Scroll To Top
'Inhumane:' How “Bernie” and his legal team are crusading against sweltering Texas prisons - “Bernie”, who lived in Austin briefly in the garage apartment of acclaimed film director Richard Linklater's home, is serving 99 years for killing a widow. Linklater calls it a humanitarian crisis. Tony Plohetski and Hogan Gore, @ Austin American-Statesman.com

FREE BERNIE TIEDE 2024

 

NEWS

Kevin Green/News Journal photo

'Inhumane:' How ‘Bernie’ and his legal team are crusading against sweltering Texas prisons - "Bernie", who lived in Austin briefly in the garage apartment of acclaimed film director Richard Linklater's home, is serving 99 years for killing a widow. Linklater calls it a humanitarian crisis.


Defense attorney Mike Degeurin, left, Bernie Tiede, center, and attorney Jodi Cole, right, during the hearing Tuesday, October 27, 2015, in the 123rd Distric Court at Panola County Courthouse in Carthage. Kevin Green/News-Journal Photo



Bernhardt "Bernie" Tiede II, the Texas funeral director who shot dead a wealthy widow and jammed her body into a meat freezer, has a new cause from his prison cell: There is no air conditioning in Texas prisons, so he is suing the state.

"Inhumane," Tiede calls his treatment.

A judge has sided with Tiede and ordered him, for now, moved to air-conditioned housing. That ruling could end up benefiting more than 120,00 inmates incarcerated in Texas prisons.
Read the article at Austin American-Statesman

Adobe Stock

As the death toll in stifling Texas prisons climbs, congressional Democrats are asking for an investigation since most Texas prisons lack air conditioning. At least 41 prisoners have died of heart-related or undetermined causes since the unrelenting heat wave began.



At least 41 people have died in stifling, uncooled prisons of either heart-related or unknown causes during Texas’ relentless and record-breaking heat wave this summer, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.

Relatives of those who died and prison rights advocates insist at least some of those deaths were caused by the heat. More than a dozen of the prisoners were in their 20s or 30s, with at least four people 35 and under reportedly dying of cardiac arrest or heart failure. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says no prisoner has died from the brutal heat in its facilities since 2012, around the time the agency began being bombarded with wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits over the heat.

On Monday, Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability implored Republican Chair James Comer to launch an investigation into conditions at prisons enduring sweltering temperatures, especially in Texas. The request follows the Republican committee members’ investigation into conditions for defendants jailed on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“The capacity of prisons and jails to adequately prepare for and provide resources to meet the increasingly extreme weather caused by climate change deserves immediate attention from this Committee,” the Democrats, including Texas Reps. Greg Casar and Jasmine Crockett, wrote. “If Committee Republicans are serious about conducting oversight of the conditions within prisons and correctional facilities, and not just playing politics with a single facility, it is critical that you demand that facilities across the country hold inmates in a humane environment and not limit your interest to a single facility.”

Comer’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the letter.

More than two-thirds of Texas’ 100 prisons don’t have air conditioning in most living areas inside the concrete and steel buildings where officers and prisoners work and live. With little to no ventilation and temperatures routinely soaring into the triple digits outside, the thermometer reading often rises even higher inside the prisons.

Since June, at least a dozen prisoners have died from reported cardiac arrest or heart failure in uncooled prisons on days when the regions’ outdoor heat indices were above 100 degrees, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of prison death reports and weather data. At least another 29 have died of what are still unknown causes pending autopsy results.

The death count is likely higher, as prisons have 30 days to report a prisoner’s death to the state.

This story was first published in The Texas Tribune, and can be viewed here.

Show More...

Austin American-Statesman News Section
Published 9:48 p.m. CT Sept. 26, 2023

'It doesn't ever cool down.' In exclusive footage, Bernie Tiede makes plea for AC in prison

In exclusive footage shared with Austin-American Statesman by director Richard Linklater, convicted murderer Bernie Tiede made a plea for air conditioning in Texas prison.

Austin American-Statesman News Section Online

Bernie's 2014 release from prison

A tale of two high-profile jail releases
Thoughts on Tiede and Alig and what it means to be a folk hero

Tolly Moseley| Austin American-Statesman
Published 12:01 a.m. CT May 17, 2014 | Updated 9:13 p.m. CT Sept. 25, 2018


Last week, the stars conspired to release two high-profile men from prison: Bernie Tiede, played by Jack Black in Richard Linklater’s 2011 indie flick “Bernie,” and Michael Alig, played by Macaulay Culkin in 2003’s equally indie and arguably more culty “Party Monster.”

Each left jail within one day of the other, each served for 17 years, and each, upon release, was promptly handed an iPhone. But the best parallel? Each celebrated his newfound freedom with Mexican food. If that isn’t cosmic destiny, I just don’t know what is.

Both Tiede and Alig went to jail for murder. Tiede for shooting his 81-year-old charge Marjorie Nugent, then stuffing her body in a deep freezer; Alig for beating his drug dealer to death, stuffing his body in a bathtub, then dismembering him — a full eight days later.

Read the full article at The Austin American-Statesman online here.
Local television interview

‘A horrible, horrible, torturous situation’ | The fight to get Texas inmate Bernie Tiede air conditioning

Bernie Tiede described the conditions at the Estelle Unit in Huntsville, Texas, in videos shot by director Richard Linklater and shared exclusively with KVUE.

Author: Tony Plohetski, Joe Ellis
Published: 10:11 AM CDT September 27, 2023 | Updated: 11:43 AM CDT September 27, 2023

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Editor’s note: See this full KVUE Defenders report Wednesday on KVUE News at 6 p.m.

An acclaimed film director and a Texas prison inmate whose story spawned the movie “Bernie” have launched a fight for him to be held in an air-conditioned facility. It’s a legal crusade attorneys say could help others incarcerated in the state’s sweltering prisons.

The pushback follows what the state climatologist says was Texas's second hottest summer on record. The heatwave put a new and urgent emphasis on the lack of universal air conditioning inside the state’s more than 100 prison facilities.

The KVUE Defenders obtained exclusive video of Bernie Tiede talking about conditions inside the Huntsville unit where he is housed.

“You wake up, and you’re just rolling in sweat,” Tiede says in one video.

Texas-based film director and producer Richard Linklater, whose famous works include “Dazed and Confused” and “Boyhood,” took a series of videos of Tiede inside the maximum-security Estelle Unit in Huntsville on Aug. 4. In them, Tiede describes the broiling conditions inside the unit.

“There’s no escape,” Bernie says in the video. “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.”

A dozen years earlier, Linklater made Tiede’s story of killing an elderly East Texas woman and storing her body in a freezer the plot of the acclaimed 2011 dark comedy “Bernie.”

Linklater, working with Tiede’s new legal team, went to see him in prison after learning about his declining health.

“He wasn’t really the Bernie I knew,” Linklater said of his visit with Teide. “He was always positive. He’s teaching, always doing things for others. He was happy to see me, and I noticed, everyone around, there was just this pall over everything.”

A couple of weeks later, Tiede’s legal team filed a lawsuit against the State of Texas in federal court in Austin, asking that Tiede be urgently moved from his unairconditioned housing to an air-conditioned facility.

They argue because of his overall health, including hypertension and diabetes, that “if Mr. Tiede’s deadly incarceration conditions continue, unabated, Mr. Tiede is likely to die this summer, in 2023.”

Richard Linklater KVUE TV Interview online

Show More...

Click here to see more news about Bernie and Texas prison conditions.

 

Bernie, 2011 • PG-13 • 1h 44m

In small-town Texas, an affable mortician strikes up a friendship with a wealthy widow, though when she starts to become controlling, he goes to great lengths to separate himself from her grasp.
See the imdb.com page here:


Official Trailer for the Bernie Movie


Interview with Shirley McLain and Jack Black


Case Analysis with Dr. Todd Grande

Legal Documents

Linklater letter
Linklater letter and interview with Bernie in prison
Legal Complaint
Legal Complaint
TRO
Temporary Restraining Order
TRO Doc 17
TRO Doc 17
Tiede TRO Amended
Tiede TRO Amended

The Bernie I’ve visited before in prison has always been very upbeat, positive, smiling and fundamentally joyful and appreciative, despite his situation. That’s the Bernie everyone knows – the positive guy who’s helping others and making the best of his situation. —Richard Linklater



 

 

About Our Team

Jodi Cole

We bring curiosity, experience, persistence, intuition, and an eagle eye to every legal challenge

Jodi Cole has been practicing law since 2004, practicing state and federal criminal defense work in Austin, Texas for the first fifteen years of law practice. She began practicing civil law in 2019 after relocating to Far West Texas.
Jodi Cole photo P Hjesslutz
Ms. Cole served as the Municipal Judge for the City of Alpine, Texas during the second half of the pandemic, helping establish a virtual hybrid court and establish full municipal court autonomy for the community. Ms. Cole has won trials and appeals, including a successful outcome for a Fifth Circuit appeal after oral argument in 2021. She has secured the release of client Bernie Tiede from a life sentence from a murder conviction for two years, helping him reenter society with Richard Linklater, and fighting to keep Mr. Tiede released with Co-counsel Mike DeGeurin in a grueling East Texas sentencing trial against the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Ms. Cole has been recognized as a Texas Rising Star Superlawyer for 2010, 2011, and 2013. Ms. Cole has also received the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Trial Lawyers recognition for multiple years. She has had cases featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Texas Monthly, Austin American Statesman, the Big Bend Sentinel, the Big Bend Gazette, Marfa Public Radio and on NPR’s Fresh Air. Ms. Cole has also appeared on the investigative news magazines 48 Hours and 20/20.

In the past, Ms. Cole has served as president of a non-profit called Community Yoga Austin in Austin, helping to provide yoga to incarcerated inmates. She has also served on the Capital Area AIDS Legal Project (“CAALP”) board , providing pro bono representation to HIV positive members of the Austin community. Ms. Cole enjoys writing, painting, running, yoga, swimming, and traveling. Ms. Cole is a member of the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and enjoys the hobby of wildlife rehabilitation. Ms. Cole has successfully and proudly rehabilitated and released baby possums, squirrels, blue jays, and a baby mockingbird.

Show More...

Contact Us
Jodi Cole Website

203 East Murphy Street
Alpine Texas 79830
(432) 837-4266
Aleksandra Chapman
achapman@jodicole.com

Texas inmates are dying from extreme heat in prisons without air-conditioning. We are killing them.

There are reports of inside temperatures being higher than 120 Degrees Fahrenheit. According to a Texas A&M study, only 30 % of Texas; 100 prison units, are fully air-conditioned.
FREE BERNIE TIEDE 2024 128K Inmates held in Texas in units without full air-conditioning
While TDCJ claims no person has died of a heat related cause since 2012, anecdotal evidence suggests at least 8 inmate death’s this summer were related to heat.
Texas is one of at least 13 states in the United States that does not have universal air-conditioning.
There were 17 deaths from 2000 to 2012 with 10 of those deaths in 2011 during a record heat wave.
Studies suggest that 13% or 271 of deaths happened in Texas prisons without universal air conditioning between 2001 and 2019 which may be related to extreme heat during warm months.
95% of households in South use air conditioning including 90% of households that make below $20k a year
People who are 65 or over, diabetic, have high blood pressure, and COPD are all vulnerable to heat related illness when housed in extreme heat.
People on certain medications, including some antidepressants are vulnerable to heat related illness.
Bernie has all of these conditions and had what a medical doctor has said appears to be a brain stem stroke and we had to file a federal lawsuit to move him to air-conditioning.
Our first federal judge said that the state argued unpersuasively that Bernie’s health in extreme heat was not an emergency and ordered that Bernie be moved to air-conditioned housing right away for 14 days.
Instead of being responsible and cooperative, the state actually had the nerve to file a motion to vacate a federal magistrate judge’s order.
The federal district judge almost immediately reviewed all of the evidence on the record and he issued a TRO again.
The state has still not agreed to keep Bernie in safe air-conditioned housing after the TRO expires next week.
We are filing for an extension to keep Bernie in safe air-conditioned housing for another 14 days. Every day could make a difference for Bernie - this is life or death.
It’s bad enough that people are being tortured and are probably dying from being trapped in their cells in triple digits, but to hide this from the public? If this is happening, that is unacceptable.
TDCJ let’s fix this now, once and for all.
Be on the right side of history.
48 Hours Investigates episode How can destroying inmates in prison from Extreme Heat where they are so sick they need emergency medical care cost effective? It’s expensive and wasteful.
TDCJ’s policy is to house its pigs at no higher than 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
In our state, pigs are treated better than human beings in our custody.
Who is in charge? How is this happening in our state?
Please contact your local house representative and senator and demand that universal air-conditioning in Texas prisons — right away.
Texas deserves better, we all deserve better.
We must fix this, because this is our state, and we deserve better!

Show More...
DONATE @ gofundme.com

FREE BERNIE TIEDE 2024

DONATE @ gofundme.com

GoFundMe Campaign for Bernie Tiede - Reform Dangerous Prison Conditions

Bernie desperately needs our help.

We are launching this page in an effort to raise legal funds for Bernie Tiede, an inmate in [NAME OF PRISON]. Bernie is being kept in unsafe and inhumane conditions at this facility, which has compounded his already severe medical conditions. We hope to raise funds to improve the living conditions of not just Bernie but every Texas inmate being kept in units without air conditioning during the brutal Texas summers. With these cells reaching close to 122 degrees during the summer, Texas prisons are playing with inmates’ lives. With your help we can ensure that those serving punishment for crimes committed are not treated in cruel and unusual ways, as is their constitutional right.

Who is Bernie Tiede?

Bernie Tiede is the subject of the 2011 motion picture Bernie, directed by Richard Linklater. A beloved community figure in the town of Carthage, Texas, Bernie found himself at the center of a scandalous murder investigation. Mr. Tiede was convicted and sentenced for those crimes and has diligently served his time since. Bernie has continuously sought to seek justice from a system that has failed him time and time again, briefly being released in 2014 for two years until he was returned to confinement.

Bernie has recently suffered several health complications. Already diagnosed with Type-2 Diabetes, Bernie had what physicians believe to be a brain stem stroke and was moved to an air-conditioned wing to recuperate. Breaking with physicians’ recommendations as well as a federal court ruling, the state fervently fought to return Mr. Tiede to his 100+ degree cell block. Being kept in such conditions would have worsened his health considerably. Tiede’s legal defense was able to prevent the State of Texas from carrying out its unofficial death sentence, but the fight is far from over.

What Needs To Change?

Here are several facts about the Texas Prison System:

  1. Only 30% of Texas’ 100 prison units are fully air-conditioned, according to a study by Texas A&M.
  2. Over 120,000 Texas inmates are held in units without full air-conditioning.
  3. Texas is among 13 US states without universal air conditioning.
Simply put, these conditions are unacceptable. The National Weather Service lists temperatures between 103 and 124 degrees to be dangerous in accordance with their heat index. Human beings kept in such conditions begin to suffer from the effects of heat stroke when their body temperature reaches or exceeds 106 degrees. Heat stroke is a serious medical emergency that happens when the body is unable to regulate its temperature. If left untreated, it can cause organ damage and death. This is a punishment the State sees fit to inflict on any inmate regardless of age, gender, or severity of crime.

This is unjust and it disgraces our institutions to treat human beings this way. Housing prisoners without proper air-conditioning stands in direct contradiction to the rights our founding fathers established when building our nation. In particular, that no citizen shall be subjected to punishment deemed cruel or unusual. In an effort to avoid the costs of installing basic amenities, Texas prisons have subjected men and women to torturous conditions. We aim to seek institutional reform and create a system that is designed to rehabilitate prisoners, not torture them.

What Can We Do?

By donating as little as a dollar to this campaign, you will be directly supporting the fight to reform Texas prisons. Bernie is emblematic of a demographic that has suffered in silence for far too long. With your help, we will change that. Become a part of the change you want to see in the world.

Thank you for your time,
Legal Team of Bernie Tiede

DONATE @ gofundme.com
Volunteer to help free Bernie.

Send an email to our legal team.

Jodi Cole and the Austin skyline

WCA Women Communicators of Austin
Media and the Law: An Interview with Jodi Cole

By Andrea Genevieve Michnik | Jul 11, 2011


This month AWC Austin takes a inside look at a critical topic: Media and the Law. The field of communication changes so rapidly, as we’re all aware, and as communicators its our responsibility to make sure we practice what we preach. Whether its for our clients, on behalf of our employers or ourselves, the law must be followed. Questions regarding private domain, social sharing, intellectual property and basic legal practice will be considered throughout our July 20th afternoon luncheon where we’ll tackle these “new-tech vs. old-law” issues with Attorneys Jodi Cole & Hannah Walker. We invite you to sign up today!
To give you a little bit of background on one of our panelists, AWC sat down with Jodi Cole, criminal defense attorney, to learn about her career path and how communication and the law intersect.

Read the whole enchilada at Women Communicators of Austin online.