It became home for Mafia boss John Gotti after his conviction in 1992. It was also labeled inhumane by Amnesty International. It is the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, the most restrictive of all federal penal institutions for its time.
When Gotti was delivered to the Marion warden, there were at least two mob men he knew (but never got to see) in the prison—Nicodemo “Nicky” Scarfo, the brutal ex-boss of the Philadelphia family, and Jimmy Coonan, the top honcho of the Westies, the New York Irish mob affiliated with the Mafia, and some of the crime cartel’s most ardent killers.
Other notorious prisoners included John Walker, the Navy man who sold classified information to the former Soviet Union; Edwin Wilson, a U.S. government employee who sold weapons to Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi and conspired to kill eight witnesses to his crime and Jonathan Jay Pollard who spied for the Israelis. It was an open question whether these prisoners were there because they constituted a continuing menace to the nation and society or because they were incarcerated in such a way to inflict great mental punishment on them.
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Kept in the most restrictive level of confinement in prison, an 8-by-7-feet underground cell for 22 to 23 hours a day, Gotti had no work, no communal recreation, no communal education classes. Food was delivered through a slot in the cell door. All that he was allowed in his cell was a single cot, a basin, a toilet, a radio and a black-and-white TV.
There was not even a chair to sit on. Rather than spend all his hours prone on his cot, Gotti folded his mattress into an L shape, which he propped against the wall to simulate a chair. It was said he read, watched television (mostly talk shows) and exercised by doing probably 1,000 pushups a day.
He was taken to his shower shackled in chains inside a movable cage. His contact with the outside was limited to five monthly visiting periods, mostly with his lawyers or his son Junior. The FBI admitted Gotti continued to rule the Gambino family through his son, who served as acting boss of the family, passing along his father’s instructions.
Most lifers sent to Marion are kept there 30 months and then transferred to a regular maximum security prison elsewhere. Gotti’s time on that basis was completed in 1995, but he remained in Marion. It was said that his lawyers did not press the issue of his long confinement for fear it would prolong the situation or possibly cause his transfer to an even harsher federal prison that had since opened in Colorado.
Some speculated that authorities still harbored hopes that Gotti would “break” and finally turn informer against the mob in exchange for some form of leniency. Some members of the media insisted they had indications that there had even been an attempt on Gotti’s life, most remarkable considering his isolation.
Other observers saw Gotti being used as a “horror example” for other mafiosi who get arrested on what could await them if uncooperative.
