BEAUMONT, Texas — Staff with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) falsified records about how hot it got in at least one Texas prison, according to an internal investigation tied to a federal lawsuit.
Court documents filed this week state that TDCJ investigators who focused on the Mark W. Stiles Unit in Beaumont in 2022 found prison staff “recreated” prison temperature logs that were missing or “defaced” by staff.
The logs claimed the lowest recorded temperature for that facility on one day of July 2022 was between 58 and 60 degrees, but the investigation found the low temperature was actually 76.
Investigators wrote that while employees may have acted on their own, it’s unlikely they would have recreated those logs without the knowledge or consent of prison leaders.
The investigation is tied to a 2023 federal lawsuit filed by Bernie Tiede, a Texas man spending the rest of his life in prison for the 1996 murder of Marjorie Nugent. The case was the subject of the 2011 film “Bernie,” directed by Richard Linklater.
Tiede sued in 2023, claiming his life was in danger due to hot conditions in his cell at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville. That year, Linklater released footage to the KVUE Defenders of a conversation between himself and Tiede about the conditions.
“There’s no escape,” Tiede said in one of the videos. “You can’t get away from it unless you put something wet on your face or you have a chill towel or something like that.”
“It’s just a horrible, horrible, torturous situation,” Linklater said. “I have to believe your average citizen is not for that. We are not for it with animals and, certainly, we aren’t for it with humans.”
The TDCJ has faced criticism for years about a lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons. The department says it’s added 10,000 cool beds to the state’s prison system since 2018.
In the court documents filed this week, Tiede’s attorneys are pushing for sanctions against TDCJ Director Bryan Collier over the falsified logs. The judge has not responded to that request.