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A trial in a Texas federal court this week could decide whether the state must provide air-conditioning in its prisons. From member station KUT, Andrew Weber reports.
ANDREW WEBER, BYLINE: Only a third of the state prisons in Texas are air-conditioned. That's in a state that regularly weathers scorching hot summers. And for years, lawyers for inmates argue the conditions - temperatures that can reach 110 degrees in some cases - constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Attorney Brandon Duke is arguing in a federal court in Austin this week that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is violating the Constitution.
BRANDON DUKE: The Constitution requires living conditions that are not exposing individuals to high heat levels.
WEBER: Duke says the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs Texas' prisons, hasn't done that. And U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who's presiding over the case, has already signaled that those conditions, which the state prison system said has contributed to the deaths of dozens of inmates since 1998, are unconstitutional. Pitman said as much in a ruling last year, but he didn't rule outright. Now he'll decide the case from the bench after a two-week trial.
Plaintiffs' attorneys say at least five inmates died in Texas because of heat related illness since 2023. In the lawsuit, attorneys also allege the TDCJ has been ignoring or even hiding some heat-related deaths in prisons. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice wouldn't provide a comment for this story, but the agency's head, Bobby Lumpkin, said in a deposition last year that he agreed with Pitman's view. More air-conditioning would halt inmate deaths. Here's Lumpkin answering a plaintiff attorney's question.
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UNIDENTIFIED ATTORNEY: You agree with that, don't you? Air conditioning is the only effective protection from the extreme heat. And you'd say, yes, that's true as far as we go, extreme heat inside, right?
BOBBY LUMPKIN: Right.
WEBER: The problem, the agency argues, is funding. It would cost $1.3 billion to install air-conditioning systems, and state lawmakers would need to approve a plan to bring AC into all the state-run prisons. In the meantime, TDCJ says it's chipping away at bringing air-conditioning online. But Duke, a plaintiff's attorney says the state is slow-walking that rollout.
DUKE: They've chosen basically the slowest, least efficient process that will take a significant number of years longer to air-condition the system.
WEBER: Attorneys say this case is novel. If Judge Pitman sides with plaintiffs, he could order Texas to provide air-conditioning at all its 101 prisons by 2029. Duke says other states are watching.
DUKE: This litigation would serve as a model because there are units in Louisiana that are unair-conditioned, in Mississippi, that get equally as hot and are equally as dangerous.
WEBER: Award-winning Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater was outside the courthouse Tuesday. The director is not involved in the lawsuit, but he did help spotlight the federal case when he intervened on behalf of inmate Bernie Tiede, the subject of Linklater's 2011 film "Bernie." Tiede was hospitalized in 2023 for heat-related illness. He said the case would address a lingering cruelty in state law.
RICHARD LINKLATER: People don't really care about what goes on in prisons behind those walls, but, you know, we need to care. It's a lot of suffering, and you just can't believe it's going on still.
WEBER: Linklater and others will be in court over the next two weeks. After that, a decision could take weeks or months, well into another sweltering Texas summer.
For NPR News, I'm Andrew Weber in Austin.
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