The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

The Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, the site of the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, is in shambles. Forty years ago we tried to do something about the MCC's deplorable conditions but failed when in Bell v. Wolfish, the United States Supreme Court threw out lower court opinions we had won that would have brought the protection of the United States Constitution to that dark place. Lost in all the attention that has been focused on the Jeffrey Epstein case and the MCC is the critical role the United States Supreme Court played in permitting the MCC to be a site where suicide and other mayhem is more likely to occur.

Four decades ago we were attorneys for detainees in the Wolfish case, which challenged conditions at what was at the time the newly constructed MCC, a supposedly state of the art jail in lower Manhattan. At trial, we showed that conditions at the MCC, including rampant overcrowding and failure to respect basic rights of detainees, fell below minimum standards of decency. The distinguished federal district judge who heard the case, for the most part, agreed and ordered sweeping relief for our clients. A unanimous Court of Appeals upheld that decision, noting that courts have an obligation to act when prison and jail conditions "shock the conscience of civilized men." These lower court rulings joined many others at the time from around the country, asserting the time had come for jails and prisons to be subject for the first time to meaningful oversight.

But the United States Supreme Court overturned the decisions we had won. The majority opinion, written by then-Justice William Rehnquist disparaged the lower court judges for refusing to give deference to prison administrators. The highest court in the land told prison administrators that in effect they could return to the darkness with permission to hold in their hands the lives of defenseless human beings who they incarcerated without worrying about judges and the law.

The effect of the Supreme Court's decision was to turn back the momentum toward prison reform that had been gaining in the courts. The predictable consequence is that the MCC would revert to the deplorable state we find today. The Epstein suicide is just one reflection of a jail that operates much as it did when the lower courts condemned it four decades ago. Severely overcrowded, the MCC currently is operating at over 150% of its designed capacity. The jail is severely understaffed. Cells are routinely flooded with sewage. Inhabitants of the jail describe feces on "their hands, legs, faces, hair, all over" and a stench so powerful that they have difficulty breathing due to the indescribable smell. It is often sweltering in the summer and freezing indoors in the winter so cold that detainees can often see their breaths.

The MCC is a place of extreme brutality. In 2017, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of Roberto Grant, a 35-year-old man who was beaten to death there. When his body was discovered, prison staff covered it up by telling Grant's family that he died of an overdose. In 2015, an officer pleaded guilty to raping a female inmate.

In this environment of degradation, dirt and despair, the Epstein suicide occurred. This awful state of affairs would not have been tolerated had the Supreme Court in our case not stayed the hands of judges. But in all the finger-pointing as to the cause of the Epstein suicide, the Supreme Court has escaped blame. We should no longer overlook that the court's excessive and unwarranted deference is a direct and proximate cause of these horrible conditions at the MCC and at many other facilities operated by the government, which has left our jails and prisons the shame of a nation.  This error must be rectified. The rule of law must operate on both sides of prison walls.

Michael Mushlin and William Hellerstein were attorneys for detainees in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979).  Michael B. Mushlin is a professor of law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and was project director of the Legal Aid Society, Prisoners' Rights Project.  William E. Hellerstein is a professor of law emeritus at Brooklyn Law School and was the attorney-in-chief of the Legal Aid Society Criminal Appeals Bureau.