Texas Prisons Heat Trial: 5 Deaths, No AC

0:00It's March 31st. From your city to your ears, this is El Paso News today, powered by AI. A federal trial just kicked off in Austin over Texas. Prisons baking inmates without air conditioning, and plaintiffs dropped a bombshell claiming five. Heat-related deaths in the last two summers. Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Robert Pittman ruled that housing folks in sweltering cells without AC is straight up unconstitutional, but he held off on forcing immediate fixes due to massive costs. Plaintiffs lawyers, repping advocacy groups slammed the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for ignoring the crisis while the state's team fired, back-saying their boosting audits, cool beds, and other relief efforts to dodge claims of deliberate indifference. Experts testified that triple-digit heat indexes around those deaths scream heat as a factor, even without some body temps recorded, though defense. Attorneys pointed to drugs or other causes and noted funding hurdles topping $1.1 billion

1:02for full AC. Meanwhile, the state is repping up to 70,000 cool beds by summer, 2027, after snagging 118 million from. Lawmakers, but the two-week trial, rolls on, pushing for system-wide AC by 2029 to finally cool things down.