Inmate to receive $30,000 for being placed in solitary confinement

A lawsuit settlement made public Tuesday brings to $386,000 the total paid by the state in relation to lawsuits stemming from the hazing of sex-crime inmates on the State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh’s F Block.

Robert Veith, 52, of the Hill District, is due $30,000 in settlement of his lawsuit claiming that he endured eight months of solitary confinement after he spoke out against tampering with another inmate’s food, according to his attorney, Steve Barth. Documents filed in U.S. District Court indicate that the case is voluntarily dismissed.

Veith, a repeat burglar, thief and robber, “spoke up against someone tampering with someone’s food who may or may not have been a pedophile,” Mr. Barth said. “He just said, ‘Hey, man, leave him alone.’ ”

That evening, according to Veith’s lawsuit, corrections officers Harry F. Nicoletti and Kevin Friess searched his cell and “assaulted him and he was slammed to the ground.” According to the lawsuit, Veith was then assigned to restrictive housing, in which the inmate leaves the cell for just an hour a day.

Five months into that punishment, then-Superintendent Melvin Lockett exonerated Veith of wrongdoing, according to the lawsuit. But Mr. Lockett was fired before Veith could be returned to the general population, and as a result the inmate lingered in solitary for three extra months, according to the lawsuit.

On F Block in late 2010, several corrections officers…