Jason Wilson spent his final days in a sweltering solitary confinement cell at the Coffield Unit in Texas. The temperature outside reached 100 degrees or hotter on 17 of 30 days that June. Inside the prison, it was worse. The day before Wilson died in July 2024, a temperature log recorded 107 degrees in the facility. He never made it out.
Now his father is suing the state. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Houston, charges that Texas knowingly subjected Wilson to cruel conditions that amounted to torture and ultimately caused his death. The family alleges the Department of Criminal Justice inflicted cruel and unusual punishment through deliberate indifference, keeping him in a brutally hot, un-airconditioned cell without adequate water, regular showers, or basic wellness checks.
Wilson was supposed to be monitored closely. He had medical vulnerabilities, including obesity, that made him especially susceptible to heat-related illness. The night before he died, the officer responsible for his mandatory wellness check never completed it. The officer later said the unit was understaffed and he was "tired due to the heat."
The wrongful death case arrives as Texas already faces a major federal action in Austin. An alliance of advocacy groups is pushing a federal judge to order the state to install air conditioning in all prisons within three years. A ruling in that case could come within months.
The heat crisis in Texas prisons is staggering in scale. More than 85,000 of the state's 141,000 prisoners are held in cells without air conditioning. Summer temperatures regularly exceed 115 degrees, with a recorded high of 149 degrees inside the facilities. Desperate inmates have resorted to pouring dirty toilet water on cell floors to lie in, seeking any relief.
Texas has officially acknowledged three heat-related deaths in 2023, including Patrick Womack, a 50-year-old inmate found unresponsive with a core body temperature of 106.9 degrees. The department has denied any such deaths since then, even as advocates and inmates report ongoing crises.
Brittany Robertson, who advocates for hundreds of Texas prisoners, said she has been receiving distress calls about shortages of cool water and failed cooling showers. Recent messages from inmates at Coffield describe hours without running water or working toilets, with no staff response. One inmate wrote: "I was stuck 20hrs with no running water or a toilet. Wow. Not one rank walked the line lastnite or even came to resolve the problem."
The conditions echo what Jason Wilson experienced in the days before his death. Ronnie Wilson, his father, said he had no idea of his son's suffering until after he was gone. When he investigated, he learned that Coffield was known informally by staff as the "glass house" because of how intensely the sun beat down on it.
Fixing the crisis is financially feasible. Installing air conditioning across all Texas prisons would cost roughly $1.3 billion, well within reach of the state's $27 billion rainy day fund. But getting the legislature to approve the spending requires a two-thirds vote, and prison authorities have resisted acknowledging the severity of the problem.
Erica Grossman, the lawyer handling both Wilson's wrongful death suit and the broader federal action, said the state's refusal to face reality is deliberate. "You don't get the funding unless you explain to the legislature why you need it, and articulate the severity of the crisis," she said. "Prisoners in solitary confinement like Jason Wilson are basically being cooked to death."
The problem is only projected to worsen. Climatologists forecast that Texas could warm by an additional 5.1 degrees by 2050, intensifying the crisis inside prisons that already lack basic cooling.
Ronnie Wilson said the lawsuit is not about money. He wants justice for his son and real change from the state. "Too many people are dying. My son was sentenced for what he did wrong, but he didn't get a death sentence. He wasn't meant to suffer like that, like he was slowly being put to death."
Author James Rodriguez: "The state of Texas could fix this tomorrow if it wanted to, but instead it's defending a system that kills prisoners through indifference and heat."
Comments