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Abstract: 

By almost any legal or ethical standard, seventeen-year-old Dustin Williamson was treated badly. He was accused of murder in 2013, held in solitary for about three-and-a-half years and, ultimately, in 2017 a jury acquitted Williamson on the murder charge. In 2018 he pleaded guilty to armed robbery and was sentenced to time served plus five years’ probation: Williamson v. Stirling, 912 F.3d 154 (4th Cir. 2018). Because Williamson remained a pretrial detainee during prolonged, harsh penal isolation, the court reviewed Williamson’s procedural complaints as a matter of substantive and procedural Due Process concerns. As this article shows, the substantive Due Process claim is not treated as the equivalent of an Eighth Amendment, Cruel and Unusual Punishment claim. The facts in this matter presented a missed opportunity to characterize prolonged, profound and procedureless confinement as impermissible; as a form of torture forbidden by the Fourteenth (substantive Due Process) and Eighth Amendments.

Keywords: Williamson v. Stirling; Wolff hearing; “safekeeper” isolation

Affiliations:  1: Executive Editor.