Claiming that a hot summer spent behind bars on Florida's Death Row is causing heat exhaustion and dizziness, two convicted killers have filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state prison system of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment.
The Miami-based Florida Justice Institute filed suit in federal court in Jacksonville on behalf of William Kelley and Jim Chandler, but the institute is seeking class-action status on behalf of nearly 300 condemned murderers housed on Death Row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford.
The suit claims that temperatures in the six-by-nine-foot windowless cells, which have no air conditioning or fans, ``frequently exceed 100 degrees'' in July and August, making it unbearable for the inmates.
“Such excessive temperature during the summer months,'' the suit claims, creates ``cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the . . . United States Constitution.''
A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said the institute is using outside temperature readings and that the interior of the prison is cooler. Spokesman C.J. Drake said the prison, prompted by the lawsuit, took a temperature reading on Death Row recently and the highest recording inside was 88.8 degrees.  Outside, the temperature ranged from 98 to 100.5 degrees.
``We have adequate ventilation,'' Drake said. ``We will be well prepared to refute all their allegations in court.''
The suit also charges that metal screening the department is putting up over each cell's prison bars will cut the ventilation even further.
”Certainly if a government official had locked up a child in a car with the windows rolled up, that person would be criminally negligent,'' said Randall Berg, executive director of the institute. “And we're talking about people.''
Drake said the wire is being installed because on June 20, an inmate hurled a breakfast tray through the bars, striking a corrections officer in the leg. The screening “doesn't block all view or ventilation, but the heavy gauge doesn't allow them to throw dangerous items through the bars,'' Drake said.
The institute asked the court to temporarily bar the prison from putting up the metal screening, but U.S. District Judge Ralph Nimmons declined. A Sept. 1 hearing is scheduled.
The suit notes that the American Correctional Association suggests that summer temperatures inside prison cells be between 66 and 80 degrees.
Dr. Charles Rosenberg, former chief of staff at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Miami and a former court-appointed prison healthcare watchdog, said he reviewed temperature logs for 1998 and 1999 at the prison, noting ``sustained high temperatures . . . almost always in excess of 90 degrees.''
“From a medical perspective such temperatures are dangerous and totally unacceptable,'' Rosenberg said.
Chandler, on Death Row since 1981 for slaying an elderly couple in Indian River County, said in court files that he has felt ``sick and dizzy'' and suffers “unbearable headaches.''
And Kelley, on Death Row since 1984 for a murder in Sebring, said that as a result of the “extreme and excessive heat,'' he “becomes very dizzy and is unable to engage in normal daily activities of living.''