An inmate’s body temp was 107.5 when he died

AUSTIN – KUT rejports that it was just before 11:00 pm when John Castillo’s cellmate alerted the guards. Castillo was passed out. His breathing was shallow. Prison staff rushed him to the medical unit, where they tried CPR and dosed him with epinephrine. But it was already too late. Castillo was dead. He was 32, according to his autopsy. The state’s doctors determined a seizure disorder was to blame. The high temperature inside the prison was also an “important contributory factor” in his death, they said. The Hughes Unit in Gatesville, about an hour outside Waco, is one of dozens of state prisons that lack full air conditioning. On the day in August 2023 when Castillo was found unresponsive in his cell, the indoor temperatures there topped 94 degrees. The Texas Newsroom recently obtained the autopsies of several prisoners, including Castillo, who are named in a lawsuit against the state alleging the lack of A/C in prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Three autopsies mention heat as a possible contributing factor in the inmates’ deaths. All three occurred last summer.

Elizabeth Hagerty, 37, complained of heat rash days before she died. The night she was found in her cell, the air around her registered 95.7 degrees. Patrick Womack, 50, had a core temperature of 106.9 degrees at his time of death. Castillo’s was 107.5 degrees. But Texas prison officials reject the idea that heat caused any of these deaths. “[The Texas Department of Criminal Justice] does not count those deaths as heat deaths because the primary cause of death was due to other reasons such as underlying medical disorders, overdoses, etc.,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez said in response to The Texas Newsrooms’ questions about the autopsies. But experts said this explanation ignores how heat can exacerbate underlying illness, hastening or even triggering death. Inmate advocacy groups say prison officials don’t want to acknowledge this because they’re now being sued over this very question. This week, they take their case back to court. “To suggest to the community, to the citizens of Texas, that the heat is not killing people in the Texas prison system is an absolute falsehood,” said Jeff Edwards, the plaintiff’s lead lawyer. “It’s outrageous, it’s wrong and that’s what our case is all about.”