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To U.S. Death Row Inmates, Today's Election is a Matter of Life or Death

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You don't have to tell Daniel Troya and the 40 other denizens of federal death row locked in shed-sized solitary cells for 23 hours a day, every day, that elections have consequences. To them, from inside the U.S. government's only death row located in Terre Haute, Indiana, Tuesday's election is quite literally a matter of life and death: If Kamala Harris wins, they live; if Donald Trump wins, they die. "He's gonna kill everyone here that he can," Troya, 41, said in an email from behind bars. "That's as easy to predict as the sun rising."
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USA: Mississippi prisoners on death row lack air conditioning

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Mississippi Death Row
Death row inmates in Mississippi — along with those in most other Deep South states — don’t have air conditioning.

A Tuesday report by The (Baton Rouge) Advocate says Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida have no air conditioning on death row. Arkansas has air-conditioned its death row since the late 1970s, the report says.

“I’m glad to know that at least one state recognizes the need to treat prisoners like human beings,” Marjorie Esman, executive director of the Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union, told The Advocate.

In Mississippi, it’s not only death row inmates whose summer environments are controlled by little else than fans and an occasional draft. The only parts of the three state prisons that are air-conditioned are medical units, Mississippi Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jasmine Cole said.

Bear Atwood, legal director for the Mississippi ACLU, said the lack of air conditioning in Mississippi state prisons — not just on death row — is a problem.

“I’ve been on a cell block in Parchman (when) it was 95 degrees,” Atwood said. “I’ve never been so hot in my life.”

The Advocate report follows the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of three Louisiana State Penitentiary inmates claiming summer temperatures at Angola, La., where the prison is located, reached a heat index of 195 degrees in 2011, and of 172 in 2012. The article says a court filing shows actual temperatures ranged from 88 to 100 degrees. That lawsuit and other similar ones claim extreme temperatures violate the eighth amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.


Source: Clarion-Ledger, August 23, 2013

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Two inmates from Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola testified to what they called “indescribable” heat levels on the death row tiers, during the first day of a federal trial in Baton Rouge on Monday. The suit was filed by three ...
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Triple-digit heat indexes experienced by three convicted murderers suing officials at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola are similar to the conditions endured by inmates on Death Row in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and ...
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