By C1 Staff
DENVER, Colo. — An inmate in Colo. who has spent the past 12 years in solitary confinement has won a lawsuit that asks for outdoor exercise rights.
U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled in favor of Troy Anderson, an inmate who’s spent most of his life in jail for crimes that include a shootout with police, who filed a lawsuit against Colorado State Penitentiary (CSP) for keeping him in a 90-foot-square room with 6-inch-wide slits for windows. Anderson’s only exercise option is a chin-up bar on one wall, according to The Denver Post.
“The Eight Amendment does not mandate comfortable prisons,” Jackson wrote in his ruling, “but it does forbid inhumane conditions.”
Anderson’s attorneys said they are hopeful that this ruling will have a widespread impact for all the inmates housed at CSP.
It’s the most restrictive prison in the state system and is used to house the state’s most dangerous inmates. Prisoners are kept in their cells for at least 23 hours a day.
But a spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said the department only sees this ruling applying to Anderson.
Per the ruling, the department has 60 days to come up with a plan for giving Anderson outdoor exercise for one hour at a time, three days a week.
Jackson noted in his ruling that one prison expert who testified at trial in the case said CSP is the only prison in the nation that does not provide true outdoor exercise for inmates. Instead, across the country prisons are rethinking the use of prolonged solitary confinement, Jackson said.