“Dear America” wrote Anthony Gay, who is being held in solitary confinement in Tamms supermax prison in Illinois, “It is like this place  is designed to  psychologically kill you. How could America be so cruel to its own people?… Is there a need to psychologically kill prisoners?” In Gay’s case, his lawyers claim, a seven-year term in isolation has damaged their client’s psyche to the point that he routinely mutilates himself, and at one point cut off one of his testicles and hung it from a string on his cell door. Originally sentenced to seven years for assault, Gay is now serving 99 years for throwing urine and feces at guards from his isolatoin cell.

The story of Anthony Gay, which appeared earlier this week in southwest Illinois’s Belleville News-Democrat, reads like a primer on what is wrong with solitary confinement, including how it drives prisoners mad, and how it can turn a relatively brief prison stint into an effective life sentence. It also documents a novel attempt by Gay’s lawyers to apply a recent Supreme Court ruling to the case of a prisoner suffering mental breakdown as a result of prolonged isolation. The story was written by George Pawlaczyk and Beth Hundsdorfer, whose award-winning  2010 investigative series “Trapped in Tamms” exposed the suffering of prisoners–especially prisoners with mental illness–in the Illinois state supermax. Read the full story on BND’s site, or here:

Tamms Correctional Center inmate Anthony Gay won’t be eligible for parole  until he is 120, unless his lawyer’s interpretation of a recent U.S. Supreme  Court ruling leads to an earlier chance at release.

Gay, 36, was sent to prison in 1994 on a seven-year sentence for assault, but  he’s now serving 99 years at Tamms, Illinois’ only state-operated supermax  prison. His prison term was increased because of mandatory consecutive sentences  for throwing urine and feces at guards.

Gay has appealed to an Illinois appellate court in what may be the first  attempt to apply a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting life sentences  without parole for people 18 and younger.

In a Florida case, the Supreme Court justices  ruled that youths were not  mature enough to fully understand the penalty of their crimes, and deserved some  chance at someday getting out. The ruling does not apply to homicide  convictions.

Gay’s mental state is deteriorating because of his seven-year stint in  isolation at the solitary-only Tamms lockup, according to experts on the effects  of isolation. Last year, he cut off a part of his genitalia, which a physician  identified as “possibly a testicle” and hung it from a string tied to his cell  door. He was treated and then sent to a “strip cell” as punishment.

Assistant Appellate Defender Scott Main has argued that years of isolation at  Tamms have diminished his client’s mental state to the point he shouldn’t be  held criminally responsible for throwing body wastes, acts he claims were  induced by mental illness. To eliminate “hope” of release by making Gay serve a  99-year sentence is like the Florida ruling because it violates the “cruel and  unusual” punishment prohibitions of the Eighth Amendment, Main has argued.

Gay, of Rockford, was included in the Belleville News-Democrat’s “Trapped in  Tamms” series published in 2009, which focused on mentally ill inmates held in  continuous solitary confinement. While the prison’s population was made up of  more than 50 percent convicted murderers, many of the approximately 240 inmates  were sent to Tamms for rules violations, despite entering the prison system for  relatively minor crimes. Many inmates currently at Tamms have been held in  solitary confinement for more than a decade and some for as long as 13  years.

Gay initially received probation for punching a youth and stealing his hat  and a dollar. But at 20, he wound up in state prison for violating probation. If  he hadn’t violated prison rules, he would have been released in 1998 after 3 1/2  years.

After spending two years in solitary during his first stint at Tamms shortly  after it opened in 1998, Gay became a “cutter,” or an inmate who responds to the  stress of isolation by mutilating himself. This has happened hundreds of times  with Gay, who has occasionally required hospitalization.

His self-mutilation, usually with bits of metal or glass, reached a new level  on Aug. 28, 2010, during an episode that spawned still another lawsuit. In this  case, filed in federal court where he represented himself, Gay won a partial  victory earlier this year.

After his lawsuit was denied at the district level he appealed to the U.S.  7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. He claimed damages caused by alleged  deliberate indifference by prison physician Dr. Marvin Powers, who waited two  days to treat Gay after he cut himself. Nearly a year later, the court ordered  Powers to evaluate Gay to make sure his life was not in imminent danger from the  results of the self-mutilation.

What Powers saw at 8 a.m. on that day in August when he arrived to treat Gay,  he later described in cool, clinical terms.

Gay stood next to a piece of his own genitalia he had cut off and fastened to  a thin string or thread.

“He was standing at the cell door with some scrotal part of him, possibly a  testicle, tied to the sliding door,” Powers wrote in his report.

After Gay refused to be treated, he was subdued and Powers closed a wound in  his scrotum with stitches. It is unclear from medical reports filed in federal  court in East St. Louis whether the body part was a testicle and whether it was  returned to his body. In his federal lawsuit, Gay stated it was his left  testicle.

Inmates who cut off body parts should not be held in solitary, said  psychiatrist Dr. Terry Kupers, an expert on the effects of long term solitary  confinement.

Kupers, of the Wright Institute, a psychology graduate school in Berkeley,  Calif., said that under conditions imposed by federal court decrees in  California, “Mr. Gay would be permanently excluded from supermax  confinement…someone who is so disturbed that he continually cuts himself, and  so bizarre and extreme in his emotional disturbance that he cuts his testicles,  is clearly extremely self-harming and functionally impaired, a grave and  imminent danger to himself, and should never be consigned to supermax  isolation.”

But medical and mental health staff members at Tamms have long labeled Gay a  manipulator who cuts himself to get what he wants, according to federal court  documents.

In the state appeal case, Main stated that the added years on his client’s  original seven-year sentence accrued during 10 months in 2000 and 2001 when he  was held at the Pontiac Correctional Center. He was charged by the Livingston  County state’s attorney with 21 counts of aggravated battery for throwing feces  and urine at guards.

One of the judges, who handled some of the cases, wrote a letter to another  county judge stating that a “$2 piece of plastic” could have stopped a number of  these prosecutions from being filed. He referred to the prosecutions as a “waste  of taxpayers’ money.”

In an opposing argument in the appellate court case filed on behalf of the  county prosecutor by the office of the State’s Attorney Appellate Prosecutor,  Gay’s attacks on guards at Pontiac were described as a scheme to force a  transfer back to Tamms because he was infatuated with a female psychologist.

That written argument stated that Gay threw body wastes at officers “in order  to force a transfer back to the prison (Tamms) to be with the female  psychologist with whom he was in love.”

The initial outcome of the state appeal process, if Gay wins, would call for  the appellate justices to order an evidentiary hearing where witnesses and  evidence could be heard concerning whether he is mentally ill because of  solitary confinement. A ruling of whether he could be held responsible for the  in-prison crimes would follow.

Laurie Jo Reynolds of Chicago, founder of the Tamms Year Ten Campaign that  opposes solitary confinement, said Gay’s situation is “emblematic” of a failure  by the Illinois Department of Corrections to connect mental illness to long term  isolation, even though a federal court ruling by a judge in East St. Louis last  year made that connection.

“This example is emblematic,” she said, “A man cuts off his testicle and  instead of admitting he needs help, they punish him for malingering… I’m so  appalled. If we built a dungeon, it would be a reform.”

Dr. Janis Petzel, a Maine psychiatrist who helped lead an unsuccessful effort  last year to convince that state’s legislature to prohibit prisoners from being  held in isolation longer than 45 days, said, “It gets to be a vicious circle —  the longer a prisoner is held in solitary, the more abnormal their behavior  becomes, and the longer they are forced to stay in solitary.”

Petzel, the former president of the Maine Association of Psychiatric  Physicians, said that while she could not offer a clinical diagnosis of Gay  without first examining him, inmates in his situation often find it difficult to  obey the rules.

“Prisons are full of people with a history of child abuse, head injuries or  mental illnesses, all of which impact their body’s stress response system and  impulse control … and make it very difficult for them to toe the line with the  very particular rules inside prisons, and also make them targets for violence  from guards and other inmates,” she said

Gay spends much of his time in solitary writing, including writing complaints  for lawsuits and composing essays.

Court documents state that Gay is “mentally ill” although his diagnosis is  not considered serious by prison medical staff. However, despite his proclivity  for self-mutilation and hours where he is strapped by his arms and legs to a  metal bed-frame for violating supermax rules, Gay’s letters to friends and  supporters are often articulate and introspective.

In a recent installment in a series of letters that begin with, “Dear  America,” Gay wrote: “It is like this place (Tamms) is designed to  psychologically kill you. How could America be so cruel to its own people? …  Is there a need to psychologically kill prisoners? Are we terrorists? Am I a  terrorist?”