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“A federal judge in Austin is hearing a lawsuit this week that aims to force Texas to put air conditioning in all state prisons.
“‘This lawsuit is about bringing temperatures to humane standards in our prisons so that nobody else has to die inside our Texas prisons,’ said Jennifer Toon [Leading with Conviction™ 2024 participant], a formerly incarcerated person who is now project director of the Lioness Justice Impacted Women Alliance.
“A group of advocates is trying to convince the judge the Texas prison system’s lack of air conditioning qualifies as ‘unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.’
“‘Live in your car in a parking lot in Walmart in August Texas heat. Live inside there with the windows rolled up. That is the type of heat,’ said Toon.
“On Wednesday, day two of that hearing, the plaintiff’s attorneys pointed to a study showing an average of 14 heat-related deaths a year in un-air-conditioned prisons in Texas, compared to zero in prisons with air conditioning. …
“Lawyers for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice questioned whether air conditioning would actually make much of a difference, noting some of the autopsies referenced by the experts who testified do not list heat as the cause of death.
“‘In these autopsies, we’re seeing that people’s core temperatures were 107 and 109 degrees, and for the state to continue to gaslight us and our families and the public about, oh, these deaths, this increase in deaths has nothing to do with the heat,’ said Toon.”
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