FLORIDA:

Claiming that a hot summer spent behind bars on Florida's death row is
causing heat exhaustion and dizziness, 2 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 on Wednesday 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." "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, the national
group that accredits prisons, suggests that summer temperatures inside
prison cells be between 66 and 80 degrees.

Dr. Charles Rosenberg, former chief of staff at the Veterans Affairsn
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."

(source: Miami Herald)