This Week Injustice- May 19, 2024
Big questions about suspended prison autopsies
Despite record deaths, ADOC is suspending some autopsies, as reported this week by Eddie Burkhalter at Alabama Appleseed. This news is incredibly alarming. Deaths inside Alabama prisons outpace all other carceral settings across our nation, at five times the national average.
Our government should be doing everything possible to determine why men and women are dying in such devastating numbers in ADOC custody, not shirking this public responsibility because of a cancelled contract.
UAB cut ties with ADOC in April, most likely because of the recent missing organ scandal. ADOC claims this is why it’s suspending autopsies on deaths due to suspected overdoses & natural causes, but let’s be real. The agency could find other pathologists to perform autopsies on these deaths, they just don’t want to, or feel like they don’t have to.
ADOC cites state law saying, “post-mortem examinations or autopsies are only required for deaths resulting from unlawful, suspicious or unnatural causes.” Can someone explain why a death in prison caused by overdose on illegal drugs doesn’t qualify as unlawful? It this yet another example of normalizing lawlessness and drug use in prison?
“Anytime a person in our community dies while in the custody of this government, we as a people should want that death vetted,” Jefferson County Chief Deputy Coroner Bill Yates told Appleseed. “In my experience, medical legal death investigation in Alabama is dysfunctional. It needs to be revamped.”
If someone dies in prison, the very least our government can do is treat their family with dignity and give them the reason why they died. But then again, ADOC is an organization that continues to redefine what doing less than zero looks like, at the expense of thousands of broken hearts.
Let’s continue to pay attention to this issue. We haven’t heard the last of it.
Here’s a look at the rest of the stories I pinned from this past week. Be good to yourselves and each other!
DEATH PENALTY
Jamie Mills is challenging his execution method & conviction after the state sets his execution date for May 30th. Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty has talking points here. Additionally, there is a petition you can sign asking Gov. Ivey to halt the execution. We do not have to kill citizens.
A small bright spot in death penalty news, the national death row population has fallen below 2300 people, the lowest number since 1989. Another astonishing data point: 14 percent of those on death row are a product of non-unanimous verdicts or judicial override, which accounts for 326 condemned people in Alabama and Florida. WOW. What a stain on our state.
ADOC/PAROLES
Shocking no one who keeps up with Alabama’s prison labor exploits, the associated press releases a study that incarcerated workers hurt or killed on the job are denied rights & protections offered to all other American workers. I recently profiled one such case: a man at Hamilton work release who fell inside a furniture plant and was immediately “laid off.” He’s still sitting inside a work release prison, unemployed.
Columnist John Archibald’s latest critique of our busted parole board takes aim at the hypocrisy in granting parole to a former sheriff convicted of corruption while denying release to the vast majority of other qualified candidates.
WAAY filed a special report on the lawsuit challenging labor practices inside ADOC.
POLICY/PUBLIC HEALTH
Why did Alabama’s legislature once again fail to pass a bill banning Glock switches, broadly supported by law enforcement? See: the gun lobby.
Former president of NAMI (National Association of Mental Illness) urges state leaders to expand mental health treatment, writing “Doing nothing is morally unacceptable.”
National overdose numbers are declining, but not in Alabama.
POLICING
The city of Birmingham, struggling to curtail rampant gun violence, proposes citizen patrols, then Mayor Woodfin is forced to defend the plan. “This is not a Barney Fife situation,” he says.
Birmingham police staffing shortage is now at almost 300 vacant positions.
A pilot program at a Birmingham high school called Common Ground is changing lives in the effort to stop violence.
Jefferson County DA Danny Carr is adjusting prosecutors salaries to try to retain veterans.
Walker County is setting up wiring for medical devices inside its jail after a health-related death.
Montgomery’s Mayor addresses crime & police shortage.
SOMETHING POSITIVE
New mental health & substance use treatment center opens in North Alabama.
They have been exposed and no one wants to work with their corruption anymore and yes all knew what they were doing. Families deserve by law to know what caused their deaths! It is disgusting to know that our Governor and our own government that taxpayers money pays their salaries but yet the people aren’t supported by those same politicians! Thank you Beth for continuing to bring ADOC / government’s corruption !!
As always thank you from all of us! Take care of yourself for all of us!