Bernhardt Tiede has diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity. In the summer of 2023, he suffered a stroke in a Texas prison cell that court documents say regularly exceeded 110 degrees. He sued the state over it. Then, right before trial, state officials pointed to a policy update for prisoners over 65 and successfully argued him out of his own case.

His situation is not unusual. All 134,500 people held in Texas state prisons face what federal Judge Robert Pitman called a substantial risk of serious harm from the heat. The state has roughly 52,000 air-conditioned "cool beds," barely enough for one in three prisoners. Everyone else spends Texas summers in cells with no AC.

Texas uses a computer formula called the "heat-sensitivity score" to decide who gets priority for a cool bed. After two years reviewing how it works, Judge Pitman found it "arbitrary, inadequate, and ineffective" in practice: so narrow that a 90-year-old with hypertension can still fail to qualify. Only about 10 percent of the prison population carries a score at all.

Three prisoners named in the litigation died with autopsies citing heat as a contributing factor. John Castillo went to the water cooler 23 times the day before he was found unresponsive at 107.5 degrees. Patrick Womack was found at 106.9 degrees, rigor mortis already setting in. Elizabeth Hagerty reported heat rash and could not keep fluids down; doctors sent her back to her cell, and she died two days later, a month before her release. Texas counts none as official heat deaths, because the state requires heat to be the primary or sole cause.

A bill requiring phased AC installation by 2032 passed the Texas House, then died in the Senate when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declined to assign it to a committee. That was the third consecutive legislative session it happened.

The trial is over. Judge Pitman has not yet ruled. Texas is in another heat dome. Sign this petition to demand the state install air conditioning in its prisons now, before the next preventable death.