Defending brutality
How Alabama spends millions fighting prison accountability
The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) this week took $1 million more taxpayer dollars to fight five families who are demanding accountability in their loved ones’ horrific prison deaths.
The five deceased men didn’t perish in prison from natural causes. Three were beaten to death by correctional officers. One died by suicide after prison staff ignored his pleas for help. And in perhaps the most appalling prison death in recent memory, one man was literally cooked to death in an overheated cell inside a unit for men with serious mental illness.
On Thursday morning, April 4th, a representative from the Attorney General’s office, Clay Crenshaw, informed the legislative committee in charge of overseeing legal spending, that the state will continue to pay outside lawyers to fight the five lawsuits filed in response to these deaths.
Committee members sat passively as Crenshaw read the names of the hired lawyers and firms, but gave no details behind the lawsuits. He didn’t mention excessive force, traumatic brain injuries or what happens to the body in hyperthermia. He also didn’t say the names of the dead: Steven Davis, Michael Smith, Roderick Abrams, Billy Smith and Tommy Rutledge.
In a cursory address to the legislative contract review committee, Crenshaw breezed over the five legal service contract extensions, barely looking up from his notes. Each contract extends legal representation for ADOC for two more years, at $195 per hour, or $200,000 for each case, totaling $1 million for all five lawsuits. No one asked questions. It was over in under 90 seconds. You can watch it below.
One of the committee members, Sen. Greg Albritton from Atmore, where Holman and Fountain prisons are located, recently said this about lawsuits against state agencies:
“It is simply an easy target for those that go on the attack and have nothing to lose. There’s absolutely nothing to lose bringing a suit.”
But there’s another way to look at lawsuits against ADOC. They’re a path to try to hold the system accountable for its continued cruel and unusual punishment, which often results in violent, horrific deaths. Few cases, particularly those involving correctional officers, ever result in criminal charges. So pursuing a civil claim is often the only avenue for families to seek justice.
The five lawsuits that brought Mr. Crenshaw to the contract review committee should be absolute outliers, but in Alabama, they are routine because brutality is routine. The circumstances behind the deaths detailed in the lawsuits are as follows:
On December 9, 2017, Billy Smith died from a traumatic brain injury after an assault by officers at Elmore Prison. Officer Jeremy Singleton, according to the lawsuit, struck Smith in the head, then kicked his legs out from under him, causing him to fall on the ground. Singleton was charged with manslaughter, but the Elmore County DA later dropped the charge.
On January 2, 2019, an officer found Roderick Abrams hanging from a vent cover inside his cell in St. Clair prison’s segregation unit. ADOC had released Roderick from suicide watch a week prior to his death, sending him to solitary confinement with no treatment or safety plan. He was one of 15 men who died by suicide AFTER a federal judge ordered ADOC to implement an emergency suicide prevention agreement.
On October 4, 2019, Steven Davis was beaten by a group of officers inside Donaldson Prison. He was pronounced dead the next day at UAB Hospital after being removed from life support. His mother, Sandy Ray, has said her son was almost unrecognizable, as almost every bone in his face had been broken in the assault. But the Attorney General, Steve Marshall, decided the beating was justified and the main officer involved has since been promoted.
Less then three months later on December 5, 2019, Michael Smith died from injuries sustained when officers beat him inside Ventress prison. Michael was 55-years old. His injuries included skull fractures, a brain bleed, a broken nose and fractured eye sockets. The prison initially told paramedics that he sustained his injuries by falling off a bunk bed. Michael’s elderly parents are still grieving the sudden loss of their only child.
And then on December 7, 2020, Tommy Rutledge died in Donaldson prison, in a cell heated to well over 100 degrees. When an officer finally found him, Tommy was seated with his face pressed to the window, trying to breathe in cool air from outside. His body temperature at death was 109. His family has sued ADOC for his wrongful death and their deliberate indifference to his safety. And yet once again, Alabama is fighting this family, litigating against them instead of acknowledging that Tommy should still be alive.
State law requires government agencies to disclose service contracts. On the first Thursday of every month, representatives from these agencies come before the 10-member legislative contract review committee to list off all new contracts and contract extensions awarded to outside vendors. The meetings are open to the public and streamed online, a rare opportunity to witness how taxpayer money gets spread around to private entities.
Committee members can ask questions, and sometimes they do, but often they sit in silence. The committee can’t block a contract, they can only place a 45-day hold on any deal that doesn’t sit well with them. Years ago former state auditor Jim Zeigler told me he considered the committee “a toothless tiger,” simply an oversight body with no real power. It was formed in an effort to make state spending more transparent and agencies more accountable.
Maybe that’s one reason ADOC’s legal spending has soared in the last five years. A quick search of the Alabama Checkbook database shows the agency has logged over $26 million in payments for legal services since 2020 out of the general fund budget. No other state agency spends that much money on lawyers. This is not simply because people in prison are litigious opportunists, this is a symptom of a system in crisis.
Instead of accepting responsibility for the conditions that have stained ADOC with the highest prison mortality rate in the nation, Alabama lawyers up and denies, obfuscates and argues. And the one legislative body assigned to review legal spending seems to wave it all through, unperturbed. Spending millions on lawyers has become just as routine as blood spilling inside the prisons.
The horrors outlined in these five lawsuits include the same factors that led the U.S. Department of Justice to sue the state for failing to remedy all the causes first outlined in detail by the DOJ exactly five years ago.
And what was Alabama’s response? To go to battle with the DOJ on the back of taxpayers, while incarcerated people and prison staff continue to suffer the chaos and violence of a lawless environment that is ADOC.
Instead of coming to the table to settle on remedies to stop this suffering, the attorney defending the state against the DOJ, Bill Lunsford, is planning what will likely be lengthy and expensive litigation. Last year Alabama paid him over $4 million out of the general fund budget. In the last five years, he's collected at least $19 million! And he’s just one attorney. To what end is this firehose of money serving?
The only net positive from any of this litigation that I can see is fatter paychecks for lawyers who are willing to defend this indefensible system with our money. And there seems to be no mechanism in place to stop this racket.
you’re reporting is incredible beth! I know this is very painful for you because it’s certainly painful reading it. I’ve got a look into some of these statistics for Kentucky prison. Your picture of the cell was exactly like John has described his solitary cell in one of the oldest prisons in the nation, and definitely the oldest in Kentucky. have also killed prisoners there, some of which John has witnessed.
Very Informative and exposes what the ADOC , legislature and AG Marshall’s office is truly about and the continuation of abuse to families because of them up holding crimes against inmates by staff instead of holding staff accountable for the same crimes that have put some inmates in prison! Prayers that these families get justice and that people will wake up and see our taxpayers dollars are being used as blood money and greed by the state and all the judges and attorneys!