Chelsee Wright walked up to the microphone in the ceremonial courtroom of the US District Court in Washington with no notes in her hand or laptop in front of her.
For nine minutes, Wright riffed against students from Georgetown University’s debate team about abolishing solitary confinement in the nation’s prisons as a panel of judges, including the court’s chief jurist, watch and take notes.
For Wright and her teammates, it was lived experience—a combined 50 years in solitary confinement, 25 of those belonging to one member, one of the inmates told the audience.
“I stand here today pleading that we as a democratic nation recognize that solitary confinement not only violates the 8th and 14th Amendments, but it also depletes the sanity of prisoners, erases who they once were to their loved ones and eliminates the freedom to live after incarceration,” Wright, the only woman on either team, told the audience of nearly 200 family members, students, lawyers and courthouse employees.
It was a rematch from four years ago, when the DC jail first organized a team and lost a debate over Zoom to the victorious Georgetown team. Since then, the debate has been held annually in the federal courthouse, making it what organizers say is the only such event held in that setting.
US Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, one of the organizers of Friday’s debate, told the audience the program was “one of the happiest events to occur in our courthouse.”
The debate team is part of the DC jail’s continuing education program that includes college classes to help students obtain their GEDs and college degrees through Georgetown. The jail identifies the inmates, often based on interest and their long-term behavior inside the facility. Local attorneys and public defenders volunteer to coach the inmates on their research and techniques, the idea being that those skills will boost self-esteem, persuasion, critical thinking and public speaking.
On one side of the courtroom, a half dozen inmates, including Wright, dressed in jail-issued blue polo shirts and khakis, sat in a jurors box surrounded by their coaches and US marshals. Across from them, the half dozen Georgetown students were dressed in suits and ties, and armed with laptops and tablets.
The students argued solitary confinement should be reformed, but was still necessary to isolate violent inmates and segregate those with infectious diseases.
The Cost of Solitary
Wright, 31, who is scheduled to be sentenced on May 8 on arson charges, rattled off statistics and cited published findings supporting her position that the the nearly 140-year practice should be abolished.
A 2013 Bureau of Prisons report stated it cost taxpayers $215 per person a day to house a person in solitary confinement at the Florence, Colo., prison, versus $86 in the general population. A 2014 University of Michigan neuroscientist’s study determined an inmate’s brain shrivels under the “extreme stress” of solitary. A 2024 General Accounting Office report found Black people make up 38% of the federal prison population but more than 59% of those in solitary confinement. She quoted from a Department of Justice report that found LGBTQ+-identifying inmates are “more likely” to be put in isolation compared to heterosexual inmates, with more than 25% of the LGBTQ+ inmates in federal facilities being placed in isolation the previous year.
Wright then paused, took an elongated breath, and told the story of two female inmates.
One inmate, Wright said, was sexually assaulted by a correctional officer. Denied access to an abortion, she “repeatedly” punched herself in her stomach so she could miscarry before she was sent to another prison.
The second inmate spent the majority of her sentence in isolation. Prison officials neglected, Wright said, to provide help with the inmate’s childhood trauma, depression and mental illness. The inmate began to self-mutilate. When it was time to be released, out of fear of returning to society, she assaulted an officer to stay in prison.
“Being home felt uncomfortable,” Wright told the audience. “It felt unknown. You won’t believe this. But solitary felt like home to her. Being degraded, caged in and controlled is what she was used to. She didn’t feel deserving of freedom.”
When the time keeper yelled “time,” numerous audience members jumped to their feet, the only standing ovation to follow the 12 presentations. One of Wright’s coaches ran over to her and hugged her.
‘This is Testimony’
Inmate James Kinard, 48, who was convicted of armed robbery, said solitary confinement has failed to deter violence inside prisons and “deteriorated” the inmates physically, psychologically and emotionally. Like several of the inmates, he argued isolation triggered suicide, mental illness and emotional instability among inmates who are released back into society, often more unstable than when they entered prison.
“This is not ideology. This is testimony,” he said. “This is not what we believe, but how we know.”
In arguing solitary confinement should be upheld, several of the Georgetown debaters noted how “fortunate” they were to be able to use laptops and the internet to research their arguments, compared to their counterparts.
Aaly Nanji argued confinement should be “conformed” to address mental and physical health problems. Inmates shouldn’t be isolated for more than 15 consecutive days, he said, and out-of-cell recreation time should be mandatory. The students also argued that prisons should appoint independent ombudsmen to oversee the use of solitary confinement.
They argued the isolation protects inmates. “This segregation helped curb deadly violence. The behavior must be constrained before it escalates,” Nanji said.
Sameer Varkantham, a George Washington University criminal justice major who was also part of the Georgetown team, argued solitary confinement should be altered, not abolished. “This is not a binary choice between solitary confinement abolition and the status quo. Instead, rather a total abolition of solitary confinement and a series of reforms that make the system more ethical and more humane.”
The students also proposed that prison staff members should be trained to better handle inmates who are isolated and to identify and recognize mental or health challenges. The inmates countered there was no guarantee the officers would implement such training.
“Under our framework, solitary confinement is no longer an unmonitored environment where inmates disappear. Instead it becomes a regular space with active oversight,” Georgetown student Benjamin Sayers argued. “Solitary confinement is sometimes necessary as a short-term method before rehabilitation can take place.”
‘Wanted to be a Voice’
After both sides completed their arguments, the adjudicators, including federal district judges Amit P. Mehta and Tanya S. Chutkan; former Georgetown Hoyas basketball coach turned NBA executive John Thompson III, and Washington Wizards player Anthony Gill left the courtroom to begin deliberations.
It took them about 15 minutes to name the jail team the winners.
US District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg said the adjudicators were impressed with both teams’ preparation, knowledge of the facts, the law, the academic literature, policy and constitutional issues and how they weaved all of those sources into their arguments without being repetitive. Boasberg also highlighted the inmates’ personal stories that they wove into their research.
Wright and Sayers were named the winners for each side.
It was Wright’s time in isolation that influenced her presentation. The second example in Wright’s argument, of the inmate who self mutilated and assaulted guards to avoid being sent home, was about herself.
Fellow inmate Harold Cunningham, 55, a mentor to the group, shared that information to the audience after the winners were announced. Members of the audience gasped and again broke out into applause. Cunningham, a team mentor who’s been imprisoned for more than 30 years for a string of armed robberies, boasted that he encouraged Wright to join the team and share her story.
In a brief interview with Bloomberg Law before deputy US marshals whisked her and her team back to the jail, Wright said she spent more than seven years in solitary confinement.
Wright, who has been in and out of prison since she was convicted of armed robbery at 17, said she spent three months memorizing her arguments to avoid using notes, to better maintain eye contact with the audience and the adjudicators. “I wanted to be a voice for those who are locked up and to make sure they are heard,” she said afterwards.
Wright says she wants to continue working as a chef and become a motivational speaker once she is released.
Some former team members are working towards becoming lawyers, Faraqui said.
At the close of the ceremony, Senior Judge Emmet G. Sullivan reminded the audience that decades ago he wrote the D.C. Court of Appeals opinion allowing individuals with felony convictions to obtain a bar license in the District if they’d proven themselves reformed since their release from prison.
“The sky is indeed the limit for you,” Sullivan said.
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