he will be the "cause celebrite" for a whole host of cases brought by human rights groups on the left. in fact, in your last paragraph - you are essentially writing an amicus brief for those cases - you say "its the closest thing to torture we have" - and when some liberal federal judge agrees with you, that's its cruel and unusual punishment, supermax will be closed.
yes, he would have been around for a few years on death row - but then he would have been gone.
In which case he'd be moved to general population where he gets to be somebody's girlfriend until he inevitably gets killed by a fellow inmate. Still less than a blaze of glory.
They're not gonna move him to Martha Stewart's house for house arrest. He's going to be in a living hell no matter what.
Plus, depending on your faith, he's going to get his eternal reward and that'll be infinitely worse than anything we can dish out.