Inmate’s death during heat wave ramps up criticism of conditions at Stateville

The death of a 51-year-old man incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center last week amplified concerns among prison rights advocates over the living conditions at the nearly century-old prison, which Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration plans to tear down and rebuild because it has been deemed decrepit beyond repair.

The Will County coroner’s office did not yet have a cause of death for Michael Broadway, who had earned a college degree while serving a 75-year sentence for a 2005 murder, and a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Corrections would only say the agency is investigating.

But his death during a severe heat wave has led inmates and prison advocates to put the blame at least partly on the squalid environment inside Stateville, where accounts from people incarcerated there and others in legislative hearings and elsewhere describe poor ventilation, visible mold, rodent infestations and unsanitary drinking water. The prison’s housing units also lack air conditioning, according to the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group.

No timeline has been set for tearing down and rebuilding the prison, a process that could begin as soon as September but is expected to take three to five years, and state officials have also not laid out a plan for how those housed in the prison will be handled during the transition.

Jennifer Vollen-Katz, John Howard’s executive director, said the poor conditions at Stateville “impact everybody, the people that are incarcerated and the people that work inside these facilities.”

“And there is no doubt that extreme heat is really dangerous for a lot of people, particularly people who are elderly and have other health issues,” she said.

According to Terah Tollner, an attorney for Broadway’s family, Broadway was unconscious in his cell before being taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital. He was pronounced dead late in the afternoon of June 19, according to the coroner’s office.

Tollner said the unit where Broadway was housed lacks open windows, and that a fan near Broadway’s cell was not used. Men incarcerated at Stateville have “complained for a month that the fan isn’t on and the windows aren’t open, and no one’s done anything,” she said.

The situation she described was largely backed up by two people incarcerated with Broadway, whose accounts were provided by Maria Makar, a lawyer for the Chicago-based civil rights law firm Loevy + Loevy.

Anthony Ehlers, a classmate with Broadway in Northwestern University’s Prison Education Program, said it was extremely hot on the floor where Broadway was housed the day he died. He also said Broadway had “really bad asthma.”

“Mike called us and said he was having a hard time breathing,” Ehlers said in the account provided by Makar. “We called the (medical) tech and it took 15 (minutes) for her to even show up to the cell house. When she got here she said it was too hot and she refused to come up the stairs.”

A correctional officer and a medical worker eventually responded, Ehlers said.

“It was a clown show from start to finish and as a result our brother died. Needlessly. He didn’t have to die,” Ehlers said. “What that tells me is we are not safe here. As a result of these conditions, our brother died.”

Makar also shared a description of the lack of even the most basic cooling efforts at the prison from Abdul-Malik Muhammad, another classmate of Broadway’s in the education program and the lead plaintiff in an ongoing class-action suit brought by people incarcerated at Stateville against the IDOC over the prison’s conditions.

“(Michael) has two broken industrial size fans outside the cell, no one has (come) to fix them,” according to Muhammad’s account, shared by Makar. “The windows are (nailed) shut (due) to structural damage, however, no one has (come) to remove the nails to open the windows so the hot air can escape.”

Muhammad also said that ice is passed out at the prison in the evening, but the bottles of water are always hot. And  “you (can’t) drink the water from the sink, that water comes out brown or (gray), depends on if it rain or not,” according to Muhammad’s account.

An IDOC spokesperson did not respond to questions about the allegations from Ehlers.

The proposal to dismantle Stateville and Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison in downstate Lincoln, and potentially rebuild both facilities on the Stateville site near Joliet, was announced by the Pritzker administration in March. The budget for the fiscal year that begins Monday sets aside $900 million in capital funds for the projects. According to IDOC, Stateville and Logan are in disrepair and the plan would allow the state to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance costs.

The governor on Tuesday said he didn’t know any details about Broadway’s case, but reiterated the need to replace Stateville.

“It’s very important that we carefully but imminently make changes in our corrections system. In particular, we’re going to need to close and replace Stateville,” Pritzker said, calling the prison “just an example of a place that needs a lot of work.”

State Sen. Rachel Ventura, a Democrat from Joliet whose district encompasses Stateville, said Broadway’s death showed how IDOC “really (does) need to step up (its) response to medical emergencies” at its facilities, and also needs to address quality of life issues for prisoners “when we have increased temperatures.”

Broadway grew up in the Roseland community on Chicago’s Far South Side. He was convicted of murder in what court documents describe as a gang-related shooting in the neighborhood.

At Stateville, he was one of 16 graduates last year from Northwestern’s Prison Education Program. In his graduation speech, he apologized to his mother for past behavior.

“Mother, this is my open apology to you and to my family,” he said in his speech. “For every time the police kicked in that door. For every time someone shot into that home. … I apologize. I know everything you ever wanted for me was to be the best version of myself, so I ask you momma ‘How did I do?’”

His education helped him connect to his grandchildren, Broadway said last year.  He dreamed of someday teaching sociology, a subject he said helped him make sense of the poverty and disinvestment in his own neighborhood.

“I grew up in an area that was heavily affected by deindustrialization, which caused food deserts, underfunded schools, and health care decline,” Broadway said in a profile posted online for the prison education program. “The loss of jobs caused lots of home foreclosures, a rise in crime and drug use, which led to our community being over-policed and having its citizens harassed.”

Sheila Bedi, a professor at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law who also serves on the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission, was one of Broadway’s teachers in the program in and praised him in a letter shared by Makar.

“Michael quite literally lit up the classroom at Stateville Correctional Center. He was a scholar. A creative. A published author. He was patient. Considerate. Deeply kind. Slightly mischievous,” Bedi wrote. “I, like so many of you, am struggling with how to honor Michael and how to seek justice in his name. I think it starts by seeking to do what Michael did. Following his example and creating art and beauty and connection in conditions that are objectively brutal.”

At a community meeting at Northwestern’s Streeterville law school campus Tuesday evening, advocates for people in prison, including many of Broadway’s friends and classmates, called for urgent change in the wake of his death. Jennifer Lackey, who runs the Northwestern program, closed the meeting by reading a statement from Broadway about his graduation in which he optimistically discussed future release.

“I’m honored, humbled and hungry for more,” the statement read. “I’m still climbing the mountain and enjoying every summit.”

Chicago Tribune’s Rebecca Johnson contributed.