Incarcerated individual documents cruel and unusual punishment in case he brought while in solitary

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Connease Warren, Abolitionist Law Center, 713-304-8990, connease@alcenter.org

Hassan Tucker, a 42-year-old man incarcerated his entire adult life, is suing two former Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections Secretaries for long-term damage he sustained in solitary confinement. Prolonged solitary confinement is widespread in Pennsylvania state prisons. Mr. Tucker intends to prove that it violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in his case. Mr. Tucker filed the lawsuit without attorney assistance from his solitary confinement cell at the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) at SCI Phoenix in April 2022; at his request, the Abolitionist Law Center entered the case in 2024. Solitary confinement cases rarely make it to trial—even more so when incarcerated individuals contend with the legal system on their own.

“I am suing the former DOC secretaries for torturing me with total isolation and severe conditions, while ignoring the extreme harm that the conditions were causing me both physically and mentally,” said Mr. Tucker. “My life will never be the same after spending 1,500 days in solitary confinement. It’s my hope from bringing this case that I will never have to experience that torture again, and I hope I can prevent someone else from experiencing it.”

Mr. Tucker began serving a sentence of life without parole, death by incarceration, in January 2005. He was convicted following a childhood of considerable trauma and housing instability. He had been incarcerated for 12 years when, in 2017, he fell headfirst from the second floor of his dorm, sustaining a traumatic brain injury that caused behavioral and emotional changes. While his prison record contained no prior violent misconduct, he was found guilty of his first three violent misconducts shortly after the fall. Despite knowledge of this and of his pre-existing mental illness, Sec. John Wetzel then approved—and Sec. George Little continued—Mr. Tucker’s addition to the Restricted Release List. The RRL designates people to be held in solitary for expansive reasons for an indefinite period of time, with release allowed only by the DOC secretary, and no clear process for gaining that approval.

In conditions common to solitary confinement across the Commonwealth, Mr. Tucker was held in an extremely small cell that prevented him from exercising or even sitting upright in bed. He was barred from virtually all contact with others, even family and legal counsel, except when he was taken to an outdoor yard cage the size of his cell for one hour on weekdays. His case details how solitary cells were constantly brightly lit, loud, had no view of the outside world, and were covered with the bodily waste of the deteriorating individuals held there, who were allowed no cleaning supplies or laundry, nor personal possessions.

After five months in these conditions, Mr. Tucker attempted suicide. Following several days of hospitalization, he was returned to solitary confinement for a total of four years. During that time, he experienced intense sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, migraines, panic, and memory loss. He began to experience visual hallucinations and chronic headaches, digestive issues, body aches, and other physiological symptoms, many of which have persisted long after his release from solitary confinement.

The damaging psychological and physical effects of solitary confinement have long been well-documented. Its use in PA follows a distinct pattern of racist overrepresentation: roughly 80% of prisoners in the IMU are Black, compared with a state population that is 80% white. In Pennsylvania, 53% of men in prisons designated “maximum” or “close” security are Black, a Philadelphia Inquirer analysis of Department of Corrections data found in 2022, whereas Black people are just 36% of minimum-security prisoners.

“The violence of solitary happens completely behind prison walls, hidden from the general public. It is emblematic of a punishment system whose cruelty knows no bounds,” said ALC managing attorney Nia Holston. “Mr. Tucker courageously sued the Department of Corrections and its leaders to bring light to what he and so many others have endured. With this trial, he is holding them to account to make sure no one else has to suffer as he did.”

Mr. Tucker seeks compensatory and punitive damages. The pretrial memorandum can be found here.

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The Abolitionist Law Center is a public interest law firm inspired by the struggle of political and politicized prisoners, and organized for the purpose of abolishing class- and race-based mass incarceration in the United States. Abolitionist Law Center litigates on behalf of people whose human rights have been violated in prison, educates the public about the evils of mass incarceration, and works to develop a mass movement against the American punishment system by building alliances and nurturing solidarity across social divisions. Follow @AbolitionistLC on Facebook and Instagram.