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It was just before 11 p.m. when John Castillo’s cellmate alerted the guards.
Castillo was passed out. His breathing was shallow. Prison staff rushed him to the medical unit, where they tried CPR and dosed him with epinephrine.
But it was already too late. Castillo was dead. He was 32, according to his autopsy.
The state’s doctors determined a seizure disorder was to blame. The high temperature inside the prison was also an “important contributory factor” in his death, they said.
The Hughes Unit in Gatesville, about an hour outside Waco, is one of dozens of state prisons that lack full air conditioning. On the day in August 2023 when Castillo was found unresponsive in his cell, the indoor temperatures there topped 94 degrees.
The Texas Newsroom recently obtained the autopsies of several prisoners, including Castillo, who are named in a lawsuit against the state alleging the lack of A/C in prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Three autopsies mention heat as a possible contributing factor in the inmates’ deaths. All three occurred last summer.
Elizabeth Hagerty, 37, complained of heat rash days before she died. The night she was found in her cell, the air around her registered 95.7 degrees. Patrick Womack, 50, had a core temperature of 106.9 degrees at his time of death. Castillo’s was 107.5 degrees.
But Texas prison officials reject the idea that heat caused any of these deaths.
“[The Texas Department of Criminal Justice] does not count those deaths as heat deaths because the primary cause of death was due to other reasons such as underlying medical disorders, overdoses, etc.,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez said in response to The Texas Newsrooms’ questions about the autopsies.
But experts said this explanation ignores how heat can exacerbate underlying illness, hastening or even triggering death. Inmate advocacy groups say prison officials don’t want to acknowledge this because they’re now being sued over this very question.
This week, they take their case back to court.
“To suggest to the community, to the citizens of Texas, that the heat is not killing people in the Texas prison system is an absolute falsehood,” said Jeff Edwards, the plaintiff’s lead lawyer. “It’s outrageous, it’s wrong and that's what our case is all about.”
The heat
Texas law requires county jails be kept between 65 and 85 degrees. Animal shelters have heat rules. Even pigs raised on prison farms are afforded some modicum of climate control.
Two-thirds of the 100 state jails and prisons, however, are not fully air conditioned.
This continues as climate change prompts more extreme weather. Last year was the second hottest Texas summer on record.
State lawmakers recently began making the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or TDCJ, record temperatures inside dozens of units. According to these readings, the average indoor temperature in August topped 85 degrees inside more than 50 state-run lockups.
The hottest prison in the state — by far — was the Garza West Unit in Beeville. For 11 straight days last summer, the temperature behind its walls did not dip below 100 degrees, according to the prison’s indoor heat readings.
Last year, inmates filed nearly 5,000 grievances about the heat. Correctional staff also fall ill every summer from the extreme heat.
A 2022 study found an average of 14 deaths per year were associated with heat in Texas prisons without air conditioning.
But the state’s prison department insists not a single inmate has died from the heat in a dozen years. It also appears to have changed the way it refers to prisoner deaths — and won’t explain why.
Just last year, Hernandez said there had been no “heat-related deaths” since 2012. This same phrasing has been used before to question the cause of these deaths.
Now, the department spokesman says there have been no “heat deaths” in that time.
When asked by The Texas Newsroom about the different wording, and whether the department defines “heat-related deaths” differently than “heat deaths,” Hernandez instead reiterated the agency’s stance: “There have been no deaths caused by heat since 2012.”
Hannah Haney, another agency spokesperson said, “The health and safety of staff and inmates is a responsibility the agency takes seriously. TDCJ takes numerous precautions to lessen the effects of hot temperatures in our facilities.”
Hernandez declined a request for a recorded interview.
The lawsuit
Extreme heat in state prisons is not just a Texas problem. Lawsuits have been filed in states across the South and Southwest, including one last week in Georgia, arguing inmates are being cooked alive behind bars.
Jeff Edwards is the lead lawyer on a case challenging the Texas prison department’s heat policies. Bernie Tiede, the convicted murderer immortalized in the eponymous film by Richard Linklater, is the lead plaintiff along with several advocacy groups.
This isn’t the first time Edwards has fought the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He represented a different group of plaintiffs who sued after a dozen inmates died from the heat in 2011 and 2012.
The department settled in 2018 and agreed to install A/C in one prison. It also implemented new heat mitigation procedures – including providing fans and water – and added thousands of additional “cool” beds. The rules now say vulnerable inmates get dibs on housing with A/C.
Inmate rights advocates, however, say these protocols are not being followed. Although $85 million in state funding was recently pumped into the agency, which will go to adding more cool beds, there is no intention to install air conditioning across the entire system at this time.
Edwards said this is the fix the current lawsuit seeks. The inmate autopsies, among other evidence, will be central to the case he presents in federal court starting Tuesday.
“The definition of indifference is knowing about a problem, knowing there’s a solution and not fixing things. They know that the heat endangers inmates,” Edwards told The Texas Newsroom.
He added the agency is now playing a “word game” to downplay the heat's deadliness.
“There can be multiple causes of death,” said Edwards. “A child would understand this.”
In its response to the lawsuit, lawyers with the Office of the Attorney General argued the prison department could not be sued because, as a government entity, it enjoys immunity. They said inmates cannot prove prison leaders are ignoring the problem because the department has implemented heat protocols, and argued their concerns of heat stroke or death were “hypothetical and speculative.”
“The deliberate indifference standard does not turn on results. If it did, then any prison with a heat-related illness could be guilty of deliberate indifference,” the state’s lawyers wrote in a recent court filing.
Hernandez declined to comment further on the lawsuit.
The autopsies
In Texas, deaths that occur in law enforcement custody are reported to the Office of the Attorney General. These public reports are separate from autopsies and typically include only a short narrative describing what happened before the death.
Autopsies can provide a fuller picture.
These examinations are ordered for all inmate deaths, except those who are executed, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
In April, the Texas Newsroom filed a public records request for the autopsies of 10 inmates named in the lawsuit. After multiple delays, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice released nine of them. The autopsies were performed by doctors at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which also provides inmate health care.
While the autopsies provided new information about the inmates’ medications, underlying medical conditions and causes of death, they were otherwise heavily redacted. All but a few paragraphs of the reports, which are between 12 and 26 pages long, were blacked out.
Two experts who reviewed the autopsies for The Texas Newsroom raised concerns about the department’s approach to these cases.
“Several of these cases that you’ve shown me, all have conditions that are knowingly exacerbated by extreme temperatures,” said Benika Dixon, an epidemiologist at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health who co-wrote a study on extreme heat in Texas prisons.
Dixon said prisoners are more likely to be in poor health. Many take medications that make them more susceptible to heat illness or stroke. Adding heat to this mix can be deadly, she said.
According to the autopsies, doctor’s attributed Castillo’s death to “epilepsy/seizure disorder, with a high environmental temperature (heat stress/hyperthermia) as an important contributory factor.”
Womack died of “hyperthermia,” or an abnormally high body temperature, due to a syndrome that results in too much serotonin in the body. He was also on medication for his mental health. “Environmental heat is a possible contributory factor,” his autopsy stated.
Hagerty’s death was due to severe hyponatremia – abnormally low sodium levels in the body – due to gastrointestinal illness likely related to a COVID-19 infection, according to her autopsy. The doctors also determined that obesity, diabetes and “elevated environmental temperature (heat stress)” may have contributed to her death.
Particularly concerning for Dixon was how inmates who had asthma, diabetes, or were taking antidepressants appeared not to be in housing with air conditioning.
Despite her underlying health risks, TDCJ’s Amanda Hernandez said Hagerty did not have a medical restriction the prison believed required her to be in housing with A/C.
In the eyes of the state, none of these three count as heat deaths.
“Although elevated temperatures were cited in these autopsies as a possible contributing factor, their deaths were not caused by heat,” said agency spokesperson Hannah Haney.
Dr. Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist who has been an expert witness in lawsuits involving state prison systems, said this interpretation “shows a lack of understanding” about how multiple factors can contribute to a death.
“Just because the cause of death is a natural disease process, that does not mean that heat didn't play a role,” she said.
Melinek also questioned why investigators appeared to not take the temperature of some inmates upon death, a move which could help prove whether heat was a factor.
Neither expert said they could categorically determine whether the deaths in question were caused by heat because the autopsies were so heavily redacted.
Elizabeth Hagerty’s loved ones said they want more answers.
According to the 37-year-old inmate’s autopsy, Hagerty told medical staff on June 27 she had not been able to keep food or water down for days. On a scale of 1 to 10, she said her abdominal pain was an 8. She was sent back to her cell, told to drink more fluids and to come back for more treatment if it got worse.
The next day, Hagerty emailed her partner’s mother from prison.
“I’ve been sick,” Hagerty wrote to Martha Romero, according to a screenshot of the email Romero provided to The Texas Newsroom. “I’ve been trying to sleep it off but it’s just so hot.”
Hagerty died two days later. Her release date was a month away.
“Just a little longer n I'm out,” Hagerty wrote Romero in her June 28 email. “I can't wait.”
