Crane v. Utah D.O.C.
10th Cir. No. 20-4032
Rights Behind Bars represents the grandmother of Brock Tucker on her claims under the 8th Amendment, Utah Constitution, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Brock entered the Utah Department of Corrections when he was seventeen years old. He had a traumatic brain injury, an IQ qualifying him as mentally disabled, major depressive disorder, and unspecified psychosis. He spent much of the next two years in a particularly punitive form of solitary confinement, spending only one hour out of his cell every other day, with no windows, no visitation, no commissary, and no phone. Despite a history of suicidal ideation, self-mutilation, and attempted suicide, Tucker was placed in a solitary confinement cell with a tie-off point and a hanging implement. On October 2, 2014, two months before he was scheduled to be paroled, Tucker finally completed suicide in solitary confinement. The district dismissed all of his grandmother's claims, and RBB along with local counsel Randall Richards has filed an appeal on her behalf explaining why the district court erred.
The Brooklyn Law School Disability and Civil Rights Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of disability rights organizations explaining that the district court undermined the important role played by the ADA in addressing the serious and pervasive discrimination experienced by individuals with disabilities and condoned discrimination that could result in the death of individuals with disabilities. The MacArthur Justice Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of a group of professors and practitioners of psychology and psychiatry explaining the harm that solitary confinement causes, especially to people with mental illness. The University of Denver Civil Rights Clinic filed an amicus brief on behalf of correctional experts explaining that states do not have to rely on solitary confinement, as demonstrated by the recent trend of limiting solitary confinement which has reduced violence in prisons, not increased it.
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