Lawsuits settled over excessive prison heat
Agreement could affect thousands of Texas inmates
Texas prison officials and lawyers in a landmark class action lawsuit Friday reached a tentative settlement that will provide air conditioning at a geriatric prison outside of Houston as well as resolve lawsuits involving inmates who died or were injured by excessive heat during oppressive summers in other state lockups.
The proposed agreement at the Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota could have lasting ramifications for thousands of inmates at more than 100 prisons statewide, the majority of which do not provide air conditioning on the housing units. Texas prison officials have acknowledged nearly two dozen inmates have died of heatstroke in prison units since 1998.
State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, a longtime advocate for updating the aging infrastructure at prisons, called the deal “a game changer” for top brass at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and especially for inmates and employees who live and work in torrid Texas weather.
“It’s certainly a departure from the position that TDCJ and the state has taken as long as I can remember,” he said.
Whitmire said installing cooling systems will be expensive, but the prison’s leaders have shown they are willing to invest in making the Pack Unit safer.
“I’m certain there will be discussions as we go forward as to what would be the next logical step — to see what other units can be made safer and more habitable for people who have been placed there and for the workers.”
Court must approve
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison, who has overseen the Pack case and several wrongful heat death cases from the start, offered ”enormous congratulations all around” at an impromptu hearing Friday in Houston via teleconference with a team of lawyers from state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, Edwards Law and the Texas Civil Rights Project who were involved in lengthy settlement negotiations this week. The settlement will have to be presented to the court for approval.
“The case literally raised life-or-death issues,” the judge told them. “It’s a triumph all the way around for the state, the inmates and the lawyers, and I feel enormously lucky to have been a small part of it.”
Jason Clark, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman, said the deal resolves the 2014 class action lawsuit over air conditioning as well as individual lawsuits involving eight heat deaths and one injury during heat waves in 2011 and 2012.
“The agreement would end the protracted legal proceeding and provide additional safeguards for offenders at the Pack Unit who may be susceptible to extreme heat,” Clark said.
Jeff Edwards, lead attorney for a group of Pack inmates who launched the class action suit, said he was gratified by the state’s willingness to come to the negotiating table and thrilled for his clients.
“Six inmates took on a state system with $3 billion in resources and accomplished what they sought out to do from the very start,” he said. “Unless we provide the same basic rights to inmates in terms of dignity, safety and medical care, everybody’s rights are at risk.”
Ellison said the proposed settlement was “nothing less than fundamental change in the daily existence of hundreds of men — transformative change.”
‘A civil rights movement’
For the inmates, a resolution would mark significant progress.
Shanda Carter said the settlement was startling news for her 39-year-old husband Michael, a diabetic former Pack resident who was among of busloads of inmates transferred to Leblanc Unit under the judge’s order last summer protect him from the heat. He called her Wednesday when rumors of a deal began to circulate.
Carter, 51, of Seabrook, said the settlement means she no longer has to fear that his life is in danger.
“I worried that he’d tell them he was sick and they would ignore him and tell him to go back to his bunk and he’d end up dying,” she said.
She said she hoped the deal would have a ripple effect.
“It’s like a civil rights movement, you accomplished something new to history,” she said.
The comprehensive deal calls for temporary cooling systems to be installed at the Pack Unit dormitories for all inmates with permanent systems to be installed with approval from the Texas Legislature. The cost of the systems is still being assessed.
The state also agreed to transport heat-sensitive inmates from Pack in airconditioned buses.
Other claims settled
In addition to air conditioning at the Pack Unit, the state has agreed to settle claims over eight deaths and one injury related to heat exposure.
Experts testified that heat deaths were preventable, a finding echoed by Dr. Tyson Pillow, an emergency physician at Ben Taub and director of the emergency medicine residency program at Baylor College of Medicine.
Indoors or outdoors, the most important factor in preventing heat exhaustion and heat stroke is prevention, rather than treatment, he said.
“Heat in a room will lead to your body compensating, sweating, dehydration, heat exhaustion and, at the extreme heat stroke,” he said. “A very hot room could lead to the same symptoms and disease process.”
Elderly people and people who take certain medicines are especially at risk, he said.
At an emergency injunction hearing in June, inmates testified they became dizzy and vomited from the heat. Texas prison officials provided documentation that 22 inmates had died from heat stroke at 15 Texas prisons since 1998.
This threat compelled Ellison to order air conditioning for heat-sensitive inmates.
Elllison ruled in July that the indoor heat at Pack was life-threatening for vulnerable inmates, writing in a scathing opinion that the summer conditions amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.”
He ordered the prison to provide cool housing units during the summer months for medically sensitive inmates, but he gave TDCJ officials the flexibility to fulfill his order as they saw fit.
Citing the prohibitive cost of installing air conditioning, officials opted to ship more than 1,000 inmates from the Pack Unit to prisons that already had air conditioning. Additional inmates were transferred to make room for the Pack evacuees.
But Ellison’s ruling was only temporary, and the case had been set for trial in March. That trial has now been canceled.