Death of Dog Trainer Highlights Strenuous Heat and Working Conditions Inside Texas Prisons [View all]

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Death of Dog Trainer Highlights Strenuous Heat and Working Conditions Inside Texas Prisons
Seth Donnelly was one of the many inmates Texas prison officials use as prey for dog hunts. He died from heatstroke after collapsing on the job in Abilene.



Seth Donnelly desperately wanted to get out of the kitchen. Ever since the 29-year-old got his HVAC certification in prison, he applied for maintenance jobs — highly sought-after assignments in lockup — but a dumb tattoo always seemed to get in the way. Three years before he pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence in 2012, Donnelly had the words “Dirty White Boy” needled onto his chest. Not surprisingly, the ink attracted unwanted attention behind bars. Each time he arrived at a new unit, prison guards assumed he was part of a similarly named white supremacist gang and put him on grunt jobs like kitchen duty. “The major and I didn’t get off on good terms,” Donnelly wrote to his sister after one transfer. “He’s convinced I’m a gang member because of my stupid chest tattoo. God I wish I never would’ve never gotten it.”

Donnelly’s mother, Deborah, says her son feared working in the kitchen at the Robertson Unit in Abilene, where he landed a couple years ago, worried he’d end up either hurt or in trouble there. Then, two months ago, Donnelly called home, ecstatic about a new job training dogs to catch escaped prisoners. Deborah was happy but grew nervous once she learned more about the assignment: the hours her son spent outside the prison gates laying scents for the hounds to track; the trees he climbed to hide from the dogs; the stifling, 75-pound “fight suit” he wore for protection when the dogs attacked.



Soon after he took the job, Donnelly complained about the heat. “Very hot today and tomorrow is supposed to be 102,” he wrote to a friend on June 19. “There that Texas heat is. I’m exhausted from work today and I may have gotten a little too much sun as I’m a little red.” It appears to have been Donnelly’s final letter. Two days later, he collapsed after finishing an early morning training run with the dogs, during which he’d been wearing the suit. According to a local justice of the peace, his internal body temperature was 106 degrees when he arrived at the hospital. Donnelly died on June 23 at 1:06 p.m. after doctors took him off life support. A preliminary autopsy lists the cause of death as “multiorgan failure following severe hyperthermia.”

Donnelly’s death has drawn criticism from advocates for prison reform and civil rights attorneys who have spent years fighting to end heat-related deaths inside Texas prisons. Some say it’s another tragic example of the need for independent oversight of the state’s hulking prison system, a proposal that failed during the most recent legislative session. “This is absolutely ridiculous and avoidable,” Amite Duncan, vice president of Texas Prisons Air Conditioning Advocates, told the Houston Chronicle. “I always say that oversight is completely necessary because they keep getting away with these things. I feel like policies aren’t being followed.”

Donnelly’s death also underscores the strenuous work Texas inmates are forced to perform without pay, as well as the prison system’s controversial use of inmates as prey in staged dog hunts.

https://www.texasobserver.org/death-of-dog-trainer-highlights-strenuous-heat-and-working-conditions-inside-texas-prisons/