MTWT: TEMPERATURES ON DEATH ROW

From: "MRS. WANDA Valdes" <wandavaldes@webtv.net>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 12:21 AM

Subject: UNION CI: DEATH ROW

Everyone please read about the men on death row suing about the high heat on death row at Union CI.

On Q wing, or X wing, which ever your prefer to call it, there are no windows and no ventilation at all. Some men live on this wing for years. The men stay naked and they pour water on themselves to try and get relief, but you can be sure that none of the higher ups have to be this way.

It is cruel and unusual to put a person in a small room that gets over 100% and not care how they survive. People just do not know the half of what goes on.

Plus the correctional office are expected to work in this situation - a place where men are waiting to die, are being treated less than animals, and are expected to act as if they are ok with inhuman treatment.

I had Chris Stapleton, who works for the Palm Beach Post Newspaper, tell me that she and a group just walked on Q wing and at the end of the hall they were all dripping with sweat. These cruel and heartless higher ups do not care if their own COs suffer, just so they know the inmates will suffer.

And to top it all they have these sick lawyers who will defend the right to hurt humans, no matter how cruel, so long as they are paid.

wanda valdes
Wife of murdered inmate, Frank Valdes
REMEMBER ONE MAN WITH GOD IS A MAJORITY

FLORIDA:

Judges to rule on heat level of Death Row

----U.S. judges will decide if high humidity levels and summer heat topping 95 degrees inside the state's death row amounts to a constitutional violation.

A panel of 3 federal appellate judges is weighing arguments about whether extreme summer heat and humidity on Florida's death row constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment."

At issue: If inmates are suffering because of indoor temperatures exceeding 95 degrees and a poor ventilation system at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, is this an Eighth Amendment violation?

Elliot Scherker, an attorney with Greenberg Traurig representing the inmates, said Monday that the misery caused by the heat was just such a violation and that airflow should be improved.

But Caryl Kilinski, assistant state attorney general, said that misery was not enough to constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." The suffering, she said, had to be quantified by tangible, serious illness.

Appellate Judge Rosemary Barkett asked Kilinski, "How can you require people to be totally miserable as long as there's no heart attack or brain tumor?"

Kilinski, echoing the lower court decision of the late Ralph W. Nimmons Jr., a U.S. District Court judge, replied that "a risk of harm has to be shown."

Barkett said that she "didn't read it [the Eighth Amendment] that way."

In 2003, Nimmons ruled in favor of Kilinski and the Florida Department of Corrections, saying that despite a "restrictive and harsh" environment caused by the indoor heat and an admission by a corrections supervisor that the ventilation system "had trouble keeping up," the situation did
not amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

To get through the summer, inmates on death row at UCI stand in their toilets, sleep on the concrete floors of their cells and wrap themselves in wet sheets.

A UCI psychologist said that she found it ''difficult to breathe" when she entered the unit.

But the problem "is not of constitutional magnitude," Kilinski insisted.

The panel of appellate judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit -- Rosemary Barkett, Gerald Tjoflat and Eugene Siler -- are expected to make a decision by late spring, before temperatures at UCI climb back into the 90s.

(source: Miami Herald)