Cruel & unusual as commodity

Making big bucks off Alabama's prison crisis

FOLLOW THE MONEY is a common suggestion I hear while tracking the boondoggle of Gov. Kay Ivey’s “Alabama solution,” aka mega-prisons, her myopic remedy to an already unconstitutional prison system. Turns out it hasn’t been hard to identify a high-pressure firehose of cash from Montgomery to lawyers making big bucks off the continued misery inside the state’s 14 major prisons and 12 labor camps.

I previously published an op-ed identifying Bill Lunsford of Maynard Cooper & Gale as the state’s highest paid hired gun, siphoning $5 million from the Alabama Department of Correction’s general fund budget this year alone for his legal services. (FUN FACT: It was right after that op-ed when ADOC’s public information office stopped responding to my requests for information on deaths inside the prisons. BTW, the freeze out continues. They are still ignoring all communique that I send. So much for “public” information!)

Bill Lunsford has made $13 million since 2018 representing ADOC, raking in the lion’s share of the agency’s $17.6 million in legal spending in the last five years. Despite employing in-house lawyers, the dysfunctional bureaucracy routinely hires outside law firms to fight lawsuits over excessive force, wrongful deaths, medical neglect and discrimination against LGBT people in prison. As ADOC has spiraled into a morass of understaffing and corruption in the last five years, the agency has tripled its legal spending.

Lunsford is leading ADOC’s fight against court-ordered mental health reforms and suicide prevention measures in the class-action Braggs v. Dunn case, as well as Alabama’s ongoing wrestling match with the U.S. Department of Justice, which sued the state in 2020 after settlement talks with ADOC (represented by guess who?) failed to result in a remedy. That case is expected to go to trial next year and why wouldn’t it? Settling a case of that magnitude would mean the gushing spigot of cash would eventually be turned off. The continuation of conflict, meanwhile, means more billable hours for the outside lawyers milking the crisis.

This line of work is so promising, Maynard Cooper & Gale formed an entire practice group dedicated to protecting the systems of mass incarceration. The website boasts the group is “an emerging trailblazer” and “distinguished as one of the first corrections-focused practices in the U.S.” So what exactly does it mean to legally represent “prison industry” interests? According to the website, they employ “principled, yet relentless, defense strategies that ensure state employees are empowered to do their jobs without interference.”

When I first read that line, I shivered with a bone-deep chill. The bloodied face of Steven Davis came to mind, a man beaten to death by officers at Donaldson Prison in 2019. Guess who represents ADOC in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Steven’s mother Sandy Ray? Sandy agrees with the DOJ, that officers used excessive force when they beat and stomped her son’s head into the floor, breaking every bone in his face until he was unrecognizable. Most taxpayers are likely unaware they are footing the bill for Lunsford to “empower” the officers who committed this brutality.

(Sandy Ray shows photos of her son at a 2019 press conference in Montgomery.)

Last month a scuttlebutt involving ADOC made headlines, but it wasn’t over prison deaths. The agency rescinded a healthcare contract it had offered to a newly formed company called Yescare, worth millions of dollars, but wouldn’t say why. A cursory press release said that “out of an abundance of caution" ADOC decided it was "in the state's best interest" to cancel the contract. For an agency that never seems to use caution, this was puzzling.

After poking around online, I discovered an eyebrow-raising announcement by Yescare dated 5 days prior to ADOC announcing it had chosen Yescare as its new healthcare provider. The announcement trumpeted the organizations new board of advisors, three men selected to help guide Yescare’s mission, “to build a recovery model of healthcare for correctional settings that mitigates risk for all stakeholders.” Guess who was named to the board? You got it. Bill Lunsford.

I don’t know this is the reason ADOC hastily rescinded the contract with Yescare, but maybe they decided it was a bad look to award the contract representing its largest expenditure ($221 million in 2021) to a company whose three board members include ADOC's highest paid hired fixer. The timing is mighty sus (as the kids say) that YesCare’s board was announced June 29 and July 5, not even a week later, ADOC picked YesCare as its new healthcare provider. Then a month later, on August 8, they yanked the contract. Wish I was a fly on the wall in whatever meeting this was decided in. I’m sure, like almost everything involving big money in Montgomery, it happened behind closed doors.