New details have emerged about the horrifying death of a man incarcerated at Donaldson Correctional Facility, where cameras captured a group of prison staff, including a sergeant and a nurse, failing to offer assistance to a man who had been stabbed. The man died after officers ignored him for more than 30 minutes, while he was clearly in distress.
The camera footage was described in detail in a recent federal court opinion. It depicts the normalcy of officer cruelty and the indifference to the value of the lives of incarcerated people that characterizes the culture at the Alabama Department of Corrections.
In an April 28, 2026, opinion the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama found that Kenneth Gilchrist, 31, was stabbed during an altercation in his housing unit at Donaldson, but he died, “only after he was not given medical care for an extended period of time.”
Video footage from a camera in the doorway of the health care unit shows that an unnamed incarcerated man brought Mr. Gilchrist in a wheelchair to the unit, where he slumped out of the wheelchair and onto the floor. Although Mr. Gilchrist “showed signs of life” and was in “evident distress,” a nurse and at least three correctional officers walked by him without offering any assistance. Two officers stood by watching and took “no action to assist.”
Based on the video, the court found that Mr. Gilchrist was left on the ground at the infirmary entrance for over two minutes before an officer directed the unnamed man to drag Mr. Gilchrist down the hallway away from the infirmary. He took Mr. Gilchrist to a windowed barbershop, where he again fell out of the wheelchair and began writhing on the floor. Over the next 30 minutes, officers repeatedly passed by and saw that Mr. Gilchrist was in a medical crisis but did nothing.
The court wrote:
Inmate Gilchrist continues to writhe on the floor, flailing his arms. [An officer] passes the barbershop again at approximately 00:29:22, at which point the three inmates and another correctional officer are observed watching Inmate Gilchrist on the floor.
At approximately 00:29:54, Plaintiff again passes the barbershop, and at approximately 00:30:45, Plaintiff returns to the hallway and opens the barbershop door. (Id.). Inmate Gilchrist continues to writhe on the floor as Plaintiff stands holding the door open and the three inmates are looking on. At approximately 00:31:29, Plaintiff closes the door and begins watching Inmate Gilchrist through the window. At approximately 00:32:10, Plaintiff opens the door again, and one of the inmates in the hallway enters the barbershop to get Inmate Gilchrist back into his wheelchair while Plaintiff stands holding the door open, making no effort to assist. At approximately 00:32:46, having been unable to get Inmate Gilchrist back into the wheelchair, the inmate exits the barbershop and Plaintiff closes the door. .Inmate Gilchrist continues to writhe on the floor (and he is now almost fully visible in the frame) while two of the three hallway inmates leave and one remains seated in the hallway, watching.
At approximately 00:33:46, Plaintiff reenters the frame and speaks with the remaining inmate in the hallway while observing Inmate Gilchrist through the barbershop windows. At approximately 00:34:22, Plaintiff leaves the hallway again, returning briefly at approximately 00:34:58 to glance at Inmate Gilchrist before leaving once more. Inmate Gilchrist continues to writhe on the floor, flailing his arms and legs, as various correctional officers, including Sergeant Shaun Mechalske, pass by the barbershop windows without intervening.
At approximately 00:45:03, after lying on the barbershop floor without meaningful assistance for approximately nineteen minutes and twenty-three seconds, Inmate Gilchrist stops moving. No one enters the barbershop until approximately 00:58:43, when Sergeant Mechalske enters and attempts to rouse him, shortly after which the video ends. By that point, Inmate Gilchrist had been on the barbershop floor for over thirty-three minutes.
The failure to provide assistance during a medical emergency at Donaldson is not unusual. Months before Mr. Gilchrist’s death in July 2021, Jason Kirkland died of “mechanical asphyxia” after his head became wedged in a broken tray slot in his cell door. A federal judge found that the officer assigned to monitor the unit went on a break and then joined another officer in a central control room “while Kirkland was in medical distress,” and it took several minutes for an incarcerated man who discovered Mr. Kirkland to get the attention of prison staff.
In December 2020, Tommy Rutledge died of hyperthermia at Donaldson with a body temperature of 109 degrees. In a lawsuit filed in that case, a federal district court found that Mr. Rutledge died after officers falsified temperature log readings and allowed his cell to reach 101 to 104 degrees. Then-Commissioner of Health Services for ADOC Ruth Naglich testified that a similar incident had occurred at the prison previously.
Families of people imprisoned in Alabama have reported that their loved ones died after they were denied medical attention for injuries inflicted during beatings—and that ADOC removed life support without their knowledge or consent and returned bodies with missing organs. Many families were not notified of their loved ones’ deaths; one parent said the warden told her that her child had died “like she was telling me to pick up my dry clean[ing].”
Research by EJI has revealed that, in the seven years since the Justice Department notified the State of Alabama that the conditions in its prisons were unconstitutional, at least 100 people have been killed inside state prisons. Hundreds more have lost their lives to suicide and fatal drug overdoses.
Because the mistreatment of Mr. Gilchrist was captured on camera, the officers who ignored his obvious medical needs were identified and disciplined. But many locations inside Alabama’s prisons remain without camera coverage, and numerous other officers involved in prisoner deaths were never criminally charged and remain working inside the facilities.
Former Commissioner John Hamm acknowledged to the Alabama Legislature that ADOC has a culture that enables and encourages excessive force and civil rights abuses. ADOC nonetheless continues to spend millions of dollars on lawyers to defend against unconstitutional practices in court.