Civil Death (H 5491, S 235)

Rhode Island remains one of only three states to still have a statute on the books which declares any person serving a life sentence in prison “civilly dead.” This provision is so archaic that the Harvard Law Review called it “outworn as a mode of punishment” all the way back in 1937. Unfortunately, Rhode Island not only retains but utilizes the statute; the Department of Corrections as recently as 2018 sought to bar an inmate from bringing a civil rights suit over his living conditions at the ACI because he was civilly dead and thus had no standing to sue. This legislation, strongly supported by the ACLU, would have repealed this outmoded statute. This bill died in committee in both chambers.