Another deadly year in Alabama prisons claims 202 lives

By Eddie Burkhalter, Appleseed Researcher

More than six years after the State of Alabama was put on notice that its violent and dangerous prisons violate the United States Constitution, the death toll inside state prisons was nearly three times the national average.

At least 202 people died inside Alabama prisons in 2025, Alabama Appleseed discovered through a records request to the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC).  Alabama’s prisoner mortality rate in 2025 was 957 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with a national average across state prisons of 330 deaths per 100,000, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

That was a drop from the 277 deaths in Alabama prisons in 2024, following another slight decline from the record high 327 in 2023. While the decline can be considered progress, the rate of deaths across Alabama prisons dramatically exceeds the death toll in other state prison systems, and continues to be high despite multiple commissions, committees, hearings, lawsuits, and investigative reports. 

Tim Mathis speaks before the Legislature’s Joint Prison Oversight Committee. Mr. Mathis is one of hundreds of Alabama parents whose children have died in state custody.

The extraordinary loss of life inside prisons run by the largest law enforcement agency in the state has left families devastated and searching for answers. Often families are notified of these deaths by a warden who shares little detail about how the person died. That’s in part because 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.

Therefore, while we know how many people died, getting an official account for how they died is more difficult. A 2021 state law requires the department to publish a quarterly report containing statistical data on the number, manner, and cause of inmate deaths occurring in prisons “including the results of any autopsy provided to the department by a third party.” ADOC began including a section labeled “Final autopsy results” in those reports. However, without stating a reason, the department removed that section from the reports beginning with the last quarterly report in 2022, despite the reports still containing the phrase that “the final autopsy results reflect the opinion of the medical examiner conducting the autopsy of the final cause of death.” 

The lack of transparency surrounding these deaths is all the more alarming given ADOC and the state’s years-long legal battle over the unconstitutional treatment of incarcerated men. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in 2019 released its first report detailing the out-of-control prisons for men in Alabama, The federal government in December 2020 sued the state and ADOC alleging widespread use of force, corruption, rampant drugs and contraband, and the inability of ADOC to keep men safe from sexual and physical violence and death.  

More than 1,500 Alabamians have died in state prison custody since Alabama’s elected officials were put on notice by the federal government that state prisons were plagued by mismanagement, corruption, understaffing, nonexistent investigations, and violence, including homicides and sexual assaults.

Alabama Appleseed’s own project to track and publish state prison deaths began in 2024 and the initial batch of data we have collected has been included in UCLA Law’s data. (Individual-level data on Alabama prison deaths in 2024 can be found by visiting UCLA Law’s Github site and navigating to the raw data for Alabama. The project will soon add Appleseed’s 2022 data to the site.)

Despite the lack of transparency surrounding the causes of death, through Appleseed’s own tracking of these deaths, from news accounts and a review of a list kept by a group of advocates, Appleseed believes at least seven people died as a result of homicides inside state prisons in 2025. That’s only one less than were killed in 2024. In 2023, the record high year of deaths, there were 14 homicides in Alabama prisons.  

Among those 2025 deaths were Michael Thomas Jones, 47, who died on February 6 after a previous assault at Limestone prison, and Cordel Ladon Battle, 30, died from a stabbing at Donaldson prison on Feb. 11. 

Montavius Banks, 31, died on June 6 after an assault at Limestone prison. Antwion Webb, 45,  died on Oct. 13 after an assault at Donaldson prison. Kendall Stone Kent, 25, died on Oct. 21 after being assaulted on Oct. 7 at Easterling prison. 

Mikheal Christopher Gilliam died on Oct. 30 following a stabbing at Elmore prison. Eric Dewayne Sanders died on Dec. 9 after being assaulted at Elmore prison. 

So far in 2026 there have been at least 12 deaths in Alabama prisons, according to the list kept by the group of advocates. Appleseed is working to confirm those deaths.