Is being confined indefinitely in a solitary prison cell “cruel and unusual punishment” and does it violate a prisoner’s right to due process?
A team of students at the University of Denver Strum School of Law and two of their professors claim the answer to both questions is yes. In 2007, they filed a civil rights lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) on behalf of a familiar name: Thomas Silverstein.
Silverstein sent me this drawing after I mailed him one of my books. Several BOP officers were angry that I gave him a copy but didn't offer them one.
Silverstein is a major character in my book, The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison, and someone I have known since 1987. That’s when I became the first and – to date — the only reporter ever allowed to interview him in prison.
