Indiana will pay inmate $100K for each year he spent in solitary, lawyers say
From the Indianapolis Star.
In his own words, Jay Vermillion described his temporary home at the Westville Correctional Facility, inside a unit that housed the “worst of the worst.”
Vermillion spent 23-24 hours a day in a cold “concrete tomb with a solid steel door." There was no direct contact or interaction with others. No telephone use, work or recreation. Just the smell of mace fumes, the ransacking of cells and "humiliating strip searches," Vermillion said.
“All of the out-of-control and unmanageable worst-of-the-worst are housed in ‘cold storage’ to induce dormancy,” he stated in a federal complaint.
Vermillion, who’s serving a decadeslong sentence for murder and other offenses, said he didn’t belong there. But starting in 2009, Vermillion remained in the unit for more than four years, he said. All while being denied a clear explanation for why he was there and a chance to explain why he believed he shouldn’t be — a right afforded to him and every inmate under the law, attorney Maggie Filler, of the Chicago-based MacArthur Justice Center, told IndyStar.
Indiana law says the maximum allowable term in solitary is 30 days, after which the department must review the offender to determine whether the inmate should stay segregated. Rather than hold these required reviews, Filler said, the DOC simply tacked on more days to Vermillion’s term.
Vermillion said he served back-to-back disciplinary terms in solitary: 1,513 days to be exact.
Since July 2000 