A federal appeals court says the Constitution does not require comfortable prisons.
By Associated Press
Published August 10, 2004
ATLANTA - It may be hot on Florida's death row, but not hot enough to be unconstitutional, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
Friday's ruling apparently puts an end to a class-action lawsuit filed four years ago that claimed summer temperatures on death row regularly top 100 degrees and sometimes reach 110, forcing inmates to stand in toilets, drape themselves in wet towels and sleep naked on concrete floors.
The court said, "The Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons. ... Generally speaking, prison conditions rise to the level of an Eighth Amendment violation only when they "involve the wanton and unnecessary infliction of pain."'
Peter Siegel, an attorney with the Florida Justice Institute in Miami, which filed the suit on behalf of Florida's 365 male inmates at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, said the organization has not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I don't think it will go any further. I don't know what we are going to do or can do," Siegel said.
In effect, he said, the ruling states, "It's hot. So what!"
Siegel said there have been a few heat-related illnesses at Union Correctional Institution, although "nobody's died, at least not from a heat stroke."
The appeals court found that the heat is not unconstitutionally excessive; the prison is equipped with a ventilation system that manages air circulation and humidity; and there are conditions that sometimes give prisoners a break from the heat.
The case was on appeal from U.S. District Judge Ralph Nimmons, who in 2002 toured the prison 45 miles southwest of Jacksonville and interviewed some of the 300 inmates. He later ruled that the heat was not excessive.
"We're extremely pleased with the (appeals) court's ruling," said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections.
Hannah Floyd, director of the Florida Death Row Advocacy Group, said in an e-mail to the Associated Press that the decision is inhumane. "I still think it is only a matter of time before people in this nation have to realize that prisoners, including the ones on death row, are humans and should be treated as such," she said.
The Florida Attorney General's Office, which represented the state in the appeal, did not immediately return a telephone call.
Last year a U.S. magistrate in Mississippi found that filthy conditions, lack of ventilation, and heat and humidity on that state's death row were so bad that they contributed to a high rate of mental illness among prisoners and violated the standard of cruel and unusual punishment. He ordered officials to provide annual mental health checkups, better lighting, improved toilets, insect control and ways to keep inmates cool during the summer, including fans, ice water, and daily showers when the heat index is 90 degrees or above.
Just six of the 52 major prisons in Florida have air conditioning in most inmate housing units. They are Brevard, Broward, Dade, Hillsborough and Lancaster correctional institutions. Some areas of Union Correctional Institution have air conditioning.
