Jurisprudence
July 31, 202610:00 AM
The Huntsville Unit prison in Texas has cells so hot that inmates splash themselves with toilet water.
Francois Picard/AFP via Getty Images.
Bernhardt Tiede has diabetes and hypertension, and is obese. In the summer of 2023, he suffered a stroke in a Texas prison cell that court documents say regularly exceeded 110 degrees. If there were ever a person the state should flag as vulnerable to extreme heat, it’s him. He is also the reason Texas has spent the past two years fighting a federal lawsuit, brought by Tiede, over air conditioning in its prisons. And this spring, right before trial, the state’s own heat-tracking system did for him what it’s done for tens of thousands of other people: nothing. Officials removed him from the case, successfully arguing before the court that a policy update meant he’d now get priority for a cool bed, on account of his current age: 67. They got that result due to a state formula for determining who gets air conditioning. Not the diabetes. Not the hypertension. A number.
