South Dakota inmate sues over lack of air conditioning in prison

A morbidly obese inmate claims the lack of air conditioning and ventilation in the state’s second-largest prison amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

Winston Brakeall, 50, is incarcerated at Mike Durfee State Prison for first-degree rape and sexual contact with a child.

Brakeall’s lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of South Dakota asks a judge to find that the Department of Corrections and Department of Health are violating the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment by failing to attend to his medical needs as a 6-foot-9-inch, 376-pound diabetic inmate.

The claims parallel those raised by prisoners in Texas, where a federal judge recently ordered 1,000 inmates with medical needs moved to cooler accommodations. Temporary air conditioning units were installed for city jail inmates in St. Louis, Missouri, this summer after protests about excessive heat that drew national coverage.

The South Dakota inmate refers to himself as morbidly obese, and says many of his troubles are related to staff mismanagement of his condition.

Brakeall claims his legs hang off a bed he doesn’t fit in and have since he was returned to Springfield from Sioux Falls in 2016 after a parole violation. He says he spent several nights on the floor in both facilities because officers refused to give him an additional mattress.

He also says poor ventilation in the modified former dormitories used to house inmates at the medium security prison breed black mold in overcrowded rooms, and that the existing vents and ventilation methods let in mosquitos, mice and ants but no air.

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“Plaintiff sweats excessively due to the constant heat and experiences severe cramps in his legs and arms,” Brakeall wrote in his lawsuit. “Plaintiff has fallen repeatedly attempting to stand for count when his calves cramped and would not support him. Plaintiff could easily die from heat stroke.”

Officers tell inmates to open their cell doors when possible, drink plenty of fluids and avoid strenuous activity during days with high heat.

“The only air conditioning in the building is in the staff areas,” Brakeall wrote. “The Department of Corrections recognizes the inhumanity of forcing their guards to remain in this environment for eight hours a day without air conditioning, but requires inmates to endure it for months on end.”

DOC officials declined to comment on Brakeall’s case, but Mike Durfee State Prison Warden Bob Dooley said inmate health and safety is taken seriously.

“It’s not the DOC’s business to punish inmates, and we don’t do that,” Dooley said.

Complaints about high heat are relatively common in Springfield, Dooley said.

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Mike Durfee is among the only DOC facilities without air conditioning. In Sioux Falls, the maximum-security Jameson Annex and work-release Unit C buildings have air conditioning, but the older buildings do not. The women’s prison and the minimum security units in Yankton and Rapid City also have air conditioning.

“It is an issue at the penitentiary in Sioux Falls,” Dooley said.

The DOC uses windows, ice machines and fans to deal with the high heat, Dooley said. After the failure of Durfee’s in-room ventilation units in 2009, the prison placed large industrial fans in common areas. Inmates can buy fans or are given loaner fans if they can’t afford them, he said.

The complete cost of installing air conditioning for the entire 1,275-capacity campus hasn’t been calculated, Dooley said, but the price of retrofitting the old in-room units was judged to be too high.

“It was decided that the air conditioning would not be replaced at that time,” Dooley said.

Inmates with a medical order for air-conditioned cells are moved to one of the dozen or so that are available, he said.

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“We’ve never had an instance where an inmate had a medical order for an air conditioned room where they haven’t gotten one,” Dooley said.

The 1,000 inmates being moving to air conditioned units in Texas after U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison called Texas corrections officials “deliberately indifferent” to conditions in a Houston-area prison known as the Pack Unit.

Inmates with high blood pressure and those older than 65 were among those he ordered to be held in areas 88 degrees or cooler.

Temperatures in Bon Homme County are cooler than those in Houston, but there were 19 days in July during which the outdoor temperature hit 88 degrees or higher, according to the National Weather Service.

In St. Louis, Mayor Lyda Krewson called in five temporary air conditioning units for inmates, who’d protested the heat in the City Workhouse. On July 21, about 150 people protested outside the center.

Brakeall wants a judge to order corrective measures by installing a larger-capacity ice machine, repairing air conditioning, improving ventilation and reducing the number of inmates per room.

He also wants a series of monetary payments, including damages of $10,000 from each defendant and fines of $1,000 per day for every day the heat index at Springfield exceeded 95 degrees in 2016 and 2017.

The DOC has yet to file a response to Brakeall’s lawsuit.