OLYMPIA, Wash., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled the rights of inmates on death row were not violated by a return to solitary confinement because of budget cuts.
The court ruled 7-2 against Jonathan Lee Gentry, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for the rape and murder of a young girl, The Seattle Times reported. Gentry is now the inmate who has been on the state's Death Row the longest.
Gentry's lawyer argued his rights were violated when the Special Housing Unit at the prison in Walla Walla was disbanded in 2008. In that unit, prisoners under death sentences were allowed contact visits with family and could spend time out of their cells socializing and performing jobs on the tier.
In solitary confinement, their only regular contact is with guards.
"It can cause you to go crazy, and it's a horrible way to be," Timothy Ford, Gentry's lawyer, said.
The dissenting justices said budget problems did not explain all the changes made in housing for death row inmates. Justice Debra Stephens said she would have returned the case to a lower court to determine if contact visits and other privileges could have been sustained.
