Miami Herald

4/08/02

 N. Florida prison is taking lot of heat

Death Row inmates claim problems with hot cells

BY MEG LAUGHLIN

[email protected]

 The question of heat in a Florida prison was elevated to an Eighth Amendment issue in an unusual Jacksonville trial last week. Specifically: How hot is too hot for a cell on Death Row?

 Ninety-two degrees, 97 degrees, 105 degrees?

 To find out what constitutes ''cruel and unusual punishment,'' an unlikely group of plaintiffs -- Death Row inmates at Union Correctional Institution -- pitted itself in federal court against a defense team of state attorneys.

 At the heart of the debate: What kind of physical problems caused by extreme heat are acceptable for prisoners -- heat rashes, dizziness, breathing difficulty, nausea, heart palpitations? And at what point do harsh conditions cross the line from tolerable to intolerable?

 Inmates testified they are forced to stand in their toilets, drape themselves in wet towels and sleep naked on the concrete floor of their six-by-nine-foot cells to get relief from extreme heat, humidity and lack of air flow. They say their heart problems, asthma, diabetes and chronic depression are exacerbated by the heat, which also causes a variety of dermatological problems.

 Dale Recinnella, a former partner at Greenberg, Traurig law firm in Miami who is the Death Row chaplain at Union, said he has seen ``elderly men struggling to breathe because of the heat and humidity.''

 Lisa Wylie, Union psychologist, characterized the summer conditions -- temperatures which hover in the 90s and go over 100 degrees -- as ''suffocating,'' causing ``lethargy, lack of sleep, irritability and great stress.''

 Even the state's own witness Sgt. Michael Young, a Death Row corrections officer, conceded that when presiding U.S. District Judge Ralph W. Nimmons Jr. visited the unit in late May to experience the heat, ``it was much more comfortable than it gets.''

 ''It gets hotter?'' Nimmons asked Young in court.

 ''Certainly,'' Young replied. ``A lot hotter.''

 MANY PROBLEMS

 Union medical director Tuong Nguyen, who was trained in Vietnam in the late 1960s, listed problems from heat exhaustion: ''heavy sweating, muscle cramps, tiredness, lethargy, weakness, dizziness, headaches, vomiting and fainting.'' But, she said, such symptoms were easily remedied: ``You drink lots of water, cool down with wet towels, wear as little clothing as possible.''

 The prisoners' attorneys claimed such measures are inhumane.

 ''We are quick to condemn the inhumane treatment of prisoners in other countries but we don't have to look any farther than Union to see the inhumane treatment of prisoners in our own country,'' said prisoner attorney Randall Berg after the trial.

 PUBLIC OPINION

 Indeed, Death Row prisoners are not only fighting a battle with the Department of Corrections but also with public opinion that the more they suffer, the better.

 ''The U.S. Constitution does not mandate comfort in prisons,'' said Donna LaPlant, a state attorney.

 However, the prisoners' attorneys, Berg and Peter Siegel, hope to prove that it's not just a comfort issue but that the heat, humidity and lack of air flow on Death Row ``deny the minimal civilized measure of life's necessities.''

 State attorneys LaPlant and Caryl Kilinski hope to prove they don't.

 WHY NOT FANS?

 To this end, both sides put a number of paid experts on the stand, which raised the question: Wouldn't it have been cheaper to install fans in the catwalks out of the prisoners' reach and be done with it?

 ''The assistant attorney general asked us about this -- if we would consider dropping the whole thing and waiving our fees in exchange for fans if her client [the Department of Corrections] agreed to it, but they didn't,'' Siegel said.

 Said Kilinski: ``After we talked, I informally suggested the fans to the Department of Corrections engineer, and he said there was not time for a study of the electrical service and wiring on the unit to see if fans would be feasible. So, we went to trial.''

 During the court proceedings, the heat and its effect on ''standard and unstandard man'' was quantified by scientists and engineers whose job it was to turn human suffering into a dizzying pile of spider-web charts, graphs and algebraic formulas that measure the effects of heat, according to age and health.

 Corrections engineer Fred Dougherty pointed to a complex grid and testified that Death Row ''has a well-considered ventilation system'' and ``temperatures consistent with reasonable levels of comfort and slight discomfort.''

 He agreed with the prisoners that temperatures on Death Row exceed 90 degrees in the summer, but said, ``some would actually feel comfortable and no one would be in distress.''

 300 DEGREES

 In a pretrial deposition, when asked what temperature would be too hot for the inmates, Dougherty replied: ''300 degrees.'' When asked about this response in court, he said: ``That would be too hot, all right.''

 The first prisoner to testify in the civil trial was Billy Kelley, 59, on Death Row for a 1967 murder in Sebring. Kelley called his cell, where he spends 24 hours a day, ``terribly hot, unbelievably hot -- brutal.''

 Last year, after Kelley waited nine years for an evidentiary hearing, U.S. Circuit Judge Norman C. Roettger agreed to look at questionable evidence that put Kelley on Death Row.

 MISLED JURY

 The result of the hearing: The prosecutor from Kelley's 1984 murder trial testified that he had ''misled'' the jury to get a conviction, which meant there was no evidence in the case.

 This outcome cleared the way for a likely reversal of Kelley's conviction. Roettger says he will rule ``in a couple of months.''

 ''I thought I'd be a free man by now,'' Kelley said. ``But here I am spending another brutal summer gasping for air and standing in my toilet.''

 The heat trial adjourned with no decision made by Nimmons. Both sides will submit closing arguments in writing, but a decision is not expected until later this year.

 By then, temperatures will be much cooler.