lawsuit
Judge Says Texas Must Provide Safe Drinking Water to Inmates
A federal judge ordered the Texas prison system to provide safe drinking water that doesn't violate "contemporary standards of decency" to inmates in a Texas prison. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison gave the Wallace Pack Unit in Navasota, Texas 15 days to replace the water supply for prisoners. A lawsuit filed by a group of inmates in 2014 alleges prisoners are kept in conditions that are inhumane enough to violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment with exposure to extreme heat and arsenic contaminated drinking water. JudgeRead More
Texas Lawsuit Alleges Prisons Without Air Conditioning are Inhumane
A lawsuit was filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project on behalf of 58 year old Larry Gene McColuum who died while suffering a seizure in the soaring 100 degree heat while incarcerated in a Texas prison. McCollum was taken to the hospital where his body temperature was measured at 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit. He fell into a coma and died six days later of what an autopsy concluded was hyperthermia "due to housing in a hot environment without air conditioning." Only 21 of Texas' 111 prisons are fully air conditioned.Read More