WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court’s liberal minority dissented on Monday to a decision to leave a lower court ruling in place that said an Illinois man's three-year stint in solitary confinement was not cruel and unusual punishment.
Led by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justices dissented to a denial of certiorari from Michael Johnson, who spent years in a poorly ventilated windowless cell the size of a parking space often covered in human waste. Jackson said an appeals court failed to consider the risk to Johnson’s health, instead focusing on his minor infractions that restricted his ability to leave his cell.
Jackson characterized the lower court ruling as an indisputable legal error that she — along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — would have remedied by reversing.
More at Courthouse News Service.
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