A federal lawsuit filed against several Alabama corrections officers and others alleges that prison staff was responsible for an inmate's death after he was allegedly “baked to death” nearly two years ago In a prison cell that was overheated. The lawsuit brought forward by the inmate's sister accuses prison staff, wardens, and contractors of causing her brother’s wrongful death.
44-year-old Thomas Lee Rutledge was an inmate at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Bessemer, Alabama, when he passed away due to hyperthermia on December 7th, 2020. According to officials, Rutledge was found unresponsive in his cell and had an internal temperature of 109 degrees.
According to the officials and his family, Rutledge was housed in the mental health ward where at least 96 inmates were kept in their cells during all hours of the day. Despite knowing that the mental health ward had issues with its heating system, prison officials did not do enough to protect inmates from the conditions.
The lawsuit alleges that prior to Rutledge's death, inmates in the mental health ward had complained about the heat but were still forced to stay inside their cells “around the clock” even for activities including eating and bathing.
In the weeks before Rutledge's death, inmates allegedly tried to suppress the heat by “stuffing clothing in vents to reduce the heat output.” Still, issues with the heat persisted.
The family's lawsuit accuses jail officials of failing to ensure the heating system was in proper order and completely ignoring faults with the system once they were discovered. A maintenance supervisor at the jail, Bill Kennedy, is named as having allegedly discovered that the AC controls of the ward’s HVAC system were broken or malfunctioning. Upon this realization, Kennedy ignored the issue, allowed the system to reach 130 degrees at one point, and subsequently destroyed temperature logs to conceal the issue.
The lawsuit also names the contractors who installed the air conditioning unit, P&M Mechanical, as having been negligent in their conduct. According to the family, the contractor’s work on the heating unit led to “unregulated heating” output, a possible cause for the high temperatures within the unit.
“His death was the direct result of the deliberate indifference or malice of the prison officials, corrections officers, and maintenance personnel at Donaldson, and of the negligence and/or wantonness of the contractor entities," the lawsuit explains.
Additionally, the lawsuit highlights that an investigator went into the prison ward during the evening hours after Rutledge had passed away and noted that the ward was “hotter than three hells.” The investigator went on to compare the unit’s heat to the immense heat that hits your face when you open an oven door.
The U.S. Department of Justice has had an ongoing lawsuit against Alabama’s prison conditions and even notes Rutledge's hyperthermia death as one of the dangerous conditions that exist in the state's men's prison facilities. The DOJ lawsuit against the state is set to go to trial in 2024. Alabama has since pushed back against the DOJ allegations.
According to Rutledge's family, Rutledge “had dreams of obtaining his freedom, joining his mother in Alaska, and starting a new and productive life.” The 44-year-old was serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for an offense he committed when he was a juvenile in 1995. However, due to a recent Supreme Court decision that ruled mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles were unconstitutional, Rutledge had hopes of an early release.
