At Coffield, inmates were being forced to spend up to six hours in the exercise yard, known as the day room. The space is designed to provide respite for prisoners outside their cells, but has become a heat trap with no AC and no access to water.
Robertson’s inquiries suggest that Wilson had spent up to five hours in the day room immediately before he collapsed in his cell. A TDCJ spokesperson declined to comment on Wilson’s death, saying the department “doesn’t comment on pending litigation”.
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Hanby wrote the letter from Coffield, where Wilson died. He described the conditions as “torture by heat – Texas is killing people every year who haven’t been sentenced to death”.
The prisoner was being housed in “a tiny cell with sheet metal on the door for 24 hours a day”. He has high blood pressure and is fearful that he may not make it.
“If I don’t survive this summer, TDCJ will use their favorite excuse and claim that I died of a heart attack,” he wrote. “That will be a lie. It will be the heat that claims me, and if not me, then so many others like me.”