A Butler County resident has filed a lawsuit against the state secretary of corrections and a state prison on the grounds that his civil rights were violated by unnecessarily putting him in solitary confinement for more than nine months.

“It was bad,” said the plaintiff, Mark Bowman of Slippery Rock. “Those feelings of being lost, hopeless, depressed, there's this huge weight on you, and you just want to die.”

The lawsuit was filed simultaneously with that of Washington County resident Timothy Waldron, whose own lawsuit alleges the same offense.

Bowman said he and Waldron were held in solitary confinement at the same time.

Both men are represented by Butler lawyers Al Lindsay and Max Roesch, who filed complaints Thursday against John Wetzel, state secretary of corrections, and Melinda Adams, superintendent of State Correction Institution of Mercer.

Read more in Friday's Butler Eagle.