Alabama jailers created deadly conditions to manipulate local officials for money, plea says
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Officers intentionally kept the conditions in a local Alabama jail “as filthy as possible” to convince county commissioners to increase salaries and jail budget, a ploy that eventually killed one incarcerated man from sepsis and hypothermia, according to plea documents in the case against one of the jailers.
Former Walker County lieutenant Benjamin Shoemaker agreed last month to plead guilty to three federal counts of deprivation of civil rights under color of law. He was the nineth worker at the jail who pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of 33-year-old Tony Mitchell, who died in January 2023 after spending two weeks covered in feces in a concrete cell with no toilet or access to medical attention.
A lawyer for Shoemaker declined to comment on his behalf on Friday.
Mitchell was arrested Jan. 12, 2023, after a relative asked for a welfare check on him. The sheriff’s office said at the time that Mitchell was talking about portals to hell and asserted that he had fired a weapon at officers.
Seven other corrections officers and one nurse contracted by the jail have pleaded guilty to federal charges related to Mitchell’s death last year.
The previous pleas highlight the dire conditions leading up to Mitchell’s death: he was denied medical attention and was “almost always naked, wet, cold, and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket” for two weeks, until he became entirely unresponsive. At the instruction of an unnamed co-conspirator, Shoemaker delayed taking Mitchell to the hospital for over three hours after nurses insisted Mitchell needed urgent medical attention.
Shoemaker’s plea revealed for the first time that Mitchell’s treatment was part of a conspiracy to justify more funding for the jail. Shoemaker was instructed to manufacture terrible conditions to use Mitchell “and his cell as a prop” when a county commissioner visited the jail two days before Mitchell died.
When an unnamed jailer who was “unaware of the plan” cleaned out garbage and old food from Mitchell’s cell, “Shoemaker berated this jailer.” Shoemaker then convinced a different inmate to act “crazy” when the commissioner visited, the plea deal read, and rewarded that unnamed inmate with honey buns for his behavior.
The commissioner was not named in the plea document. Minutes from a Walker County commissioners meeting 10 days after the visit — and two weeks after Mitchell died — confirmed that a county commissioner visited the jail. Neither the plea deal nor the meeting minutes indicated that the commissioner saw Mitchell’s conditions.
In the meeting, Walker County sheriff thanked the commissioner for coming to the sheriff’s office and the jail, and for giving his department new equipment, the county minutes read. The sheriff is not implicated in Shoemaker’s plea document.
“I actually went down and worked for a couple of hours. I was out of my environment, and it made me watch around everywhere you’re at, you know, you’re sort of uneasy,” the commissioner said in the meeting in February 2023. He added that the commission needed to work on the sheriff department’s jail structure, and that there was “a need for more” jailers.
Shoemaker also admitted that he assaulted at least two other inmates on separate occasions. He was promoted to lieutenant as a reward for assaulting at least one of the men, according to the plea, which described a jail culture where corrections officers were “encouraged” to “physically abuse detainees” and “exert dominance over detainees.”
A lawyer representing both the Walker County sheriff and Shoemaker in civil litigation declined to comment on pending litigation. The sheriff’s department didn’t respond to a phone call and voicemail requesting comment.
Shoemaker will be arraigned on Feb. 13, according to court documents.
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Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.