In testimony, state inmates say heat is unbearable in prisons

Statements are part of a suit seeking relief from sweltering cells

A series of inmates Monday offered vivid accounts of daily life locked inside prison dormitories without air conditioning in sweltering summer heat.

You can’t read because sweat pools up in your eyes. You can’t write a letter because the ink gets smeared with sweat. You accidentally brush against your bed post and it’s like touching an oven that got left on.

“It’s undescribable. It’s real misery,” said Thomas Pennington, a 52-year-old serving a life sentence. “You sit on your bunk, put your head down and you just sit there, you’re soaking wet, clothes stuck to you.”

Pennington and four other inmates described sleepless nights, headaches, dizziness and nausea. One inmate, Carlos Huerta, 30, went to the emergency room for heat exhaustion with a body temperature of 102.3 and on another oppressively hot day, Huerta saw a sweat-soaked guard on his unit collapse.

The testimony came in a federal lawsuit by inmates seeking emergency relief from “cruel and unusual punishment” of indoor heat that sometimes tops 100 degrees in the summertime.

Lawyers for six inmates at the Wallace Pack Unit northwest of Houston say the heat is especially dangerous for sick and elderly inmates and those who take medicine that inhibits their body from cooling itself.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison previously ruled that the inmates needed a safer water supply because the well at Pack Unit had elevated levels of arsenic.

Twenty-two inmates have died from heat-related illness at the state prisons since 1998, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Most state prisons in Texas do not have air-conditioning in the housing units.

Lawyers for TDCJ questioned the inmates about the remedies the prison has provided — including ice water, respite rooms and wellness checks.

The Pack inmates testified that the ample ice water and fans aren’t enough to mitigate the heat. The cool showers help for about as long as it takes to walk back to one’s bunk from the shower. The respite areas —

including the craft shop, the barber shop and an administrative hallway — offer limited space for limited time periods.

Keith Cole, 63, told the judge the situation has improved since he and others sued the prison. There’s always ice water available, for example.

But he said only truly assertive inmates like him take advantage of the respite areas on a daily basis. The fans just blow hot air. The dorms don’t have cross-ventilation because the windows are sealed shut.

One of Cole’s biggest fears is shortness of breath, which he says affects him every summer when the temperature rises.

“The best way to describe it is it feels like you’re sucking in air, but you’re not sucking in air. You have the sensation that you’re suffocating,” Cole said.

The hearing is expected to last into next week.