Nyheim Toney, 29, died Monday after being stabbed multiple times at Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama.
He is at least the second person stabbed to death in an Alabama prison this month alone. Mitchell Cosby, 41, died on June 15 after he was stabbed at Donaldson Correctional Facility near Birmingham.
The Alabama Department of Corrections told The Montgomery Advertiser that Mr. Toney was taken from the prison medical unit to DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, and then airlifted to UAB Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
At least 10 people have been killed in Alabama prisons in the first half of this year.
And that may be an undercount. ADOC has underreported the number of homicides—misclassifying or failing to report killings even to federal investigators.
Years after the Justice Department put state officials on notice that Alabama’s prison system violates constitutional requirements, ADOC has failed to effectively address the overcrowding, understaffing, and other factors underlying its “systemic failure” to protect people in its custody from violence and sexual abuse.
Regular reports of extraordinary violence, loss of life, and traumatizing conditions have yielded few announcements about any effort to address the current crisis. The State has spent millions of dollars fighting lawsuits brought by victims of violence in the state’s prisons—and by federal prosecutors who sued ADOC in December 2020.
At least 21 people have been killed in Alabama’s prisons in the roughly 18 months since the lawsuit was filed. But state officials’ indifference to the crisis of violence in Alabama’s prisons persists, leading federal prosecutors to conclude that Alabama officials will not protect incarcerated people unless a court forces them to do so.