Killing of an elderly inmate casts pall on plan to reduce solitary confinement in California

Sacramento, Calif. • California's efforts to ease its famously harsh use of solitary confinement are clashing with a bloody reality after an inmate who spent decades alone in a tiny cell was sent back to the general population and killed by fellow inmates within days.

Hugo "Yogi" Pinell's repeated assaults on guards landed him in solitary confinement beginning in the early 1970s, making him one of the longest-serving solitary confinement inmates in the nation, said Keramet Reiter, a University of California, Irvine, professor of criminology who studies the issue.

His involvement in a bloody 1971 San Quentin escape attempt that left six dead, including three guards, also helped spur the creation of super-maximum prisons like Pelican Bay State Prison, designed to isolate the most incorrigible and dangerous criminals and gang leaders, Reiter said.

More recently, the 45 years Pinell spent in segregation helped drive the national debate over the isolation of prisoners. The issue recently drew criticism from both President Barack Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Pinell's life behind bars traced the rise of extreme isolation as a prison-management tool from its start to its recent decline, she said.

The 71-year-old's death Wednesday in an exercise yard comes as California is trying to settle a federal lawsuit filed in 2009 by two killers who, like Pinell, served time in the notorious Pelican Bay security housing unit in California.

Pinell was released from segregation because he had no recent gang-related behavior, corrections department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said in an email.