$250,000 Paid by Maine to Former Prisoner Held in Solitary Confinement—Which the State DOC Says Doesn’t Exist
by Chuck Sharman
The Maine Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $250,000 to former state prisoner Zachary Swain on February 26, 2026, settling his claims that he was subjected to excessive and debilitating solitary confinement during his six-year incarceration at Maine State Prison (MSP). The payout is remarkable because the DOC had long insisted that solitary confinement no longer exists in its lockups. State Corrections Commissioner Randall Liberty even told lawmakers during a February 2022 hearing that their proposal to outlaw the practice in Maine was “an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Liberty made his comments about LD 696, a bill to ban solitary that Swain spoke in favor of, as PLN reported; it died in committee in April 2022, a month after the prisoner was released from MSP, where he estimated that he spent over half the time isolated 23 hours a day, his sentence growing ever longer as his mental illness worsened and he picked up additional criminal charges for acting out. [See: PLN, July 25, 2022, online.]
When reporting by the Bangor Daily News finally cut through the double-speak by Liberty and other DOC officials, state lawmakers tried—but failed—to rein in the problem. By that time the story of what happened to Swain, then 25, had also found a sympathetic ear with Lincoln County District Attorney Natasha Irving, who worked to get a host of DOC charges dropped when Swain was released on probation.
In December 2022, after his release, Swain filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, accusing Liberty and other DOC officials of violating his Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment with excessive isolation, as well as his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 42 U.S.C. ch. 126 § 12101 et seq. In addition to his struggles with mental illness, the complaint catalogued Swain’s increasingly desperate attempts at self-harm, which reached a nadir when he swallowed metal wire and a pair of toenail clippers, perforating his colon.
The complaint also included claims against the DOC’s contracted medical provider, Wellpath LLC—which declared bankruptcy in November 2024, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.31.] It was dismissed from Swain’s suit in September 2025; remaining Defendants began negotiating the settlement agreement soon thereafter. The payout it provided for Swain also included costs and fees for his attorney, Alex G. Chardon of Garmey Law in Portland. See: Swain v. Maine Dep’t of Corr., USDC (D. Maine), Case No. 1:22-cv-00408.
After LD 696 died, state Rep. Grayson Lookner (D-Portland)introduced LD 1096 in 2023 to define “solitary confinement” as isolation in a cell “or other place from the general population of a prison or jail” for 22 hours or more in a 24-hour period.
“I’d like to … limit and prohibit the use of solitary confinement,” he told News from the States. “I think that’s the ultimate goal, but first we have to define it.”
Lookner ended up pulling his proposal in 2024 after Liberty proffered an alternative definition that lawmakers rallied around—one with exceptions for prisoners confined for medical or mental health reasons, as well as others confined in isolation for up to five days based on a “reasonable suspicion” that they have ingested or inserted contraband into their bodies.
As Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition Assistant Director Jan Collins explained, “The problem was they were turning a bill that was supposed to be about a definition into a policy bill. We wanted the definition so we could talk about policy, we didn’t want the definition to be the policy.”
Meanwhile prisoners at MSP launched a brief two-day hunger strike in March 2026 to protest their placement—without meaningful review—in housing units where they received only one or two hours out of cell each day.
“It messes you up,” said one striker, prisoner Nicholas Gladu.
He filed a grievance with the DOC, to which Liberty responded in a letter obtained with a public records request by the Maine Morning Star. In it, the Commissioner admitted that the DOC’s goal for prisoners in Gladu’s housing unit was two-and-a-half hours out of cell every day, but the goal wasn’t met because of staffing shortages.
“The housing unit is not a de facto segregation unit, nor is there any intention to make it into one,” Liberty promised.
Additional source: News from the States
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