Thomas Silverstein and 36 Years in Solitary Confinement

Thomas Silverstein spent 36 years in solitary confinement, longer than any other inmate in the federal prison system, after he killed a correctional officer at USP Marion in Illinois in 1983. The Bureau of Prisons responded by placing him under a directive known internally as “NO HUMAN CONTACT,” and he lived under some version of that order in four federal facilities until his death on May 11, 2019, at age 67.¹

How He Entered Federal Prison

At 23, Silverstein was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for three bank robberies committed with his father and a cousin. He entered the federal system in the mid-1970s.² Inside, he joined the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, and rose to its three-man “commission.” Membership required what the gang called “making bones,” a euphemism for proving a willingness to kill.³

The Killings That Led to Isolation

Silverstein was first convicted of murdering inmate Danny Atwell, who had reportedly crossed the Aryan Brotherhood. That conviction was reversed on appeal after a federal appellate court found improperly admitted hearsay and prosecutorial misconduct; the government declined to retry him.⁴⁵

In 1981, at USP Marion, Silverstein and fellow inmate Clayton Fountain killed Robert Chappelle in the Control Unit as a favor to the Mexican Mafia. Reaching through the bars of Chappelle’s cell during recreation, they strangled him with a cord. Silverstein later said he was “sorry I had to kill him through the bars and couldn’t get next to him.” He received a life sentence plus 20 years for conspiracy.³⁵

In September 1982, Silverstein and Fountain attacked Raymond “Cadillac” Smith, the leader of a Black prison gang known as the D.C. Blacks, who had allegedly vowed to avenge Chappelle. As Smith left a shower, they stabbed him 67 times with knives fashioned from bed frames and towel racks, then dragged his body through the unit to display it to other inmates. Silverstein received a second life sentence.⁵²

The Murder of Officer Merle Clutts

On October 22, 1983, Silverstein killed correctional officer Merle Clutts, a 19-year veteran of the Bureau of Prisons. Three officers were escorting the handcuffed and shackled Silverstein from the showers back to his cell when he paused outside another inmate’s cell, somehow freed his hands, and attacked Clutts with a nine-inch homemade knife, stabbing him roughly 40 times before other officers intervened.⁶ Silverstein later claimed he had planned the attack for months because Clutts had been harassing him; federal investigations cleared the officer of wrongdoing.⁷ Clutts was 51 and left a wife, a daughter, and a two-year-old grandson.

Eight hours later, Fountain killed a second officer, Robert Hoffman, in the same unit.⁸ There was no federal death penalty for prison murders at the time. Bureau of Prisons Director Norman Carlson told Congress that “the lack of a Federal death penalty makes a mockery of the Federal criminal justice system when we attempt to deal with multiple murderers who continue to prey on innocent victims.”⁹ Carlson instead pursued what he called “the harshest conditions legally allowed.”¹⁰

What “No Human Contact” Looked Like

The directive that governed the rest of Silverstein’s life moved with him through three facilities.

USP Atlanta

Silverstein was first transferred to USP Atlanta and placed in what he called the “side pocket,” a windowless underground cell measuring six by seven feet. He could touch both walls at once and reach the ceiling light fixture. For the first six months, two guards stood outside around the clock. He was stripped to his boxer shorts, denied personal items, and allowed no clock, radio, television, or mail beyond a Bible. The lights never went off. He had one hour of outdoor recreation per week in a space where he could see no one.¹¹

In a later legal declaration, Silverstein described construction crews adding bars to his cell while he remained inside, forcing him to shield himself with a sheet against welding sparks. He said it felt like being “buried alive.” His vision deteriorated under the constant light, and he reported hearing voices through the vents.¹¹

USP Leavenworth

After an inmate riot at Atlanta in 1987, Silverstein was moved to USP Leavenworth in Kansas, where the Bureau built a dedicated space in the Special Housing Unit basement that staff called the “Silverstein Suite.” It was a windowless, video-monitored cell with a bunk, desk, shower, and toilet, connected by remote-controlled doors to two small recreation cages. The design guaranteed he would never set foot in a hallway. He lived there for about 16 years, lights on continuously, with one hour of recreation per day in the attached cages.²⁷

ADX Florence

In July 2005, Silverstein was transferred to ADX Florence, the federal supermax in Colorado. He was initially placed on “Range 13,” one of the most restrictive units, where the only other inmate was World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. He later moved to D-Unit, where he could hear sounds from neighboring cells but still could not see other prisoners.¹¹¹² He described the experience as “sitting in your very own personalized coffin, watching yourself rot away, day by day, minute by minute, wondering which part of yourself is first to decay.”¹⁰

How His Case Shaped the Federal Supermax

The two officer killings on October 22, 1983, triggered a lockdown at USP Marion that lasted 23 years, until 2006. The facility’s roughly 350 inmates were confined to seven-by-nine-foot cells for nearly 23 hours a day. Meals came through door slots. Contact visits were prohibited. Any inmate leaving a cell was placed in leg irons, handcuffs, and a “black box” device over the cuffs.⁸

In 1988, a federal appeals court upheld the permanent lockdown, calling it a “unitary and integrated system for dealing with the nation’s least corrigible inmates.”⁸ The Marion model became the template for ADX Florence, which opened in November 1994 as the nation’s first purpose-built federal supermax. Its project manager stated that “Marion learned from Alcatraz, and now we’ve had 30 years to learn from Marion.”¹³ Roughly 40 states later adopted versions of the supermax design.¹⁴

The Lawsuit Challenging His Isolation

In November 2007, the University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s Civil Rights Clinic, led by Professor Laura Rovner, sued the Bureau of Prisons on Silverstein’s behalf, arguing that his conditions violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.¹⁵ His team stated he was “suffering deprivations that cause mental harm that goes beyond the boundaries of what most human beings can psychologically tolerate.” Silverstein’s own 64-page declaration noted a “spotless conduct record for over 22 years” with no disciplinary infraction since 1988, and Bureau psychologists had rated him a low risk for violence.¹¹

In October 2011, U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer dismissed the case, ruling that conditions at ADX Florence were not “atypically extreme” and noting that Silverstein was no longer technically under “no human contact” status after his move to D-Unit.¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

His Later Years

Silverstein became a self-taught artist in isolation, drawing the cells and recreation cages he inhabited, the escort procedures used to move him, and self-portraits. He told author Pete Earley, the only journalist ever granted face-to-face access to him, that his art was how “he spoke from his heart.”¹⁹⁷ He practiced yoga, studied Buddhism, and worked through anger management courses. According to Earley, who corresponded with him for 32 years, Silverstein eventually apologized for his crimes and renounced the Aryan Brotherhood and white supremacy.²⁰

Death

Silverstein was admitted to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, in February 2019 for heart surgery. He died there on May 11, 2019, at 67, from complications of the procedure. He had been incarcerated continuously since the mid-1970s and spent the final 36 years of his life in isolation. He was survived by his wife, Renee Silverstein.¹²¹ His case is still invoked by reform advocates as evidence that indefinite isolation amounts to torture, and by corrections officials as justification for the supermax approach to inmates who have killed inside prison walls.

1
New York Times. Thomas Silverstein, Dead
2
Prison Legal News. Thomas Silverstein, Americas Most Isolated Prisoner, Dies at Age 67
3
Justia. United States v. Silverstein, 732 F.2d 1338
4
Law.resource.org. Silverstein v. United States, 737 F.2d 864
5
U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. Silverstein v. Federal Bureau of Prisons
6
The Southern Illinoisan. Remembering the Fallen: Marion Prison Guard Honored During Memorial Service
7
Pete Earley. Thomas Silverstein
8
PBS Frontline. Lock It Down: How Solitary Started in the U.S.
9
Office of Justice Programs. Congressional Hearing on Prison Violence
10
Solitary Watch. When Isolation Became the Supreme Punishment
11
Solitary Watch. Americas Most Isolated Federal Prisoner Describes 10,220 Days in Extreme Solitary Confinement
12
5280 Magazine. ADX Florence Facts Supermax
13
Prison Legal News. The Proposed Prison in Florence, CO: A New and Improved Marion
14
Literary Hub. No Human Contact: On Solitary Confinements Origins
15
Denver Post. Prisoners Isolation Spurs Help by Students
16
Solitary Watch. Federal Judge Rules 28 Years in Solitary Confinement Not Extreme, Dismisses Silverstein Case
17
Courthouse News Service. Longest Held Prisoner in Solitary Loses Challenge
18
U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. Silverstein v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, No. 12-1450
19
Solitary Watch. Additional Art
20
Pete Earley. No Human Contact Book Giveaway
21
CBS News. Solitary Confinement: Thomas Silverstein Has Died