EJI received multiple reports that Nolan Conner Deason, 33, was killed in an assault at Fountain Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, on November 4, 2024. He would have completed his sentence in 30 days, on December 5, and had been at Fountain for less than a month before he died.
At the time of his death, Mr. Deason was classified as minimum custody and was living in the Fountain Annex, which houses approximately 200 men in an open-bay dormitory.
According to multiple reports, after Mr. Deason arrived at Fountain in mid-October, he was not allowed to sleep on a bed and was forced to sleep on the floor. Mr. Deason was assaulted on several occasions after his arrival. At approximately 10 pm on November 4, he was chased around the dorm until he was captured and fatally assaulted.
At the time of the assault there were no officers in the dorm. No officers entered the dormitory until several hours later, in the early hours of November 5, when an incarcerated person informed an officer that Mr. Deason was naked and unresponsive in the bathroom. At that point, Mr. Deason reportedly was already dead.
Mr. Deason is at least the 14th person killed in an Alabama prison in the past year.
The U.S. Department of Justice notified state and department officials in April 2019 that the violence and lack of adequate conditions within Alabama’s prisons violate the Constitution. In December 2020, after nearly two years during which the Alabama Department of Corrections failed to address the concerns raised by the Justice Department, federal prosecutors “determined that constitutional compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means” and filed a lawsuit against the state.
In the more than five years since the Justice Department’s report, nothing has happened to stem the tide of violence in Alabama’s prisons. In 2024, Alabama’s prison homicide rate was 69 per 100,000, more than five times the national average.