Jamal Wilson, 38, died on November 1 after he was assaulted at Elmore Correctional Facility in Elmore County, Alabama.
Mr. Wilson had served nearly 15 years of a 20-year sentence and would have become eligible for parole in April. At Elmore, he was designated as minimum custody and was living in a faith-based honor dormitory designated for individuals who have maintained a clear disciplinary record and are committed to participating in programs that develop “life skills, personal growth, and accountability with outcomes of positive personal, family, institutional, and community relationships.”
Witnesses reported to EJI that Mr. Wilson was assaulted near his bunk in the honor dorm on October 29. He was taken to the hospital but the Alabama Department of Corrections refused to allow his family to see him until after he died on November 1.
Mr. Wilson is at least the fifth person killed in an Alabama prison in the past three months, and at least the fifth person killed at Elmore in the past two years.
Marquis Hatcher, 31, was killed in an assault in an Elmore dormitory on November 4, 2022. Stephone Marshall, 38, was stabbed to death in a dormitory at Elmore on May 16, 2023. Rubyn Murray, 38, was beaten to death in a holding cell at Elmore on July 26, 2023, after correctional sergeant D’Marcus Sanders allowed other incarcerated people into the cell to assault him. Derrek Martin, also 38, was killed in his dormitory at Elmore on December 12, 2023, when witnesses told EJI the officer assigned to the dormitory was asleep and no staff responded to Mr. Martin’s cries for help.
The number of homicides in Alabama’s prisons is likely higher. A lack of supervision by officers and the absence of video monitoring means that many assaults and deaths are unobserved, and family members frequently report they are unable to get any information from the Department of Corrections about what happened to their loved ones.
These include the family of Tim Mathis, who died at Elmore on June 4. Mr. Mathis’s father told Alabama legislators that, two hours after he last talked to his son, the warden called him. The warden “basically told me my son was dead [but] wouldn’t tell me where his body was,” he told lawmakers. “She wasn’t going to tell me where his body was going to be sent. Basically, all she told me was to contact her tomorrow at 8 am in her office.”
They also include the family of Mitchell Monroe, 45, who died at Elmore on August 25. ADOC told reporters that Mr. Monroe was “found unresponsive on his bed [and] had a head injury and abrasions on both legs.” Months later, family members reported to EJI that they had been unable to speak with the warden at Elmore or anyone at the prison after an initial phone call about the death, had not received a death certificate, and the Department of Forensic Sciences told them it would not release an autopsy report because the death remains under investigation.