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WASHINGTON D.C.: The US Supreme Court has decided not to hear an appeal from Texas inmate Dennis Hope, who was convicted of robbery and argued that being forced to spend 27 years in solitary confinement violated the constitutional bar against “cruel and unusual” punishment.

The justices turned away Hope’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that he had failed to show that his prolonged solitary confinement violated the US Constitution Eighth Amendment prohibition on excessive punishment.

Hope’s attorney, Easha Anand, a lawyer with the civil rights law firm MacArthur Justice Center, criticized the court’s decision, stressing that hundreds of inmates in Texas have spent 10 or more years in solitary confinement.

“The idea of putting prisoners in solitary confinement for decades on end would have been anathema to the Founders, and we believe that the Supreme Court must someday take up a case to make that clear,” Anand said, as quoted by Reuters.

In 2018, Hope, who is still in prison but is no longer in solitary confinement, filed a civil rights lawsuit against prison officials.

He was convicted in 1990 of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Following a 1994 prison escape, he was placed by prison officials in solitary confinement.

He has also had federal convictions for carjacking, robbery, using a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, and illegally possessing a firearm, according to court records.

As Hope is no longer in solitary confinement, Texas asked the justices to consider the case redundant, a request contested by Hope’s lawyers.