It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson could hear his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping for breath and crying out for help at the Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami on the edge of the Florida Everglades.
The elderly man was confined to a wheelchair and for weeks had been complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing in the unventilated dorm where he was serving his sentence, according to a federal class action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two other inmates at the prison.
