A notorious federal prisoner who has spent 24 years in solitary confinement has filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons with the help of University of Denver law students.
Thomas Silverstein, convicted of killing two fellow prisoners and a guard in the 1980s and accused in a fourth killing behind bars, says the conditions of his confinement amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
A representative for the Bureau of Prisons could not be reached for comment about Silverstein’s case Wednesday.
Silverstein, 55, entered prison in 1978 on an armed-robbery conviction. Since then he has lived in federal prisons in Marion, Ill.; Leavenworth, Kan.; Atlanta; and Colorado.
On Oct. 22, 1983, as a result of killing prison guard Merle Clutts in Marion, he was placed on permanent “no human contact” status.
He was transferred to Atlanta in December 1983.
While he was imprisoned in Atlanta, Silverstein’s lawsuit says, he would get so hot in his cell that he would strip naked, wet the floor and roll on the wet floor to cool himself.
In December 1987, Silverstein was moved to Leavenworth to a cell that was renamed “The Silverstein Suite,” where the lights were kept on 24 hours a day.
Silverstein was moved to the Administrative Maximum prison, or “Supermax,” in Florence in July 2005. There, he is in a soundproof cell.
He can exercise for one hour, five days a week, but the exercise is limited to walking no more than 10 steps in any direction and approximately 30 steps in a circle, according to the suit.
Visiting professor Dan Manville and associate professor Laura Rovner are working with Sturm College of Law students Steven Baum and Amber Trzinski on Silverstein’s case.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver, says that Silverstein is “suffering deprivations that cause mental harm that goes beyond the boundaries of what most human beings can psychologically tolerate.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
