BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A federal judge has ordered temperature data be collected for 21 straight days in advance of an Aug. 5 trial of a lawsuit by three condemned killers who claim extreme heat indexes at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The Advocate reports the suit, filed last month, alleges heat indexes on death row at the prison reached 172 degrees Fahrenheit last year and 195 degrees in 2011.

Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson's order Tuesday came at the conclusion of a court hearing during which an attorney for the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections and the prison called the inmates' data "greatly exaggerated," ''faulty" and "generally incompetent."

[Via The Advocate]

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