Solitary Confinement is "Torture:"The Forthcoming Seminal Trial of Political Prisoner Russell Shoatz
Full title: Solitary Confinement is "Torture:" The Forthcoming Seminal Trial of Political Prisoner Russell 'Maroon' Shoatz
Shoatz attorney and Legal Director of the Abolitionist Law Center Bret Grote discussed this forthcoming trial about the issue of solitary confinement. - March 12, 2016
Bio
Bret Grote is the Legal Director of ALC, and a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is a 2013 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and was recognized as the Distinguished Public Interest Scholar for his graduating class. He was the Isabel and Alger Hiss Racial Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2012. In addition to his work at Abolitionist Law Center, Bret has been a volunteer investigator, organizer, and researcher with HRC since 2007.
Russell Shoatz is well-versed in social justice issues and acquired too many awards and degrees to name here. His father, a Black Panther, has been inprisoned since 1971. Russell has fought to raise awareness around his father's case both nationally and internationally. He is the national spokesperson of SHOFAM (Shoats Family), the legal defense fund for his father. Russell works with youth in Philadelphia, raising funds and awareness for national tours and finals for The Gold Coast Buccaneers Drill Team/Leadership Development Programs). Russell has a lifetime of education and humanitarian work starting with Little Maroons, a school founded by Russell and fellow parents. Russell serves as chairperson for the SHOFAM annual fundraiser, supporter of political prisoners and a host of NGOs in youth work, and event planner. He also works with the Human Rights Coalition, Axis of Justice, Black August, Heads 4 dreads clothing line and GRIOT, his consulting firm that makes use of political prisoners incarcerated genius. Russell worked for Jerry Lewis at Sunshine Foundation and Moss Rehab mentoring disabled children and adults. He is also responsible for revolutionizing media strategies/urban marketing by creating three platforms in one. Russell is the founder of quote (the most informative reading since the Panther Paper). The ground shaking multimedia juggernaut Blu magazine. Russell is a visionary, carpenter, father, artist, four-star chef and the list goes on.
Transcript
Solitary Confinement is JARED BALL, TRNN: Welcome, everyone, back to the Real News Network. I'm Jared Ball here in Baltimore.
On February 12 of this year, an important but overshadowed ruling by the Western Pennsylvania U.S. District Court said that the 22 consecutive years spent in solitary confinement by former Black Panther Party member and current political prisoner Russell Shoatz deserves, and will receive, its own trial. To discuss this potentially groundbreaking ruling, forthcoming trial, and the man about whom all of this is happening, is his attorney and legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, Bret Grote.
Bret, welcome back to the Real News.
BRET GROTE: Thanks, Jared.
BALL: So if you would, just again, briefly remind our audience who Russell Shoatz is, why he is a political prisoner, and how he has ended up involved in this potentially seminal case and ruling.
GROTE: Sure. Russell Shoatz became involved with the Black liberation movement in the 1960s. He joined the Black Panther Party and was also a part of the Black Liberation Army. He was incarcerated in 1972 for the homicide, his alleged role in the homicide of a Philadelphia police officer and sentenced to life without parole.
In 1977 he performed his first liberation from prison, escaping, and he was not captured for 27 days. In 1980 he again escaped from prison and this time was out for three or four days. After this second escape in 1980 he was referred to by somebody else he was incarcerated with as Maroon, and that is the moniker that he has picked up and how he is known by friends and families and others around the world now.
BALL: And if we can, just for those who may not be aware, maroon refers to the enslaved Africans who would escape throughout, well, actually, even on the continent, but throughout the western hemisphere, escaped enslavement, set up the autonomous societies and be engaged in all kinds of, what I guess would be called, considered terrorism against slaveholders and plantations. But, I'm sorry, please continue.
GROTE: Absolutely. And Maroon, at that time, wasn't familiar with the history of maroon societies, and he began an intensive study of that history and has since referred to it in his own political writings.
In 1980 he was captured. He was placed in solitary confinement, where he remained for two or so years until he was released in 1982 to the general population of SCI Pittsburgh. At this time he decided that he was going to try a different approach to getting himself and others out of prison, and that was to abide by prison regulations and abide by the law, but organize with other lifers in the institution to work with their families, community members and human rights advocates to appeal to the Pennsylvania legislature to repeal life without parole sentences.
At that time the Lifers Association at the prison in Pittsburgh consisted of five or six people who did very little, nothing specifically for the interests of lifers. After Maroon got involved, the participation shot up to over 100 people who were attending meetings, and they were becoming quite politicized. This terrified prison officials, and on the night that the then-president of the Lifers Association was impeached and Maroon was made the interim president, he was thrown in solitary confinement. This was in the spring of 1983.
And within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections he remained in solitary confinement from the spring of 1983 until February of 2014. There was a 19-month stint between 1989 and 1981 where he was housed in the general population of the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. There was an uprising at another Pennsylvania prison so the state sent a number of people to the federal system for temporary confinement.
Upon his return to Pennsylvania he was placed right back in the hole, and that is where he spent more than 22 consecutive years. In March, no, in May of 2013 we brought a lawsuit under the 8th and 14th Amendment challenging his long-term, indefinite solitary confinement, and several months later, in February of 2014, he was finally released to the general population a few months after his 70th birthday, and that is where he remains today at the state correctional institution at Graterford, Pennsylvania.
BALL: So you all have won this ruling that will grant a trial around this long-term, prolonged, 22-year consecutive solitary confinement, where officials, and part of what has been written about this case, perhaps you can elaborate on that, is that solitary confinement has been defined officially, at least by some, as torture. If you could explain a little bit about that, how that relates to this case, and then tell us anything else we need to understand about, again, the seminal nature of this ruling and the forthcoming trial.
GROTE: Right. So the constitutional standard under the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment is that prison officials cannot be deliberately indifferent to conditions of confinement that deprive prisoners of basic human needs. We alleged and produced substantial evidence that 22 years of solitary confinement constituted deprivation of several basic human needs of Maroon's, including environmental stimulation, social interaction, mental health, his physical health, sleep. And the judge said that there was sufficient evidence in the record so that the defendants were not entitled to some re-judgment.
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