Document Type
Brief
Publication Date
12-15-2025
Publisher
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Language
en-US
Abstract
By the time Emery Barron sued Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials in 2021, they had kept him caged for almost six years in solitary confinement without providing a pathway for him to reenter general population. Department of Correction policy calls for officials to review the ongoing need for solitary confinement after an initial ninety-day stint in disciplinary confinement. However, procedural carve outs allow officials to leave people like Barron in solitary indefinitely without an opportunity to be heard by a decisionmaker and without requiring officials to assert any legitimate penological interest behind the confinement.
Under this scheme, which violated both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Barron languished in rodent infested cells where loud music blasted for twelve hours a day and other individuals yelled from their cells to one another constantly, depriving him of rest. Barron was confined to his cell for all but thirty minutes a week for a period of over a year. In any limited time out of his cell, Barron was still caged, shackled, and separated from others. Although Defendants were aware that prolonged solitary confinement can have disastrous consequences for incarcerated individuals’ physical and mental well-being, they continued to confine him in solitary without meaningful process.
Being in prolonged solitary confinement created both a risk of and actual substantial harm to Barron’s mental health, in part because of his unique and deteriorating physical health circumstances, which Defendants knew about. Indeed, Defendant Cronauer prevented Barron from receiving treatment for his sarcoidosis—a condition that led Barron to become legally blind during his solitary confinement.
The district court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment, holding that despite leaving him in these conditions for years, Defendants had not violated the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendments. Because these conclusions cannot be squared with the law, this Court should reverse.
Recommended Citation
Steven Mitchell, Carolyn Sacco, Shaina Sikka & Madeline H. Meth,
Opening Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant Emery Barron
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/4158
