On March 3, 2017, a binding legal settlement was entered between the Arizona Department of Corrections and death row prisoner Scott Nordstrom, represented by the Arizona Capital Representation Project. Like most death penalty states, Arizona classifies its inmates at its highest security level, maximum custody, and houses them in predominately solitary confinement conditions at a super-maximum facility. In late 2015, Mr. Nordstrom filed a section 1983 lawsuit challenging mandatory maximum custody classification for all death sentenced prisoners on Due Process and Eighth Amendment grounds. Under the terms of the settlement, death sentenced prisoners will now be classified for housing based upon the risk assessment criteria used for all other Arizona prisoners, replacing the current system of mandatory placement of death row prisoners into maximum custody at a super-maximum facility. The empirical data overwhelmingly demonstrates that death row prisoners pose no greater security risk than prisoners in general population. See Cunningham, Reidy, and Sorensen, Wasted Resources and Gratuitous Suffering: The Failure of a Security Rationale for Death Row (2015) (available here). The settlement gives the Arizona Department of Corrections flexibility to continue to use maximum custody for prisoners who pose the greatest risk to other prisoners and prison staff while respecting the due process rights of death sentenced prisoners who pose no such threat.
Archive for March, 2017
The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence in State v. Hidalgo. The Court rejected Mr. Hidalgo’s Furman challenge.
