Hope v. Harris

Dennis Wayne Hope spent 27 years in solitary confinement as an act of retaliation by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The MacArthur Justice Center represents Mr. Hope to combat the incredibly damaging and cruel usage of solitary confinement – particularly long-term – as punishment.  

For 27 years, Mr. Hope spent virtually every waking minute alone in a cell smaller than a compact parking space. He was let out of his cell for 1-2 hours per day to exercise in another cage barely four times its size. His only human contact was with the guards that strip-searched and handcuffed him. The mandated regular reviews of his isolation were sham proceedings in which officials signed off on his continued isolation without even bothering to review his file. 

Decades of isolation have led Mr. Hope to hallucinations, chronic pain, and thoughts of suicide. 

This sort of treatment has been understood for centuries to be a form of torture. The longest stint in solitary confinement recorded at the time of the nation’s founding was months – not years. Even still, records of old newspapers reported that confined prisoners “beg[ged], with the greatest earnestness, that they may be hanged out of their misery.” 

A century later, when the Supreme Court considered a sentence of just four weeks of isolation – compared to Mr. Hopes’ 27 years spent alone – characterized solitary confinement as an “additional punishment of such a severe kind” that it imposed “a further terror and peculiar mark of infamy” even over and above a death sentence. And today, jurists around the country and across the political spectrum warn that “years on end of near-total isolation exact a terrible price.”  

The MacArthur Justice Center (MJC) represents Mr. Hope on appeal, fighting to make clear that a quarter century of solitary confinement violates the original understanding of the Eighth Amendment.

UPDATE

Despite broad support from a collection of amicus briefs, the Fifth Circuit rejected Mr. Hope’s claim within a two-sentence footnote. It then denied his petition for rehearing en banc.  

MJC asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether 27 years in solitary confinement can violate the Eighth Amendment, as at least five circuits have held, and whether the Due Process Clause requires hearings where prison officials are open to the possibility of a different outcome, as at least seven circuits have held.  

Although the Supreme Court denied the petition, Mr. Hope was released from solitary confinement by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in 2022. He leaves behind 3000 other prisoners in Texas trapped in solitary confinement, with over 500 people in isolation for over a decade.