One of those who testified at Durbin’s recent hearing was Damon A. Thibodeaux, who in 1997 was sentenced to death for allegedly raping and murdering a 14-year-old cousin. He was incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, which sits on a former plantation and is one of the nation’s most troubled prisons. Thibodeaux spent 15 years in solitary confinement. In 2012, he was exonerated, the 141st death row inmate to receive such a reprieve since 1976.
“I do not really have the words to tell you fully how much physical, mental and emotional harm is done to those of us who are placed into solitary confinement for any length of time,” Thibodeaux says in the written statement prepared for his testimony. But what he could tell was sufficiently troubling: “I saw men lose their minds. Some screamed at all hours of the night. Some just stared at a wall….
“I watched the state slowly execute many of my fellow inmates before it could legally put the needle into their arms.”
Article Appeared @http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/04/11/solitary-confinement-prisons-torture.html