Fentanyl is killing people inside Alabama’s largest, most expensive law enforcement agency – the Alabama Department of Corrections

by Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

St. Clair Correctional Facility (photo by Bernard Troncale)

The lives of two young men, both 31, who died 23 days apart this year in separate Alabama prisons, were ended largely by the same drug, according to state medical examiners. 

Overdose deaths, and especially those deaths known or suspected of being caused by fentanyl, have soared in the state’s prisons. The overdose mortality rate in Alabama’s prisons last year of 435 per 100,000 people was 20 times the national rate across state prisons. 

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4 in the minutes after his father last spoke to him by phone (photo courtesy of the family).

Tim Mathis knew his son, Chase, had a drug problem and had gotten into drug debt with other incarcerated men at Staton Correctional Facility, but when Chase realized his life was in danger and asked an officer for help, he was instead transferred to a dorm at Elmore Correctional Facility known for heavy drug activity, Mr. Mathis said. 

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4 in the minutes after his father last spoke to him by phone, an ADOC investigator told Mr. Mathis. Instead of protecting his son, Mr. Mathis said the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) “threw him to the wolves.”  

What his son’s autopsy report shows is that the state’s medical examiner believes Chase died of accidental “mixed Drug toxicity (fentanyl and fluorofentanyl).” Fluorofentanyl is a synthetic form of fentanyl first produced in the 1960s. He was given two doses of Narcan, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose, but it wasn’t effective, according to the autopsy report. 

“I know what he was doing. I know why he was in the prison, but he shouldn’t have died there,” Mr. Mathis said. He places the blame for his son’s overdose death squarely on the back of ADOC, which he said “needs to get off their asses and do something” about the rampant drug crisis across the state’s prisons. 

ADOC is desperate to increase its dismal staffing levels, but continues to bleed staff due to corruption, officer arrests, and turnover. Recent hiring efforts have produced applicants unable to pass the drug screens and fitness tests, and who have gang affiliations who have been weeded out, reducing the numbers of new recruits. This week, ADOC Commissioner John Hamm revealed that the 4,000-bed mega prison under construction in Elmore County will have a final cost, including furnishing and move-in costs, of $1.25 billion, the most expensive prison ever built in the United States. The ADOC has produced no plan as to how this prison will be staffed; neither did the agency submit a 2025 budget at the Joint Legislative Budget Committee hearing this week.

The loss of life continues, claiming sons, brothers, husbands

Wesley Abernathy, 31, died on Mother’s Day inside Bullock Correctional Facility. The ADOC investigator assigned to his death told his wife, Amber Abernathy, by phone last week that the toxicology report shows it was a lethal dose of fentanyl that killed her husband. That report isn’t yet public record, and awaits the local district attorney’s decision regarding any possible criminal charges before it can be released, the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences wrote to Appleseed last week. 

Wesley and his wife, Amber Abernathy (photo courtesy of the family).

Mrs. Abernathy said she strongly believes her husband had no idea that what he may have taken before he died contained fentanyl. “He had been given it one time and was already scared of what it had done to him,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “They roll their own cigarettes, so they’re lacing these cigarettes with things.” She too blames ADOC for its failure in preventing the constant flow of drugs. 

“I don’t think that the guards are even watching when they should be, and you don’t know how many guards are bringing it in,” Mrs. Abernathy said. Mrs. Abernathy, who works as a social worker, asked why ADOC has not increased medical staff inside prisons as a result of the increasing numbers of overdose deaths. She warned other incarcerated people not to take substances from other incarcerated people or from officers, as they can’t be certain of what other drugs they might contain. 

Of those in ADOC custody, between 75 percent and 80 percent have substance use disorder, according to Appleseed’s report “A Bitter Pill.” Yet the drug treatment has plummeted across the prison system. In 2010, there were 5,242 incarcerated people in Alabama’s prisons who completed drug treatment, but by 2023 that number fell to 967. 

Alabama Appleseed asked ADOC whether Narcan, which cannot be abused, is made available to incarcerated people inside prison dorms. ADOC is working on a statement regarding the department’s use of Narcan, a spokeswoman told Appleseed. 

Alabama prisons saw a record 325 deaths in 2023. So far, ADOC investigations have determined that 112 of those deaths were from preventable causes, with 10 homicides, 13 suicides and 89 overdose deaths. The death rate in Alabama prisons has climbed to five times the national average. Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate is 1,370 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

ADOC has a serious problem hiring and retaining quality officers as well, leaving prisons woefully understaffed. Records requests show 366 staff were fired between 2018 to 2023. Of those, 134 were charged with work-related crimes, ranging from smuggling contraband to assault and murder. Commissioner Hamm acknowledged in this week’s legislative budget hearing that the department was not going to meet a court-ordered staffing increase of 2,000 more officers by January, 2025. 

While there have been arrests of both ADOC officers and civilians, charged with contraband-related crimes, in speaking with incarcerated people who witness the many drug deals inside Alabama prisons, those ADOC staff arrests are just the tip of the iceberg, and many more officers continue to smuggle drugs and other dangerous contraband for substantial payments.  

Prison officers arrested across the state

ADOC officer Monica Blakeney was arrested at Limestone Correctional Facility on July 31, charged with second-degree promoting prison contraband for allegedly bringing amphetamine/methamphetamine into the prison, according to news accounts. Blakeney was released from jail on a $5,000 bond. 

ADOC officer Annetta Smith was arrested August 1 and charged with promoting prison contraband and possession of marijuana. Smith is being held under a combined $30,000 bond for her two charges. Smith has since resigned from her position with the ADOC.

Court records state Smith on August 1 “smuggled three packages wrapped in black electrical tape into Staton Correctional Facility” which contained 273 grams of marijuana. She admitted to smuggling in the drugs under her clothing to sell to an incarcerated man, according to those records. 

Kilby Correctional Facility officer Tyree Lynette Hoyle, 46, was arrested March 24 and charged with use of position for personal gain and attempting to distribute drugs. Court records indicate Hoyle met ADOC officer, Ebony Chillous, at the Montgomery Zoo and received three packages containing suboxone, marijuana and a cell phone. Chillous is also charged with attempting to distribute drugs and using her office for personal gain. 

Charging documents state Hoyle on November 30, 2023, conspired with a state prison inmate and Chillous to deliver drugs inside the prison. She received a $500 Cash App payment from an incarcerated man on November 9 and transferred the payment into her personal bank account, according to court records. 

Mario Grant, 32, an officer at Kilby Correctional Facility, was arrested February 26 and is charged with use of official position for personal gain and conspiracy to commit a controlled substance crime after smuggling drugs into the prison. The charging documents do not state what drugs he is alleged to have brought into the prison. 

/0 Comments/by

Less than one year into a short prison sentence, Wesley Abernathy is gone. He was only 31.

Wesley Abernathy was set to be released in December 2025. He had been sentenced to 30 months in ADOC. He died at Bullock Correctional Facility on Mother’s Day this May (photo courtesy of the family),

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Like many Alabama families, Wesley Abernathy’s mother, wife, and sister paid thousands of dollars in extortion payments hoping the money would keep him alive during his short sentence in an Alabama prison. “We have gotten threats from other inmates in there. I was suckered into paying money,” his sister, Darby Martinez explained. “One time he was on the phone with me, and somebody got on there and said, ‘if you don’t send me this money, I’ll kill him tonight.’” 

The family paid dearly. But Wesley died anyway.

“I had to tell my mom. It was horrific. I think that’s the worst pain that I’ve ever been through,” Mrs. Martinez told Appleseed. Wesley, 31, was her mother’s only son. He died at Bullock Correctional Facility on Mother’s Day this May.

Mrs. Martinez talked to her brother by phone the night before he died. They talked for eight minutes, until 10:58 p.m.  “I’ll call you on Mother’s Day. Tell mom and everybody to answer,” Wesley told his sister. Instead, Mrs. Martinez got a call from a prison employee at 6:58 a.m. 

“Let me switch you over to the chaplain,” the man told her. “I knew instantly something was wrong. He couldn’t get the chaplain to answer so he told me ‘I’m very sorry but Wesley passed away.’ I don’t really remember much from that moment. I know they said that I just fell to the ground and was screaming,” Mrs. Martinez said. 

Wesley Abernathy with his sister, Selena Colon, his mother, Aleshia Gonzalez, and his sister, Darby Martinez (photo courtesy of the family),

Wesley was set to be released in December 2025. He had been sentenced to 30 months in ADOC, followed by probation, after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

From January 1st through June 20th  there were 161 deaths among the incarcerated in Alabama prisons, Appleseed learned through a records request. Alabama prisons saw a record 325 deaths in 2023.  So far, ADOC investigations have determined that 112 of those deaths were from preventable causes, with 10 homicides, 13 suicides and 89 overdose deaths. 

Alabama’s overdose mortality rate in prisons last year of 435 per 100,000 was 20 times the national rate across state prisons, according to the latest available national data from the Federal Bureau of Investigations. 

Ms. Martinez estimates that during her brother’s time in prison she sent $3,000 to men who’d threatened his life. Between her, her mother and Wesley’s wife, she estimates they sent between $5,000 and $7,000 to extortionists who threatened to kill him. 

“Because I was scared for his life, and even with us telling the prison, ‘Hey, there’s drugs in there. It’s not as safe there. They were like ‘Oh, well, he’s probably gonna die.’ This is literally what the woman told me on the phone,” Mrs. Martinez said of a female officer she spoke to. “She said, we’ve moved him four times already, and I said, no you have not. You moved him from one dorm to the next. You didn’t try to do anything.” 

Mrs. Martinez said the Law Enforcement Services Division investigator looking into her brother’s death told the family that ADOC told him not to worry about an autopsy because they believed it was an overdose death, but the condition of his body at the funeral home told another story.

The side of Wesley’s face was black, and he had a large knot on his head. “So we started asking. How did this happen?,” Mrs. Martinez said. 

The investigator told the family that he fought for an autopsy to be done because Wesley had bruises on his face, but that according to the funeral home there were no signs that an autopsy had been done. 

“We had my brother cremated, so there’s no going back. They just ripped that away from us. We thought an autopsy was performed because the investigator didn’t even know the autopsy wasn’t even done,” Mrs. Martinez said. 

Wesley had an addiction problem and may have been using drugs while incarcerated, Mrs. Martinez said. She believes he was in debt to those men inside who were selling him drugs. Drug debt is a common catalyst for violence and death inside Alabama prisons. 

One incarcerated man who was extorting the family told Mrs. Martinez on a prison phone about a month before her brother died that, “We run this prison. The officers do what we say, so they’re not going to protect your brother.” Like so many Alabama families with incarcerated loved ones, Wesley Abernathy’s family did not know who to turn to, or how to create safer conditions for him. There is no guidebook for desperate families and generally no one with any power to help them. “There are people that deserve to be in there. I understand that, but it’s to teach people. Not for all these families that have to get phone calls that their family member is gone.” 

Wesley and his wife, Amber Abernathy (photo courtesy of the family).

Mrs. Martinez described her brother as a good-hearted person who loved to fish, and could most often be found fishing at Guntersville Lake. “He was a good man. He had three babies, and he loved them to death, with everything in him,” Mrs. Martinez said. 

Amber Abernathy, Wesley’s widow, told Appleseed she received a call from the prison warden the morning he died, but that the shock of finding out had her in disbelief. 

“I was just saying, Is this a joke? Are you just kidding? This is not funny. I just was in panic,” Mrs. Abernathy said. The warden told her there was no bruising on the body and that it appeared to have been a medical event. 

Mrs. Abernathy described what the family saw when they arrived at the funeral home. 

“He had lots of bruising on his face – on the right side of his face. He had a knot on the right side of his head, and markings behind his ear and on his right side,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “We were not prepared for that.” 

The Law Enforcement Services Division investigator assigned to her husband’s death told her in an early phone call that they believed he died of a fentanyl overdose, she said, and that there were no bruises or other signs of injury on him. She said that although she suspected he was using drugs in prison he’d never take fentanyl purposefully, and that he had always been afraid of that drug. The investigator told her his body would be set for an autopsy, but that’s not what happened, she explained. 

Mrs. Abernathy said the investigator told her Wesley could be seen on security footage at around 3:30 am the day he died doubled over in pain, before going to the bathroom where he remained doubled over as if his stomach was hurting. He then returned to his bunk. A man who slept nearby Wesley later told the investigator that when Wesley returned from the bathroom he told the man he believes he may have ingested fentanyl. She said the family knows he bought a cigarette from someone the night before and they’re worried that it may have been laced with a drug. 

In another call with the investigator about three weeks after the funeral he told Mrs. Abernathy that he had seen those bruises and had requested an autopsy, Mrs. Abernathy said, but when she explained to the investigator that the funeral home told the family they saw no signs of an autopsy having been done, the news caught the investigator off guard. 

Wesley and his daughter, Paizlee Abernathy (photo courtesy of the family).

“That doesn’t make sense, because I specifically requested for a full autopsy on him. They had his body at forensic sciences, so I don’t understand why they didn’t do an autopsy,” Mrs. Abernathy said the investigator told her, referring to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences (ADFS), which can conduct full autopsies and drug toxicology screens on incarcerated people. 

Mrs. Abernathy requested the report on her husband’s death from the ADFS but in a letter to her on June 20th, and in an identical letter on July 19th, the department said the reports in that case weren’t yet public records because the death was either still under investigation by the local district attorney, or because the department hadn’t yet finalized the reports. 

ADOC declined to directly answer Appleseed’s questions regarding the statement the investigator made about his concerns over the signs of injuries and his request for a full autopsy. 

“The death of inmate Abernathy is still under investigation by the Law Enforcement Services Division. The ADOC does not have the authority to authorize autopsies. Any questions regarding autopsies should be directed to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences,” the ADOC spokesperson wrote to Appleseed. 

ADFS in a response to Appleseed also didn’t answer whether Wesley received a full autopsy or just a toxicology screening, and instead sent a letter identical to those sent to Mrs. Abernathy. 

ADOC first confirmed for Appleseed that autopsies would no longer be done by the state for suspected natural or overdose deaths. UAB Hospital terminated its longstanding agreement with ADOC to conduct autopsies and/or toxicology screens on suspected natural and overdose deaths on April 22, 2024, ADOC told Appleseed. Families recently filed a lawsuit against UAB after discovering that their incarcerated loved ones’ bodies were returned to them for interment missing internal organs. 

/0 Comments/by

In an overcrowded prison dorm with no correctional officers present, a beloved brother and son is killed, one of four deaths at Donaldson prison in three days.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Deandre Roney died June 9, 2024. He was one of four men at Donaldson prison who died over a three-day period in June (photo courtesy of his family).

Deandre Roney knew his life was in danger, so he asked officers at Donaldson Correctional Facility to move him, as did his family. A man had been chasing him with a knife for days, and had already stabbed him once, the blade breaking off inside of him, his family told Appleseed. 

Corrections staff assured the family that they would move Deandre to safety. He wasn’t. Instead, Deandre was stabbed in his back and in his head by a makeshift knife the following day. He died June 9 at UAB Hospital. Mr. Roney was scheduled to be released on Nov. 6, according to court records. 

Deandre was one of four men at Donaldson prison who died over a three-day period in June. One man died while in hospice care at the prison, and two others were found unresponsive and later died. 

“Friday night my brother called and asked if he could have someone come and get him out of that dorm, because he didn’t feel safe. He wanted to rest,” said Chante Roney, Deandre’s sister. Deandre’s mother called and spoke to an officer who told her he’d get her son moved, Ms. Roney said. 

“Saturday morning my brother called and asked if we contacted anyone there, because no one ever came,” Ms. Roney said. Within a few hours of that phone call her brother was stabbed.

The day of the stabbing the family got a call from another incarcerated man telling them they needed to call the prison and that something had happened to Deandre. They called and spoke to a lieutenant whom they said was “very rude” and said they’d have to call back on Monday,  Ms. Roney said. Later Saturday evening the prison’s warden called the family and confirmed that he was injured, but did not tell the family the serious extent of his injuries. 

“He said he was at UAB and he was stable, and for us to go over there and see him. He’s ready to be seen. Just prepare for the worst,” Ms. Roney said the warden told them. “But we were thinking maybe he was just injured real bad, not knowing he was already dead. They really just had him set up so we can come and view his body.” 

No correctional officers present

In the days after his death the family received calls from men in Donaldson prison who knew Deandre and what happened to him. Those men told the family that Deandre was looking for help that Saturday, but there were no officers in his dorm. Deandre walked toward the prison’s faith dorm where officers could usually be found, Ms. Roney said, but he never made it to safety. “This guy snuck behind him and killed him and left him outside,” Ms. Roney said.

Deandre Roney (photo courtesy of his family)

People who are nearing release can often become targets of violence in Alabama’s deadly prisons, where staffing is woefully under court-ordered staffing levels, and prisons are overpopulated and filled with drugs and weapons. Donaldson prison was at 150 percent capacity in April, the last month for which the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has released a monthly statistical report. 

“He was reaching out, uneasy. He didn’t feel safe. He felt like something was going to happen before he made it home by November, and they failed him. They really failed him,” Ms. Roney said. 

The man who the family was told by others inside Donaldson prison killed Deandre is serving 30 years after pleading guilty to attempted murder and assault in the first degree in 2011. ADOC declined to say whether anyone has been charged with Deandre’s killing, and court records don’t indicate the man the family believes killed him has been charged in connection with the death. 

“There are no further updates to share at this point. The LESD investigation is active and ongoing,” an ADOC spokeswoman responded to Appleseed, referring to ADOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division. 

“We were saving money up for him to come home, to buy him clothes, because he’s been gone all these years,” Ms. Roney said. “He was coming home the first week of November, His birthday was at the end of November, and he didn’t even make it.” Instead of using that money to help her brother make a  life outside of prison, the family used it to bury him. 

150 days left to serve

Deandre’s handwritten motion for reinstatement of his probation, which goes into detail about telling his probation officer that he lost his job and was unable to pay his fines and fees.

Deandre pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery and attempted murder in 2002 and 2003 respectively, and was sentenced to 20-years split sentence, to serve three years with five years of probation following his release. He was 16-years old at the time of the robbery, court records show. He remained in state custody until July 2007, but his probation was revoked by then-Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Gloria Bahakel in November 2008 after he missed one check-in with his probation officer and failed to pay his court-ordered fines and fees that month, court records show. He was remanded back to prison to serve out that original 20-year sentence. Deandre was 150 days shy of completing his sentence when he was killed. 

Ms. Roney plans to speak at an upcoming public hearing of the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee meeting on July 24th. “I would love to speak on my brother’s behalf,” she told Appleseed. She won’t be alone that day in Montgomery. Tim Mathis, who’s son, Chase Mathis, died moments after he spoke to him by phone in Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4th, also plans to speak to those lawmakers. 

Ms. Roney wonders how long her brother remained there on that ground outside before other incarcerated men, not officers, came to his aide. 

“Inmates had to go out there and get my brother off of the ground and get him to the infirmary. He didn’t have a chance,” Ms. Roney said. 

/0 Comments/by

Another death in an Alabama prison, another grieving family

Chase Mathis was confined to a wheelchair when he went to prison. His mobility challenges meant he often did not have enough to eat and did not get his basic needs met. But in Alabama’s drug-infested prisons, lethal drugs are always available even when food is not.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4, 2024. His grieving family is seeking answers (photo courtesy of his family).

Chase Mathis died inside Elmore Correctional Facility on June 4 moments after his father last spoke to him by phone. Now the father is seeking answers, and wants to expose Alabama’s troubled prisons that failed to keep his son, who entered prison in a wheelchair, alive.

Before prescription pills took their toll, Chase was a farm boy and a prankster, affectionately called Plowboy in his community. “He’s been climbing on tractors since he was big enough to ride a bicycle to the fields…He could pretty much run anything. If he could reach the controls he could run it,” Tim Mathis said. His son grew up in a small rural community between Dothan and Cottonwood. “He loved to shoot fireworks. He loved to hunt. Just normal country stuff.”

Chase Mathis loved making friends and family laugh (photo courtesy of Chase’s family)

Chase went to great lengths to make people laugh, his father remembered. During a friend’s birthday party at a local fast food restaurant, Chase dressed in full clown costume, makeup and all, just to make people smile. 

His son’s life took a turn when he became addicted to prescription pain pills, Mr. Mathis said, but it was a 2014 car accident that sent him to prison. Chase was driving with a friend and was intoxicated when they believe he fell asleep at the wheel. The car struck a tree, killing his friend. Chase suffered multiple broken bones throughout his body, three skull fractures, a torn spleen and an aneurysm. “We stayed in the trauma unit for 41 days before we knew he was going to live,” Mr. Mathis said.  A year-and-a-half later Chase was indicted for murder, but Chase later agreed to a plea deal and a reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 15 years. 

Chase’s attorney asked that he be put into the Alabama Department of Corrections’ Substance Abuse Program (SAP), Mr. Mathis said, but he never received that critical treatment once incarcerated. “Ain’t none of that happening,” Mr. Mathis said of the SAP program. “It’s just a crock…If we had known that at the time, if I could go back and do it again I’d say, take your damned chances, go to trial and see what the jury says.” 

ADOC’s own data confirm that there has been a 64% decrease in the number of incarcerated people completing drug treatment over the last decade. Staffing is threadbare at the troubled agency, which constricts the availability of rehabiliative programming. Magnifying Chase’s challenges in prison was the fact that he relied on a wheelchair. He called his father one day in tears, and said he was hungry. “I can’t walk,” Chase told his father, and his dorm is too far from the dining hall. By the time he wheels himself there it’s too late, and the food is being put up, he said. If he buys food from the prison store he has to eat it as soon as he buys it, or else he’ll be robbed of the food, and the officers do nothing to stop it, Chase told his father. 

Mr. Mathis called then-ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn to discuss his concerns but Dunn declined to talk to him, so Mr. Mathis said he’d like to visit the prison and talk to him in person. 

“And I was advised that if I set foot on the property up there I’d be charged with a terroristic threat,” Mr. Mathis said. 

“There was no medical rehab whatsoever. He had to teach himself how to walk,” Mr. Mathis said. His son began using drugs in prison, he believes, to get his mind off of the brutal violence and unchecked depravity surrounding him inside daily. 

Mr. Mathis spoke to his son the day he died. Their call ended at 8:32 p.m. on June 4th. He received a call from the prison at 10 p.m. with the news of Chase’s death. An investigator with ADOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division told Mr. Mathis that he believes Chase died within 15 minutes of talking to Mr. Mathis.

Chase Mathis (photo courtesy of the family).

Mr. Mathis said it’s hard to know for certain, but he’s concerned his son may have been killed with what’s known as a “hotshot,” or a lethal dose of drugs administered against one’s will and meant to kill. 

“Chase told me he owed these guys money. He didn’t tell me who they were, but he told the investigator. He gave them their names,” Mr. Mathis said. Chase owed more than $1,000 in separate amounts to three men at Staton prison, he said. He assumed it was drug debt, which is common in Alabama prisons and often results in the extortion of family members, assaults and homicides. Because of that debt and threats he was receiving, Chase told investigators and asked to be moved, his father said, but instead of placing him in a cell by himself for protection, his son was placed in general population. Chase’s deaths just moments after arriving at Elmore prison is suspicious, he explained. 

Chase’s body was sent to the state’s lab at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for an autopsy, Mr. Mathis said. He was told by ADOC that the autopsy would be done because the death was under criminal investigation. 

ADOC first confirmed for Appleseed that autopsies would no longer be done by the state for suspected natural or overdose deaths. UAB Hospital terminated its longstanding agreement with ADOC to conduct autopsies and/or toxicology screens on suspected natural and overdose deaths on April 22, 2024, ADOC told Appleseed. Families recently filed a lawsuit against UAB after discovering that their incarcerated loved ones’ bodies were returned to them for interment missing internal organs. 

Mr. Mathis has signed up to speak at the upcoming public hearing during the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee meeting on July 24th. He’s still not sure what he’ll say, but knows he wants to talk about the drug crisis in Alabama’s prisons. 

Mr. Mathis said he’d like to see a nationwide news agency come in and expose the crisis in Alabama’s prisons. “So the average person out here can see, because if we had a dog pound that was run like the facility my child’s been at, they’d be pitching a fit,” he said. 

National coverage of Alabama’s horrific prisons has been widespread at least since 2019, and sadly the humanitarian crisis persists. Reports have appeared in USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, Politico, Fox News and more.

Families with incarcerated loved ones attend the Prison Oversight Committee hearing in December 14, 2023 (photo courtesy of Alabama Daily News).

Reaction from lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Prison Oversight Committee after hearing from family members of incarcerated people at a previous public hearing in December 2023 resulted in passage of SB322 this past legislative session, which creates a family services unit to provide answers and information to families of incarcerated people who have been injured or hospitalized. 

Alabama’s overcrowded, understaffed and deadly prisons have been in a state of crisis for decades, yet with each week the crisis only gets worse. Appleseed regularly talks to family members who have lost loved ones inside prisons, or who are being threatened with violence or death, and family members extorted to keep them safe, and it’s not just Appleseed staff who are having these conversations. 

“I know I’ve said this before, but I’ve gotten another call from another constituent where their son was beat up because the gangs are running our prisons, and the prison guards are bringing the drugs and the cell phones to the gang members,” Alabama House Speaker Pro Tem Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, said during a Legislative Contract Review Committee’s meeting in June. “I mean, these people call me and they’re crying their eyes out because they’ve got a video tape of their son that’s just been (sexually assaulted) or beaten up by the gangs. I feel sorry for you all, but please God, we’ve got to do something to protect these prisoners. It’s insane what’s going on in our prison system.”

/0 Comments/by

Five Years Ago, the United States Department of Justice Declared Alabama Prisons Unconstitutional, Unsafe, and Harmful. They Still Are.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

It was five years ago today that the U.S. Department of Justice released a report detailing violations of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment for incarcerated men in Alabama prisons, and since then more than 1,000 people have died in state prison custody. 

The Alabama Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee meets today and is tasked with providing critical oversight of a department that for decades has been steeped in mismanagement, chaos, corruption, and violence. 

The DOJ issued a second report in July 2020 detailing widespread use of excessive force, including deadly force, by corrections officers against incarcerated people, and in December 2020 the DOJ sued the state and the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). The trial, which will be closely watched across the nation, is set for November, but could be pushed back.

Throughout the last five years, state officials have provided major pay increases to prison guards, increased the ADOC’s budget by 48%, and signed a medical care contract for $1 billion. ADOC officers confiscate hundreds of weapons, even guns, along with enormous amounts of drugs on a regular basis. But nothing seems to stop the carnage. Alabama prisons have a death rate five times the national average, and 2023 saw record loss of life, with 325 incarcerated people dying in state prisons.   

Low prison staffing levels were flagged in that first DOJ report as being a catalyst of the violence, yet from December 2017 until Sept. 30, 2020, the state showed an increase of just 25 officers over nearly two years, which was less than 1.5 percent of a judge’s order to add 2,000 correctional officers by February 2022, and the staffing problem has only worsened. ADOC’s quarterly reports show total security staffing fell from 2,102 in December 2021 to 1,763 by September 2023, even after massive recruiting efforts, pay raises and incentives.

And many officers are part of the problem. Between 2018 and the end of 2023, ADOC fired 366 Corrections staff, and more quit before being terminated. During those years 134 ADOC officers and staff were charged with work-related crimes, Appleseed discovered through a records request, with charges ranging from promoting prison contraband to murder. 

In a recent case, ADOC Sgt. Demarcus Sanders in July 2023 was charged with murder in the death of Rubyn James Murray, 38, beaten to death at the hands of two other incarcerated men, directed to do so by Sanders, court records allege. Those two incarcerated men are also charged with murder. “The defendant confessed to the offense,” an ADOC investigator wrote of Sanders in a deposition. 

One of the last men to die in Alabama prisons was 39-year-old Samuel Ward, who was stabbed to death on March 27 by another incarcerated man at Limestone Correctional Facility. It was the fifth homicide at that prison since May 2021, and the second during the month of March. 

Gov Kay Ivey and supporters of her plan to build new prisons have said those buildings are the answer to Alabama’s deadly prison crisis, and while lawmakers have secured the money to build the first $1.08 billion prison – in part with $400 in federal COVID-relief funds, and potentially $100 million from state education funds, money for a second planned prison hasn’t been found. 

Immediately, after the 2019 report was released, Ivey began promising an “Alabama solution” to the problem. “Over the coming months, my Administration will be working closely with DOJ to ensure that our mutual concerns are addressed and that we remain steadfast in our commitment to public safety, making certain that this Alabama problem has an Alabama solution,” Ivey said at the time.

Asked what the most significant accomplishments to address the prison crisis to date have been, and about the lack of funding for the second planned prison, Gov. Kay Ivey’s office declined to provide a response, and instead sent portions of Ivey’s most recent state of the state speech. 

“The Alabama Department of Corrections certainly remains a key focus of our state’s public safety efforts. I will be frank: Running a corrections system is a hard job, and I know everyone has an opinion on how they can do it better. There is no one more capable to lead that effort here in Alabama than Commissioner John Hamm,” Ivey said in her February speech. 

“Prisons around the country and on every level – federal, state and local – are experiencing challenges. But we remain committed to doing everything in our power to make improvements where we can in our state system.

“We are moving forward in our mission to build two new facilities. At the same time, we are working to stop contraband coming into our existing facilities, and we are doubling down on our staff recruitment efforts and seeing record graduating classes of officers because of it,” Ivey’s speech reads. 

New buildings alone won’t solve the culture of violence and death inside Alabama’s prisons, which is exactly what the Department of Justice told the state in the 2019 report: “While new facilities might cure some of these physical plant issues, it is important to note that new facilities alone will not resolve the contributing factors to the overall unconstitutional condition of ADOC prisons, such as understaffing, culture, management deficiencies, corruption, policies, training, non-existent investigations, violence, illicit drugs, and sexual abuse.”

While no ADOC official attended the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting in December, family members of those who’ve died in state custody did, and spoke of the brutal ways in which their loved ones’ lives ended. 

“When you see your dad for the first time in 10 years and half of his face is almost gone because he was beaten, it does something to you,”17-year-old MaKayla Mount told lawmakers at that December meeting carrying her father’s urn with her in the State House that day. Christopher Mount was beaten and strangled to death inside a protective custody cell at Easterling Correctional Facility on Mother Day 2023. 

“My son was raped in February of this year and it took them over a month to get him moved,” one mother told the lawmakers at that meeting. 

Appleseed’s Executive Director, Carla Crowder, described for lawmakers at that December meeting how ADOC repeatedly failed to hold accountable the 38-year-old suspect in the kidnapping, rape and torture of 22-year-old Daniel Williams, who died at a hospital on Nov. 9. The suspect was involved in nine instances of sex assault, rape, and stabbing since 2017 in ADOC while incarcerated, yet there is no documentation that the department disciplined the man or placed him in segregation. 

“His classification summary showed a five-year clear record of institutional violence, which resulted in a perfect score of zero in risk assessment conducted in October, and a total score low enough for him to be placed in medium security in an open bay dorm. The psych associates signed off on this and the warden signed off on this,” Crowder said at the meeting. 

These kinds of attacks are precisely what DOJ identified five years ago: “The combination of ADOC’s overcrowding and understaffing results in prisons that are inadequately supervised, with inappropriate and unsafe housing designations, creating an environment rife with violence, extortion, drugs, and weapons. Prisoner-on-prisoner homicide and sexual abuse are common. Prisoners who are seriously injured or stabbed must find their way to security staff elsewhere in the facility or bang on the door of the dormitory to gain the attention of correctional officers. Prisoners have been tied up for days by other prisoners while unnoticed by security staff.” 

The report was signed by since-retired U.S. Attorneys Louis Franklin Sr., Jay Town and Richard Moore, all Trump appointees. 

Alabama prisons in January were at 168 percent capacity, and held 20,469 people in combined prisons designed for 12,115. In the five years since, the state’s prison population has remained the same. At the time of the release of the DOJ’s 2019 report, Alabama prisons held just one less incarcerated person than were being housed in January, 2024.

/0 Comments/by

The Alabama Department of Corrections is desperate for officers and fired hundreds in recent years 

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Correctional Officers (from ADOC website)

Alabama’s prison staffing crisis has an outsized role in the violence and record number of deaths seen across the state’s prisons, most everyone agrees. New data obtained by Appleseed shows yet another reason prison staffing remains dangerously low: the large number of terminated prison employees – 366 Department of Corrections staff fired from January 2018 to November 2023.

The list includes only people fired from the department, not retirements or resignations, and was provided following a records request by Appleseed. Among the 366, at least 19 had been charged with work-related crimes, including contraband and assaulting incarcerated people with batons, for striking an incarcerated man “in the facial area with an open hand and push[ing] the inmate into a wall,” and for hitting another incarcerated man on the jaw with a closed fist “requiring surgery for his injury,” according to court records. 

Still another former prison worker was charged with assault for causing injury to an incarcerated man by “kicking and/or punching him” and two officers were arrested in May 2022 and charged with criminally negligent homicide in the death of 27-year-old Jason Kirkland, who was found dead after he became stuck inside his cell’s small metal door used to pass food through and asphyxiated. 

An officer was arrested in May 2022 and charged with multiple crimes in connection with allegedly attempting to smuggle marijuana inside a frozen Poweraid bottle into Fountain Correctional Facility. Another officer was arrested in February 2020 after attempting to bring seven ounces of marijuana, three ounces of meth, two knives and other contraband into Fountain prison. That officer was convicted in federal court and was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. 

But those 19 former ADOC employees charged with work-related crimes don’t come close to painting the entire picture of corruption and violence at the hands of ADOC employees; many former ADOC officers and staff quit before they’re fired, as Appleseed’s review of court records showed. Records for a former officer charged with assault for allegedly beating a man with a baton at Donaldson Correctional Facility in 2021 showed that two other former officers were also charged with assault in that incident, but those two officers weren’t listed by ADOC as having been fired during that time. Additionally, challenges with securing evidence and witnesses for incidents that occur in a correctional setting result in corrupt staff getting quietly pushed out the door rather than criminally prosecuted.

Equal Justice Initiative notes that, “since 2019, EJI has identified at least 89 ADOC employees who have been criminally charged or administratively sanctioned for misconduct within Alabama prisons. In 30 of these cases, the offending officers were supervisors.”

In one case, a lieutenant with 20 years experience attacked Victor Russo, a 60-year-old incarcerated man, who later died.  Mohammad Jenkins, who was a shift commander at Donaldson Correctional Facility, pleaded guilty to using excessive force on Russo, then lying afterwards to cover up his abuse, according to the United States Department of Justice. “Specifically, on Feb. 16, 2022, Jenkins willfully deprived inmate V.R. of his right to be free from excessive force by kicking him, hitting him, spraying him with chemical spray, striking him with a can of chemical spray and striking him with a shoe, while V.R. was restrained inside of a holding cell and not posing a threat,” the DOJ stated. 

ADOC’s staffing problems, which have been a driver of the violence and death inside Alabama’s prisons, have plagued ADOC for decades, and recent court orders to improve have gone unanswered. From December 2017 until Sept. 30, 2020, the state showed an increase of just 25 officers over nearly two years, which was less than 1.5 percent of a judge’s order to add 2,000 correctional officers by February 2022, and the staffing problem has only worsened. ADOC’s quarterly reports show total security staffing fell from 2,102 in December 2021 to 1,763 by September 2023, even after massive recruiting efforts, pay raises and incentives. 

Violence could lead to early releases

Despite such a significant number of terminations, the assaultive and criminal behavior by ADOC officers keeps occurring. Now, violence against incarcerated people in Alabama is leading lawyers to request early release based on the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) inability to keep people in its custody safe.

This month, a grand jury indicted Limestone Correctional officers Samuel Dial and Jesse Cobb with felony assault for what court records allege is the beating of a 74-year-old incarcerated man in the head with a “broom handle.” Less than two weeks later, the man’s attorney on Feb. 21 filed a motion asking the court to reconsider releasing his client early because of the assault. Hospital records attached to the filing show the man suffered an intracranial hemorrhage and an abrasion to his left arm. 

The two officers remained employed by ADOC as of Friday were working at “non-contact posts” pending the outcome of ADOC’s criminal investigation, the department told Appleseed.

Despite signs of repeated, unlawful behavior by one man long before this episode, he remained a law enforcement officer at the ADOC. That officer,  Jesse Cobb, has been arrested four times since 2013, charged twice with driving under the influence, once for leaving the scene of an accident and twice for public intoxication. 

The earliest of Cobb’s DUI charges was dismissed for reasons court records do not make clear. Cobb in August 2014 pleaded guilty to a separate DUI charge in which court records state he was driving his motorcycle drunk and told the arresting officer “I work for the department of corrections.” The arresting officer in his notes said that Cobb was “using his job to establish dominance.” Cobb received a 180 day suspended jail sentence and was ordered to attend DUI school. The 2014 was later appealed and the charge dropped by the City of Athens, court records show. 

Cobb in July 2018 pleaded guilty to public intoxication and received a $50 fine plus court costs, and he was again arrested in January 2022 and charged with leaving the scene of an accident, public intoxication and failure to report an accident. Court records state he crashed into a guardrail, left the scene and the next day met with a state trooper and said he left the scene “because he was drunk.” Cobb pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and to public intoxication and received a one year suspended jail sentence and two years unsupervised probation. 

“You’re just making your problem bigger, in a new building.”

Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, told Appleseed that the staffing problem itself can result in officers breaking the law. 

“In a low staffed environment, officers are more likely to want to make deals with incarcerated people to try to keep the peace there. So it’s like, Oh, I’ll bring you in some contraband,” Deitch said. “And then there’s also the fact that low staffing allows more bad things to happen inside: Not enough people to notice that staff are bringing in contraband.” 

Appleseed regularly receives videos from inside prisons showing open drug use, assaults, injured and dying people and with no officers in sight. 

ADOC did raise pay for correctional officers and trainees last year, but Deitch said it’s a mistake to think that it’s solely a salary issue. “Counterintuitively it’s better to raise the standards for what it takes to be an officer, raise the educational level, raise the age, raise what kind of things you’re looking for,” Deitch said. “Because then it makes the job more appealing to the kind of people you actually would want to have working there.”

The most important change ADOC could make to improve hiring, she said, is to improve prison conditions, and proponents of Alabama’s new under-construction $1.08 billion prison say that’s what’s needed to fix the state’s deadly prison crisis, but Deitch cautioned about placing all bets on that new prison building. 

“Building a new building doesn’t do anything about the culture. This is a system that has a very dysfunctional culture. It’s a culture that supports violence. It’s a culture that supports the bringing in of contraband. Breaking of rules. All sorts of violations, and unless you change that culture, the new building isn’t going to do anything,” Deitch said. “You’re just making your problem bigger, in a new building.”

/0 Comments/by

Record Loss of Life in 2023 Pushes ADOC’s Death Total Over 1,000 Since DOJ Put State on Notice

by Eddie Burkhalter, Researcher

St. Clair Correctional Facility (photo by Bernard Troncale)

Alabama prisons in 2023 saw record high deaths for a second straight year, a grim reminder that the Alabama Department of Corrections is incapable of protecting incarcerated people from drugs, violence and death.

Last year, 325 people died in Alabama prisons, the Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed for Appleseed. This total means more than 1,000 people have died in state prison custody since 2019 when Alabama government officials were put on notice of conditions so dangerous and deadly that the state was violating the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Altogether, there were 1,045 deaths in Alabama prisons from the April 2019 release of the U.S. Department of Justice’s report detailing the horrific violence in the state’s prisons through the end of last year, according to ADOC’s statistical reports and data Appleseed gathered through records requests.

ADOC doesn’t release timely data on prison deaths, and names aren’t released in department reports, leaving it up to journalists and others to gather those names and seek confirmation. The department’s quarterly reports publish data that reflects what was happening in prisons three months prior, so it’s difficult to gauge the current state of violence and death inside Alabama prisons. Appleseed obtained the names and dates of deaths last year through a records request.

The Public Oversight Committee held a public hearing on December 13, 2023 in Montgomery (photo by Alexander Willis for Alabama Daily News).

It can take many weeks and even months for ADOC to close out an investigation into an in-custody death, due in part to the time it takes the state’s lab to complete toxicology reports, but in ADOC’s quarterly reports the department notes that 127 death investigations had been completed for deaths that occurred in 2023. Among those, 47 were determined to be caused by “accidental/overdose,” four were homicides, five were suicides, 72 were “natural” deaths and two were “undetermined’ leaving 198 yet to have an official cause of death.

Families of victims of custodial violence and abuse increasingly are speaking up. Last month, dozens of grieving family members attended the Joint Prison Oversight Committee at the Alabama Statehouse. Other families have emailed lawmakers with chilling photos and videos of the chaotic, degrading, and deadly conditions across the prison system. The 2024 legislative session is less than two weeks away and the desperation of these families promises to push Alabama’s prison crisis into the spotlight yet again.

Hundreds of deaths, little communication with grieving loved ones

ADOC also has a history of misclassifying deaths, as the U.S. Department of Justice noted in a 2019 report. “There are numerous instances where ADOC incident reports classified deaths as due to ‘natural’ causes when, in actuality, the deaths were likely caused by prisoner -on- prisoner violence,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s findings in the report.

Christopher Latham (family photo)

For example, the death certificate for Christopher Latham, 40, who died on Oct. 10 following an assault by another incarcerated man at Ventress Correctional Facility on Oct. 4, lists the manner of death as an “Accident” despite also noting that the injury was the result of a “prison fight.” The death certificate, first obtained by ABC 33/40’s Cynthia Gould, lists the immediate cause of death as respiratory failure and the underlying cause as “Intracranial Trauma.” Latham had previously been struck in the head with a weight at Staton Correctional Facility prior to being taken to Ventress prison, where the second assault occurred, according to statements from his family and ADOC.

Appleseed on Thursday contacted the office of the physician who certified Latham’s death at Southeast Health Medical Center in Dothan to question how injuries from a prison fight could result in the death certificate listing the manner of death as “Accidental” instead of a homicide. The physician’s nurse confirmed that Latham had been seen by the doctor, but the physician did not return Appleseed’s message as of Monday morning.

Among the names of those who died last year are 39-year-old Rubyn Murray, who was set to be released in 2025. Former ADOC sergeant D’Marcus Sanders was charged with murder in connection with the July 2023 beating death of Mr. Murray at Elmore Correctional Facility. Mr. Murray had served 19 years of a 20 year sentence for a 2004 robbery. The Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole denied parole for Mr. Murray in February of 2021. His conviction stemmed from a robbery of a Montgomery convenience store in which $125 was stolen; no one was injured, according to court records.

Mr. Murray was involved in an altercation with another officer earlier on July 26, which resulted in minor injuries on both the officer and Mr. Murray, according to an ADOC statement. Murray was then taken to a “back gate holding area” and was to be taken to Staton Correctional Facility for medical assessment and treatment.

“Before the transport could occur and in violation of ADOC policy, two other inmates gained access to the holding area,” the statement reads. “Inmate Murray was found unresponsive and was transported to SHCU and then to an area hospital for emergency treatment. Medical staff was unable to resuscitate inmate Murray and he was pronounced deceased by the attending physician.”

Sgt. Sanders and two incarcerated men, Fredrick Gooden and Stefranio Hampton, were charged with Murder. According to court records, Sgt. Sanders unlocked Mr. Murray’s cell door and allowed those two other incarcerated men to enter and beat Mr. Murray, causing serious injuries that later resulted in his death. An Elmore County District judge has approved an affidavit of hardship filed on behalf of Sgt. Sanders and declared him indigent, meaning Alabama taxpayers will pay the cost to defend him against the murder charge.

Brian Rigsby and his sister Elizabeth (photo courtesy of Pamela Moser)

Brian Rigsby, 46, died on Oct. 4, 2023, at the Staton Correctional Facility infirmary after being beaten by other incarcerated men in August 2023 at Bullock Correctional Facility, causing numerous stab wounds, fractured ribs, a facial fracture and two small skull fractures. Mr. Rigbsy also had end-stage liver failure in the days leading up to his death, his mother, Pamela Moser, told Appleseed.

Mr. Rigsby had been turned down for parole by the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles in July 2023. Ms. Moser was one of the families who pleaded with legislators to address the inhumanity in the prisons at the oversight committee meeting. “When one breaks the law, they lose their freedom, not their rights as a human being. The way my son’s end of life was handled was not humane, kind, or caring. For him and

MaKayla Mount holds an urn containing her father Christopher Mount’s ashes at the Prison Overrsight Committee’s public hearing (photo by Eddie Burkhalter)

his family, I can only hope and pray for change,” she told the six lawmakers in attendance.

Another 2023 victim was Christopher Mount, 44. He was beaten and strangled to death on Mother’s Day 2023 after being placed

in a suicide cell with another man at Easterling Correctional Facility.

Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) investigators believe the other man, William Smith, killed Mr. Mount in that cell. Mr. Smith, 48, was incarcerated after being convicted of choking his girlfriend to death in 2017. Mr. Mount was choked to death as well, according to his death certificate, which lists his cause of death as asphyxiation. “My daughter has nightmares and wakes up screaming and crying because all she sees is her dad being beaten and strangled and screaming for help,” Christy Martin, mother to Mr. Mount’s 17-year-old daughter, MaKayla, told Appleseed. “We were supposed to have him home in our arms and not in an urn.”

Easterling prison was at 188 percent capacity the month that Mr. Mount was killed.

Alabama’s prison mortality rate is five times the national average

The November 2023 death of 22-year-old Daniel Williams following what other incarcerated men say was two to three days of beatings and sexual assaults received international news coverage. Mr. Williams was serving a 12-month sentence and was weeks away from his release when he died.

The suspect in Mr. Williams’ death had a decade-long history of assaulting and raping other incarcerated men in several prisons, Appleseed’s review of court records revealed.

Those documents show nine reports of the suspect in Mr. Williams’ death sexually assaulting or harassing other incarcerated men over the last five years, and those records also show that ADOC didn’t take disciplinary measures against the man that could have increased his classification status and removed him from areas inside prisons in which he could further harm others.

In October 2023, ADOC gave the suspect a perfect scores in the category of “History of Institutional Violence” despite clear records of the previous assaults and rapes. As of Jan. 9 the suspect had not been charged in connection with Mr. Williams’ death, according to court records.

The federal government in December 2020, sued the state and the Department of Corrections alleging that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November, 2024.

The death rate in Alabama prisons has climbed to five times the national average. Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate is 1,370 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The Ivey Administration’s response has been to begin construction of a $1.08 billion prison expected to house 4,000 people when it opens in 2026. ADOC officials cite perennially low staff and inability to retain and recruit officers as the cause of much of the violence, but have not released a realistic plan as to how they plan to staff the largest prison ever built in Alabama.

The following is the document provided by the Alabama Department of Corrections listing deaths in 2023:

/0 Comments/by

Alabama families and lawmakers seek answers from ADOC officials as prison violence and deaths persist. ADOC’s response: “There’s two sides to every story.”

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Klifton Adam Bond (source Facebook)

Just 22 days after friends of Klifton Adam Bond’s family spoke to the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee about Bond’s injuries following a severe beating, Mr. Bond was found dead in his cell at St. Clair Correctional Facility. 

For lawmakers who listened to those pleas for help, the death of this 38-year-old man should be yet another call to push for meaningful oversight of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), which continues to prove itself incapable of protecting the incarcerated from violence and death. 

Mr. Bond was attacked on Nov. 6, 2023 at Donaldson Correctional Facility and remained in a hospital intensive care unit for 12 days, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of his mother, as reported by Alabama Daily News. Doctors performed brain surgery on Mr. Bond and told the family he’d require extensive rehabilitation, a friend of the family told the prison oversight committee. Instead, Mr. Bond was moved to St. Clair prison on Jan. 3, 2024 and was found unresponsive in his cell the next day, according to ADOC. 

It’s unclear how he died and Appleseed is working to learn more, but in social media posts the family makes clear they believe it was a homicide. The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Bond had been fearful for his life in the days leading up to his death, and that several officers wanted to retaliate against Mr. Bond for his effort to get other incarcerated people medical care. 

Barbara Ann Turner, a friend of Mr. Bond’s family, spoke to lawmakers in December at the Joint Prison Oversight Committee meeting, and pleaded for action. The committee’s annual public hearing is statutorily mandated, and while all six lawmakers on the committee attended, there was no one from the Department of Corrections present. “He was beaten with a pipe, he was stabbed all over his body,” Ms. Turner told the lawmakers, noting that it took intervention from a state senator to get confirmation from the prison’s warden that Bond had been assaulted and was being treated at a hospital. 

“It’s never been worse.”

Just hours after Mr. Bond’s January 4th death, members of the Alabama Joint Contract Review Committee met in Montgomery and heard a request from an ADOC employee to approve a contract for court-ordered oversight of the department. That oversight is connected to a long-running lawsuit over mental health care in prisons, and the reports drafted by the external monitors aren’t currently made public. 

State Representative Chris England

Representative Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, a member of the committee, told Mandy Speirs, assistant general counsel for the Alabama Department of Corrections, of the hundreds of emails he regularly receives from families of incarcerated people describing the violence and death, and pleading for help. “We actually had a meeting here in this room last month of the Prison Oversight Committee, where some of the same people who were sending the emails came to talk to us about some of the horrors they’re experiencing in our prison system,” Rep. England said. “And unfortunately, no one from the Department of Corrections showed up.” 

Rep. England asked if the reports created by those external monitors could be released to the committee, to which Ms. Speirs responded that she would determine whether that was possible. He also questioned whether the committee should create additional oversight of ADOC which could give an “unbiased report.” 

“Not only what’s going on inside the facilities but what the Department of Corrections is doing to address them, but something has got to give because it’s really getting out of control,” Rep. England said. 

“I will say, and I understand, but to make a small defense is that there are two sides to every story and the DOC…for every email that you have, I’m sure we have information for that,” Ms. Speirs said. 

Appleseed reached out to Gov. Kay Ivey’s office with questions about executive branch responses to the crisis, but has received no response. While select lawmakers have been hearing from impacted families and speaking out about the problems, there have been no public statements or explanation for the increasingly deadly prison conditions from the Administration in charge of running prisons. “The Governor’s Office is pretending that nothing is wrong,” Rep. England told Appleseed. “The Executive Branch is in control and responsible for the day to day operations of the prison system and it’s never been worse.” 

It remains unclear what the “other side” is to the frequent cases of individuals being beaten to death while in custody of the state’s largest law enforcement agency, including instances where correctional officers are involved. The story of the beating death of Rubyn Murray, 39, who had served 19 years of a 20-year sentence for robbery, is one of a correctional officer allegedly using his authority to help end the life of a man he was paid to keep alive. D’Marcus Sanders, then an ADOC sergeant at Elmore Correctional Facility, is charged with murder in connection with Mr. Murray’s death in July. According to court records, Mr. Sanders unlocked Mr. Murray’s cell door and allowed two other incarcerated men to enter and beat Mr. Murray, causing serious injuries that later resulted in his death. The Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole denied parole for Mr. Murray in February of 2021. His conviction stemmed from a robbery of a Montgomery convenience store in which $125 was stolen; no one was injured, according to court records.

Alabama taxpayers will pay the cost to defend Mr. Sanders in court after an Elmore County District judge approved an affidavit of hardship filed on behalf of Mr. Sanders and declared the former correctional officer indigent. 

State officials have been provided detailed accounts of unconstitutionally dangerous prison conditions for the last five years, yet the violence only increases. The federal government in December 2020, sued the state and the Department of Corrections alleging that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November, 2024. 

“The most brutal meeting I’ve been in”

State Senator Dan Roberts

Senator Dan Roberts, R-Mountain Brook, is chair of the Legislature’s Contract Review Committee and a member of the Joint Prison Oversight Committee. Sen. Roberts spoke to Ms. Speirs during the Contract Review meeting. “That was the most brutal meeting that I’ve been in since I’ve been elected,” Sen. Roberts said of the Dec. 13, 2023, Prison Oversight meeting, where fourteen Alabama families and advocates spoke to lawmakers about Alabama’s broken prison system. 

Among them was 17-year-old MaKayla Mount, whose father, Christopher Mount, was brutally beaten and strangled to death inside a suicide cell at Easterling Correctional Facility after being placed there with another man. “When you see your dad for the first time in 10 years and half of his face is almost gone because he was beaten, it does something to you,” Ms. Mount told committee members. 

MaKayla Mount holds an urn containing her father’s ashes at the Prison Oversight Committee’s public hearing.

Appleseed is awaiting ADOC’s official count of prison deaths during 2023, but the number is expected to set a record for a second straight year. ADOC opened investigations into 247 deaths from Jan. 1 until Sept. 30, the last date for which the department has made that data available in ADOC’s quarterly reports. 

If prison deaths during the last three months of the year remained on pace, Alabama prisons would have seen more deaths last year than ever. Alabama prisons saw a 34 percent increase in deaths between 2021 and 2022, according to the federal data, although the U.S. Department of Justice’s 252 deaths in 2022 is less than what Appleseed and The Montgomery Advertiser confirmed through the Alabama Department of Corrections to be 270 deaths that year, which would put the increase at 43 percent. 

The death rate in Alabama prisons has climbed to five times the national average. Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate is 1,370 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

/0 Comments/by

With prison officials absent, Alabama families plead with legislative prison oversight committee to stop the torture and death across the Department of Corrections

Speakers ranged from a teenager whose father was brutally killed to a retired lawyer whose father tried to reform Alabama’s prisons 40 years ago.

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

The Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee held a public hearing on December 13, 2023 in Montgomery (photo by Alexander Willis for Alabama Daily News).

For just over three minutes, 17-year-old MaKayla Mount stood before members of the Legislative Joint Prison Oversight Committee and told the story of her father’s brutal beating and strangulation death inside a protective custody cell at Easterling Correctional Facility on Mother Day 2023. She arrived in Montgomery carrying her father’s remains in an urn.

“When you see your dad for the first time in 10 years and half of his face is almost gone because he was beaten, it does something to you,” Ms. Mount said during Wednesday’s public hearing of the Prison Oversight Committee. She was among fourteen Alabama families  and advocates who spoke to lawmakers about Alabama’s broken prison system, many telling stories of their loved ones dying behind bars, being beaten and family members extorted, and of the indifference of wardens and officers hired to keep their loved ones alive. 

MaKayla Mount holds an urn containing her father’s ashes at the Prison Overrsight Committee’s public hearing. 17-year-old Maykala testified about her father Christopher Mount’s brutal beating and strangulation death inside a protective custody cell at Easterling Correctional Facility on Mother Day 2023 (photo by Eddie Burkhalter).

MaKayla was not permitted to carry the urn to the podium as she, a teenager barely five feet tall, addressed elected officials about the hardest challenge in her young life. “My dad will never get to see me graduate. Never get to see me get married. Never get to see me graduate college. Have kids. That was taken from me,” Ms. Mount said. Correctional officers are supposed to be watching those suicide cells, but none were when her father was attacked and killed, she said. 

William Smith beat and then strangled to death Christopher Mount, who was 44, in that cell, according to ADOC. Mr. Mount’s death certificate lists his cause of death as asphyxiation. Smith, 48, was incarcerated after being convicted of choking his girlfriend to death in 2017.  Smith is believed to have killed himself 20 days after Mr. Mount’s death. Mr. Mount had served almost 17 years of a 30-year sentence after pleading guilty to a string of crimes in 2005 and 2006, all motivated by substance use. 

“My son was raped in February of this year and it took them over a month to get him moved,” one mother told the lawmakers. About three weeks after being moved from Donaldson Correctional Facility to Bullock, some of the men who raped her son at Donaldson arrived at Bullock, she said. “He has spent a lot of time fighting and defending himself, but he’s only going to get written up for defending himself, and then that will have an effect on him when he comes up for parole again,” she said. Appleseed is protecting her identity because of threats to her son’s life and ADOC’s inability to keep him safe. Her son is incarcerated because of an offense that occurred when he was 17 years old.

Her son “has had everything happen to him but be killed” and she had to close her business because of threats she received from other incarcerated men “because they know I make cash money and they know where I live because it’s just that small and people talk.” 

No Alabama Department of Corrections staff appeared to be in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting, one speaker noted, even though it was a statutorily mandated public hearing. 

When it was Pam Moser’s turn to speak, the Birmingham nurse detailed the injuries her son, Brian Rigsby, sustained after an attack at Bullock Correctional Facility. Mr. Rigsby died on Oct. 4, before Ms. Moser’s application for medical furlough for her son, who was also suffering from liver failure, could be processed. He was 46. 

As a child, Brian Rigsby was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Substance abuse plagued his adult life, resulting in a life sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to robbery in which no one was physically harmed. A string of prior non-violent convictions were linked to his addiction and resulted in the life sentence. 

Ms. Moser and her son’s father, Mitchell Rigsby, visited their son at Bullock in August, as they did each month, she told committee members. “Brian had called a few days earlier and said he’d been hurt. The left side of Brian’s face was swollen and discolored. He had an open stab wound on his left calf which was red and swollen. I counted five lacerations on his head,” Ms. Moser said. “Four days later, long enough for sepsis to set in, Brian was finally hospitalized with a skull fracture, a facial fracture, rib fracture, a stab wound and teeth knocked out.”

Pam Moser and Mitchell Rigsby stand outside the Statehouse. Ms. Moser testified about her son Brian Rigsby’s death in September 2023 while in custody (photo by Elliot Spillers).

The warden told Ms. Moser that no report on Brian’s attack had been filed and told Ms. Moser “I don’t know how we let Brian get by us.” Yet, over and over again at the hearing, families told of severely injured and dying loved ones who were ignored or mistreated by high-level officials in the ADOC, the state’s largest law enforcement agency.

Brian was released but was hospitalized again on Sept. 13, Ms. Moser said, and she got a call from a hospital physician ten days later requesting the family visit with Brian because his condition was deteriorating. The family did visit with Brian in the hospital, but soon after the warden stopped those visits and Rigsby was taken to Staton Correctional Facility, where a warden told her: “Brian is doing better and he was placed on comfort care.” Ms. Moser, who has worked as a hospice nurse, explained to the warden that the change in care meant that her son was dying. 

“Warden Babers said ‘We’re all dying,’” Ms. Moser told the committee. “We were not allowed to see Brian the last seven days of his life. We called daily to tell him we loved him and were trying to get a visit. We don’t know if he got any of those messages, and if he did, was there any response.” 

The federal government in December 2020, sued the state and the Department of Corrections alleging that the state “fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff.” That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November, 2024. 

Another speaker, Birmingham lawyer Edward Friend, shared grim historical context. In the 1970s, U.S. District Court Judge Frank Johnson placed the Alabama prison system under federal oversight for 13 years and issued what, at the time, was the most detailed and sweeping remedial order to correct blatant constitutional violations. Judge Johnson appointed an oversight committee to monitor the State’s implementation of his order.

“My father was a member of that 1976 committee. A toughened veteran of World War II who witnessed unspeakable horror and participated in the Normandy landing, he was shocked to the core with the persuasive cruelty and violence (in Alabama prisons),” Mr. Friend told the legislative committee. “Let’s fast forward 48 years. I feel like it’s 1976 again. This son of that military veteran, his friends and neighbors, all are shocked to the core by the local and national newspaper headlines that scream about our prison atrocities, the excessive force by guards as well as inmate on on inmate assaults up 41% in 2023; shocked that we have more inmate murders in the country by a factor of five, shocked that the Department of Justice based on a mountain of evidence declares ADOC is “deliberately  indifferent” to violence that permeates our prisons.”

While the crisis in Alabama’s overpopulated, understaffed prisons continues to grow, the number of people being incarcerated in the state is as well. 

Alabama had the 12th highest rate of increase in the number of people incarcerated in state prisons between 2021 and 2022, with a nearly six percent increase in that time, according to a November report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Only 10 states had a higher rate of imprisonment than Alabama in 2021, and only eight had higher rates in 2022, according to the federal data. 

Deaths in Alabama prisons are expected to reach a record high for a second straight year in 2023. Alabama prisons saw a 34 percent increase in deaths between 2021 and 2022, according to the federal data, although the U.S. Department of Justice’s 252 deaths in 2022 is less than what Appleseed and The Montgomery Advertiser confirmed through the Alabama Department of Corrections to be 270 deaths that year, which would put the increase at 43 percent. 

Exacerbating the crisis, parole rates have also plummeted in recent years, others spoke to the committee about, as reported by Alabama Daily News. Paroles in Alabama dropped from more than 50 percent in 2018 to less than 8 percent this year. 

/0 Comments/by

New Justice Department Report Shows Incarceration Has Increased in Alabama, With No Evidence of Public Safety Benefits

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

Alabama’s incarceration rate is again on the rise, outpacing most other states, nearly four years after the federal government sued the state over unconstitutional conditions in its dangerous, understaffed prisons.  

Alabama had the 12th highest rate of increase in the number of people incarcerated in state prisons between 2021 and 2022, with a nearly six percent increase in that time, according to a November report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Only 10 states had a higher rate of imprisonment than Alabama in 2021, and only eight had higher rates in 2022, according to the federal data. 

The report put the percentage of Alabama’s incarcerated classified as violent offenders at 61.3 percent of the 21,413 imprisoned in 2021. That’s markedly lower than what the state classifies as violent offenders. The Alabama Sentencing Commission in its 2023 report stated that 80 percent of the in-house prison population was serving a sentence for a violent offense. The difference between the state and federal estimate comes down to how Alabama more broadly defines what is legally a violent offense, as Alabama Reflector reported in April. 

Alabama prisons saw a 34 percent increase in deaths between 2021 and 2022, according to the federal data, although the U.S. Department of Justice’s 252 deaths in 2022 is less than what Appleseed and The Montgomery Advertiser confirmed through the Alabama Department of Corrections to be 270 deaths that year, which would put the increase at 43 percent. 

Alabama prisons had a 4.2 percent decrease in releases between 2021 and 2022, while overcrowding remained extremely high, at 170 percent design capacity on Dec. 31, 2022, according to the data. 

Racial disparities in incarceration remain extreme. Black Alabamians made up 26.8 percent of the state’s population in 2022, but 52.7 percent of Alabama’s prison population, according to recent data from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Elected officials have responded to the prison crowding and violence by funding construction of the most expensive new prison in the U.S., the $1.08 billion, 4,000-bed Elmore megaprison. 

The increases in incarceration come at a time when statewide crime data is incomplete, making it difficult to understand and analyze the impact of increased incarceration on public safety.  Because of changes in the reporting system, only partial data is available on crime.alabama.gov, a collaborative effort between the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) and the Institute of Data and Analytics at the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business to track and report crime data.

Despite Alabama’s punitive practices and high incarceration rates, the state’s homicide rate persistently outpaces national numbers. In 2021, Alabama had the third highest homicide rate in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Alabama’s homicide rate of 15.9 deaths per 100,000 people was nearly double the rate in several other southern states including Virginia, Florida, and Texas.

What’s more, as Appleseed previously reported, in recent years Alabama’s overall crime rates saw a sharp decline that coincided with a decline in incarceration rates. Alabama’s crime rate declined by 17% from 2005 to 2019, the most recent year data is available from ALEA. Robbery, the most common violent crime, sunk by 48%. During much of that period, the state’s incarceration rate fell as a result of increased paroles and implementation of Sentencing Standards, which require non-prison options such as probation and community supervision for many offenses. These statistics, which have accumulated over several years, strongly suggest that less incarceration – especially in prisons with rampant violence, harsh conditions, and little rehabilitation – could improve public safety. 

/0 Comments/by