By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed researcher

The man the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) believes was responsible for the kidnapping, torture, rape and death of 22-year-old Daniel Williams inside Staton Correctional Facility in 2023 stabbed two other men this week at Holman Correctional Facility.

Lamont Wilson stabbed two men at Holman on Wednesday, according to multiple people who told Appleseed about the incident. One victim suffered such serious injuries and was evacuated from the prison by helicopter. ADOC has not responded to Appleseed’s questions about the attack.

“When is something going to be done with him, or is this going to be swept under the rug like my son?,” asked Mr. Williams’s father, Terry Williams, speaking to Appleseed on Friday. He’d shared a post about the Holman prison stabbing to his Facebook page on Thursday. “I can’t tell you how broken-hearted, mad and frustrated I am with all of this.”

The murder of Daniel Williams, a young father who died the day before he was scheduled to be released, made news across the country. A month later, Appleseed shared the history of ADOC’s failures leading up to his death at the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee’s public hearing in December, 2023.

It is unclear why ADOC’s website still lists Mr. Wilson as a “medium” custody inmate, meaning he is housed in less restrictive conditions and can remain in the general prison population, despite a long history of serious assaults, sexual violence and death across state prisons. Holman, considered a level five or “maximum security” prison, includes one-person segregation cells where prisoners with disciplinary issues are secured away from the general population. Someone within ADOC decided Mr. Wilson did not need this level of security and returned him to an open dorm where weapons are readily available.

Mr. Wilson pleaded guilty in 2023 to first-degree assault in St. Clair County Circuit Court for a previous attack on an older prisoner at St. Clair Correctional Facility who was nearly killed. He originally was charged with attempted murder. The attack was also detailed in a federal lawsuit. “His assailant was able to enter his locked cell and stabbed him in his arms, chest, back, head, and neck, using two ice picks,” according to the Second Amended Complaint, filed Aug. 28, 2015. “[The victim] suffered extensive injuries to his back and neck, including chipped vertebrae, requiring treatment at UAB hospital.”

Shortly after that case was resolved, Daniel Williams was likely smothered to death, according to the state’s chief medical examiner. Evidence found on Mr. Williams’ body corroborated accounts from witnesses who said he had been kidnapped and tortured over several days inside Staton prison. Dr. Edward Reedy, chief medical examiner for the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, conducted the autopsy. His report details injuries consistent with the accounts of Mr. Williams’ final days. “There is evidence of ligature restraint on the decedent’s ankles and contusions on various locations that are also suggestive of manual restraint,” Reedy wrote in the report. He also noted “multiple abrasions and contusions in varying states of healing” and “diffuse abrasions and contusions on his upper extremities that may be defensive in nature.”

“The cause of death was probable asphyxia due to smothering,” Reedy wrote.

Appleseed obtained Lamont Wilson’s full ADOC Classification Summary which documents nine reports of Mr. Wilson sexually assaulting other incarcerated men between 2017 and 2022. Some of the reported assaults also involved additional violence, including stabbing. The reported assaults occurred at Donaldson, Fountain, Ventress, Bullock and Limestone correctional facilities. Mr. Wilson received no disciplinary reports for any of those reported sexual assaults, according to the classification records.

ADOC’s own Classification Summary for Mr. Wilson in 2023 also listed reports against him during the previous 18 months for selling drugs and threatening someone who owed him money with violence, placing a “hit” on another inmate, sexually assaulting an inmate at Donaldson and raping an inmate at Fountain. Yet a risk assessment conducted Oct. 13, 2023, gave Mr. Wilson a score of zero in the category “History of Institutional Violence” during the previous five years. He also received a zero under “Most Severe Disciplinary Report Received.”

On Nov. 8, 2023, while Mr. Williams was on life support for injuries suffered in Mr. Wilson’s cell, ADOC staff completed Mr. Wilson’s annual classification review. The review noted that Mr. Wilson had not received a disciplinary report since 2018 and recommended no changes to his medium-security status.
Mr. Williams died the following day.

An Elmore County grand jury reviewed the evidence against Mr. Wilson in October 2024 but declined to indict him in Mr. Williams’ death. It’s unclear what exact evidence that grand jury saw and heard, because grand jury proceedings are not publicly held, but it has been widely known for years that more cameras are needed throughout the state’s prisons. Even so, ADOC has failed to install and maintain enough cameras to adequately monitor what happens inside its facilities.

In a recent filing in the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) lawsuit against Alabama and ADOC documenting unconstitutional violence, sexual assault, and excessive force in the state’s prisons for men, federal attorneys included as exhibits 20 “Sexual Abuse Incident Form” documents compiled by ADOC officers in 2022 and 2023. In each of those documents, ADOC officers indicated that additional cameras were needed. Under the question, “Should monitoring technology be deployed or augmented to supplement supervision by staff,” officers wrote responses including “More cameras,” “More cameras would be better,” “more cameras & longer time retention of video footage,” “cameras would have assisted” and “Always need more cameras.”

Despite all of the evidence that Mr. Wilson requires a higher level of custody, it’s unclear whether that would matter, because ADOC seems unable to control the movement of incarcerated people inside prisons, and rules regarding where a person is assigned to sleep, or remain while awake, are not regularly enforced, according to federal attorneys in the DOJ’s lawsuit.

Then-Commissioner John Hamm minimized unauthorized prisoner movement, testifying in that ongoing federal case ‘Well, you go visit other people at their house, and I mean, you’re not there with malicious intent, then everything is fine, you go back to your house. So if an inmate in a dorm goes to another dorm and just going to say hi, that’s fine, but they are inmates.’”

For the family of Mr. Williams, and now for two other men at Holman, the consequences of what happens when prison officials fail to adequately monitor and respond to violence remain painfully real. As is the case in much of the suffering and violence that occurs in Alabama prisons, officials at ADOC, the largest law enforcement agency in the state, have released no information about these attacks.

Since 2024, Appleseed has called for independent oversight and monitoring of Alabama prisons. Finally, in 2026, the state established a pilot program in which the Office of Examiners of Public Accounts is conducting oversight operations for one prison, which has not yet been named.

By Eddie Burkhalter and Carla Crowder

Seven years after the United States Department of Justice first documented unconstitutional levels of violence, sexual assault, and excessive force by guards fueled by extreme mismanagement, dysfunction and corruption across Alabama’s prison system for men, a new 260-page motion from the federal government reinforces what prisoners and their families have consistently claimed since then: Alabama’s prisons remain catastrophically dangerous and ADOC leadership has failed to take basic measures to address the human rights crisis festering in the state’s largest law enforcement agency.

The DOJ’s motion for summary judgment builds upon the complaints filed in 2020 and 2021 with page after page of recent episodes of institutional violence and abuse along with the state’s ineptitude at curtailing it. “It is not uncommon for prisoners to report being held hostage, beaten, abused and extorted by other prisoners,” the DOJ writes. Although the motion is heavily redacted for safety and security reasons, Appleseed was able to pull the following details from the approximately one-third of the motion that was not redacted. 

The lack of accountability and supervision starts with ADOC’s executive leadership. The DOJ’s motion draws upon depositions from the highest ranks at the department’s central office. 

Concerning former Commissioner John Hamm: “He does not know how many overdose deaths there are in the facilities—he does not receive reports on overdose deaths, but he asked about them “periodically.” He testified he does not visit each facility at least once a year. He has heard reports of prisoners sleeping in dorms they’re not assigned to, selling their racks, and being homeless, but that’s the warden’s job to run the facility and he has not talked to them about those issues. He does not keep track of data about sexual assaults; he does not review LESD reports about sexual assault; and has not talked to wardens about sexual assaults in the facilities.”

Concerning current Commissioner Greg Lovelace, interviewed while he was serving as Chief Deputy Commissioner: “He testified that he is the number two in the organization and is supervising the entire ADOC system for the Commissioner. He spends most of his time on the new prison project, and has not seen any reports regarding the extent of violence, contraband, or sexual assaults in the system.”

The pleading documents wardens who have no clue as to what policies and procedures govern the agency along with flagrant ignorance among agency leaders about critical issues such as staffing, investigative procedures, and corrective action since the DOJ initially raised these issues in its 2019 CRIPA (Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act) report.

“Similarly, Alabama also used to hold regular meetings where they would discuss violence in the prisons, but Alabama stopped these meetings and when the meetings occurred, Alabama did not track whether any recommended violence mitigation measures discussed at the meetings were implemented by the facility wardens.

Alabama fails to respond reasonably to the extensive violence and sexual violence in the prisons. Alabama fails to conduct proper investigations, track valuable information, or use available information to mitigate the substantial risk of violence and sexual violence. These systemic deficiencies, taken as a whole, show deliberate indifference,” according to the motion.

The case is set for trial in November. U.S. District Judge Harold Mooty has informed both sides that he plans to visit the 13 prisons at issue in the litigation prior to the trial.

“Erosion of the physical plant”

For years, Gov. Kay Ivey and many legislators have relied on promised new prisons as the remedy. But Alabama prisons have been overcrowded for two decades, the DOJ points out, putting major strain on the physical plant. And yet, maintenance at these current facilities has been woefully lacking.

As the DOJ expert put it: “The erosion of the physical plant of Alabama’s facilities reflects the erosion of willingness or ability to manage the correctional system.”

“Despite acknowledging that the prisons are falling apart, Alabama has failed to respond reasonably to the substantial risk posed to prisoners continuing to be incarcerated in the facilities. For example, there is supposed to be a maintenance supervisor at each prison responsible for the day-to-day maintenance at the prison. However, not every major male prison in Alabama has at least one employee who does maintenance.” 

None of the state’s major prisons have preventive maintenance plans, there are no regular audits of working conditions and the person in charge of research and planning for ADOC “does not have information related to maintenance of facility management and she does not know who would produce that data.” 

Instead the prisons have been left to fall apart, with broken equipment routinely fashioned into weapons.

Governor Ivey’s Alabama solution to an Alabama problem

Violence is pervasive throughout the state’s system and has been for several years, the federal government states in the motion, and yet ADOC “also fails to properly classify all incidents, obscuring the official numbers reported for some violence.” The federal government’s new motion then appears to catalogue dozens of homicides occurring after the state was notified of federal action and vowed to improve conditions. 

Alabama officials stood before the press and constituents seven years ago and vowed to quickly address these issues.  “Our primary objective is to ensure each facility provides a humane, secure, and safe environment for inmates, and that reforms already in place and proposed bring about positive, tangible changes throughout the prison system,” then ADOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn said in a statement with Gov. Kay Ivey regarding the DOJ’s 2019 findings letter.   

“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 in the statement. 

The joint statement reads that ADOC “has been actively working to remedy these concerns by improving correctional officer hiring and retention; developing effective prison management, including efforts to curtail the entry of contraband; and replacing an outdated prison system with state-of-the-art correctional facilities designed to safely, effectively, and humanely manage and meet the needs of a diverse inmate population.”

“In response to DOJ’s findings, it is important to understand all the current efforts ADOC has taken and will continue to take to improve the conditions of confinement within the male prison system,” Mr. Dunn said. “Governor Ivey’s commitment to working closely with the Legislature to resolve this generational problem will ultimately lead to a 21st Century prison system.”

Despite assurances in 2019 that the state was working to address the DOJ’s concerns and stem the tide of contraband and deaths, those deaths only increased in the following years. The new motion documents the following: “From 2019 to 2024, as reported by Alabama, prisoners killed at least 78 other prisoners in ADOC…Prisoners are routinely stabbed with prison-made knives and knives smuggled in from outside.”

Sexual violence also remains rampant inside the state’s prisons, where “prisoners engage in sexual acts for protection, for drugs, and to work off debts.” Unreported sexual violence occurs “hidden behind sheets draped from top bunks to conceal what is happening on lower bunks, all occurring in the absence of staff” and one man “testified he had been beaten, held down, and raped numerous times in ADOC.” This too was documented seven years ago.

Overcrowding and understaffing have been problems for more than two decades, which leads to violence and sexual abuse, the DOJ’s motion states. The prisons have operated above design capacities since at least 2000, and there is regularly one officer covering multiple posts, “leaving entire housing units unsupervised for excessively long periods of time. … Regional Director Edward Ellington testified that it was permissible for an ADOC facility to have no officers assigned to watch a housing unit.” 

“If inmates don’t stop it, it don’t get stopped,” one incarcerated man told the DOJ. “They just come after you’re dead or he’s dead or after they’re all done and be like, Come on, let’s go to Seg.” One prisoner testified that it took him a week to report that he was sexually assaulted “because other prisoners would not let him out of the dorm.” 

ADOC’s inability to control the movement of incarcerated people inside prisons contributes to the unconstitutional violence, and staff fail to ensure people are sleeping in their assigned beds. Bed roster counts and the wearing of wristbands that denote which housing unit a person is assigned to are not consistently enforced. Yet leadership shrugs. “Even Commissioner John Hamm minimized unauthorized prisoner movement, testifying, ‘Well, you go visit other people at their house, and I mean, you’re not there with malicious intent, then everything is fine, you go back to your house. So if an inmate in a dorm goes to another dorm and just going to say hi, that’s fine, but they are inmates.’” 

Because movement isn’t controlled, prisoners lose assigned beds to stronger prisoners or due to debts, becoming essentially homeless and “sleeping on the floor, in dayrooms, or even outside.” Controlling movement is critical to keeping sexual assault victims and predators apart. 

One warden interviewed by DOJ investigators couldn’t say how many dorms her facility had, or if her facility’s population was “less than 10,000 prisoners. (It is around 1,200 prisoners).” She didn’t know how many homicides occurred at her prison since she became warden, and knew very little about the homicides that happened in the previous month.  She was uncertain about the details of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act that governs how state prisons handle sexual assault incidents, and when asked if she could change one thing about her prison “she said the location because of her commute.” 

Ongoing excessive force, assaults and homicides by officers

From 2019 through Jan. 31, 2025, at least 12 ADOC officers and supervisors have been criminally convicted of charges related to assaulting incarcerated people, and at least five more were charged for assaulting prisoners. 

“At Elmore, two officers, a sergeant and a lieutenant, were convicted of an incident in which the sergeant repeatedly punched, kicked, and struck two handcuffed prisoners with a baton,” and at Staton, an officer and a sergeant were convicted of kicking a prisoner and striking him with a baton, then lying about the incident in a report and to a state investigator. 

The DOJ noted the beating death of Steven Davis by multiple officers at Donaldson Correctional Facility in 2019 that resulted in a $250,000 settlement to his mother.  “ADOC settled that case after Judge Proctor denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss, concluding that “fourteen incidents in three years is sufficient to plead ‘obvious, flagrant, [and] rampant’ abuse…” 

Despite the repeated warnings as a result of the DOJ litigation, ADOC supervisors failed to prevent and address excessive force, and use excessive force themselves, the DOJ states.  “A lieutenant at Donaldson repeatedly used excessive force, culminating in his criminal conviction in 2023” and yet, “An ADOC official admitted she had never seen a facility report in which a captain recommended corrective action.” 

Despite widespread excessive use of force incidents, ADOC fails to properly investigate or handle these incidents, including one in which a man said an officer woke him “by striking him in the head with a baton because he did not turn over fast enough.” 

“The prisoner had a sleeping disorder. He testified that a baton blow broke his arm and that the warden later arranged for him to be seen by medical. ADOC files do not mention an officer using force in this incident.”

ADOC lacks a system to track use of force, and fails to prevent “the same officers and supervisor, and others, from repeatedly using excessive force against prisoners.” The motion again documents extreme complacency by ADOC leadership and staff over years: “Commissioner Hamm never received training on use of force in a ‘correctional setting.’ He did not know whether ADOC had a centralized database to track uses of force. He did not know whether uses of force increased or decreased during his tenure. He had never talked to a warden about use of force. He could not remember the last time he reviewed an LESD investigative report related to use of force.” 

“An ADOC use-of-force investigator testified that she did not recall any manual about how to conduct investigations, and she does not make determinations or recommendations about whether uses of force were justified, nor does she receive training about how to complete audit forms about uses of force. The investigator concurred with facilities’ findings that uses of force were justified, even when the files did not include body chart documentation, photographs, or statements from officers and prisoners.” 

Leadership’s response

In the state’s own motion for summary judgment, filed late Monday by private Alabama attorney William “Bill” Lunsford, he argues that the state has made “demonstrable, consistent, and comprehensive efforts” to resolve the allegations of inadequate correctional staffing; excessive use-of-force by officers against incarcerated people, violence and sexual abuse among the incarcerated and a failing classification system.

On the DOJ’s allegations regarding excessive use-of-force, the state’s motion reads that the DOJ cannot “establish a policy or practice of excessive force or a “history of widespread abuse” that should have put supervisors on notice of repeated excessive uses of force.”

In support of that argument, the state notes that for a particular six-month period, almost half of the use of force incidents reviewed by ADOC’s own review board were deemed unjustified, but the state alleges those instances of excessive use of force were handled properly. Yet, the data the state argues shows ADOC is properly handling excessive use of force instances instead clearly shows that the violence at the hands of officers is widespread.  “For example, between August 2024 and January 2025, ADOC’s Use of Force Review Board reviewed at least 58 use-of-force incidents and found 26 uses of force unjustified or unnecessary,” the state’s motion reads. 

Despite the state’s arguments that ADOC has taken meaningful steps to resolve the DOJ’s concerns, Alabama prisons remain overpopulated, understaffed and filled with contraband. 

In April 2019 there were 27,660 people in custody of ADOC, with 5,480 of those aged 50 or older. This April there were 28,568 incarcerated by the state, and 8,171 aged 50 and older. The month that DOJ’s report was published in 2019, Alabama prisons were at 168 percent capacity. The state’s prisons were at 171 percent capacity in March 2026. 

Alabama prisons hit a record high number of in-custody deaths in 2023, when 327 people died, and more people died in Alabama prisons per capita than in any state in the nation in 2024, and at a rate that was nearly double those of the next highest state. In 2023 Alabama prisons had an overdose mortality rate 20 times the national average across all state prisons in 2019, the last year for which the federal government has made that data available.

Not for lack of funding

ADOC’s funding has exploded during the course of the litigation as the agency has increased pay for officers, signed expensive contracts for medical care and legal services, and spent double the budgeted amount for a new mega prison. The general fund allocation to the agency has gone from $486 million in 2019 to the current $883 million, swallowing 25% of the entire General Fund.

The Alabama Corrections Institution Finance Authority this month agreed to borrow almost $200 million to build a new 4,000-bed prison in Escambia County, which increased the budget for that prison project from $700 million to $900 million. The state’s other new 4,000-bed prison project in Elmore County has already cost more than $1.25 billion. 

The rising costs of these two new prisons is already at least $900 million more than the state Legislature in 2021 approved, when the expected cost then was set at $1.3 billion for both prisons. 

The cost to taxpayers to defend the state’s unconstitutional prisons in courts continues to balloon as well. Mr. Lunsford has already been paid at least $56.4 million defending ADOC, and with an additional $38 million he’s set to receive to defend the state’s prisons from the DOJ’s lawsuit, he’ll have been paid $94.4 million. 

With this motion, the DOJ argues that the 260 pages of facts laid out are beyond dispute; that the state violates the Eighth Amendment rights of incarcerated men and that the plaintiffs are entitled to judgment in their favor.