Daniel Terry Williams was 22 years old, a young father serving a one-year stint for theft in Alabama’s hellhole prisons. He was almost free, almost home when, according to his lawyer and others, he was drugged, brutally raped, tortured and beaten.
He died Nov. 9 in a hospital, on the day he was to be released.
Carla Crowder, executive director of Alabama Appleseed, appeared last month before the Alabama Prison Oversight Committee to talk about rampant violence behind Alabama’s bars.
Death in Alabama prisons is five times the national average, she told legislators, and provided documents she said proved it.
But she wanted to talk specifically about Williams’ death at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore County. It was a window into the brutality of Alabama’s penal system.
The killing made international news.
Fox News put it this way:
Alabama dad allegedly tortured, killed in prison left eerie final Facebook post weeks before planned release.
The New York Post said this:
Alabama man beaten beyond recognition in same prison where inmate was ‘rented out’ and murdered.
Crowder spoke of the attack – and what preceded it – in stunning detail.
“The 38-year-old suspect in this kidnapping, rape and torture was involved in nine instances of sex assault, rape, and stabbing since 2017 in ADOC while incarcerated,” Crowder, a lawyer, told the committee.
“There is no documentation that he was placed in segregation for any of these assaults,” she went on. “There was no disciplinary action by ADOC.”
“His classification summary showed a five-year clear record of institutional violence, which resulted in a perfect score of zero in risk assessment conducted in October, and a total score low enough for him to be placed in medium security in an open bay dorm. The psych associates signed off on this and the warden signed off on this.”
“Nine days later, 22-year-old Daniel Williams … was found, according to ADOC, unresponsive on this inmate’s assigned bed.”
Crowder did not use the suspect’s name in her remarks, but did name him in a letter to legislators. He was also named as a suspect in a letter to prison officials from Williams’ lawyer. The inmate’s name appears many times in accompanying DOC documents passed to committee members.
Because that suspect has not been officially investigated or charged in many of those incidents, and because he apparently still has contact with other inmates, we will henceforth refer to him as Inmate X.
The claims are breathtaking.
- That an inmate was accused nine times of heinous acts, and was still treated as if he posed no risk.
- That prison officials failed even to investigate accusations against that inmate.
- That failure to take violent incidents seriously allowed a dangerous inmate to have a clear record.
- That incident after violent incident was reported to prison officials who in most cases did nothing to punish Inmate X, or keep him from terrorizing others.
- That all this could occur in a prison system already under federal scrutiny for inhumane treatment, sexual assault and violence amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.
Crowder is not alone in rebuking the state for its failures.
Andrew Menefee, a lawyer for Williams’ family, sent a letter to prison officials in mid November, contending Williams was tied up by Inmate X for at least two days, “held hostage in a corner of a housing dormitory, forced to consume drugs against his will, beaten and repeatedly raped until he was unconscious.”
An ADOC spokesman responded to questions this way:
“The ADOC Law Enforcement Services Division investigation is still ongoing, and cause of death is still pending the results of a full autopsy, including toxicology report. Given that, it would be imprudent to comment on a matter pending both litigation and the outcome of a death investigation.”
But how could such a series of events happen? The prison system’s own records, obtained by Alabama Appleseed and passed on to legislators, provide a telling roadmap.
Inmate X’s “classification summary,” a series of ADOC documents that include charges, disciplinary actions and so-called “enemies reports,” is filled with allegations of brutal and bloody violence that is all but ignored by guards.
In the 18-month period used by DOC to assess risk for disciplinary purposes, the system’s own documents show Inmate X was accused by other inmates of:
- Raping a prisoner at Fountain Correctional Facility in September 2022. The victim said he was assaulted by several inmates, taken to the middle of the dorm and gang raped. That prisoner identified Inmate X as one of the attackers.
- Calling for a hit on a prisoner at Bullock Correctional Facility in October 2022. The victim said the troubles started when the two had a previous altercation at another prison.
- Selling drugs and threatening a prisoner who owed him $10 at Bullock last August.
The imposing Inmate X was not disciplined for those. Instead of going to the effort to write them up as attacks, instead of sending him to disciplinary hearings or reclassification hearings or various types of secure custody to protect others, prison officials wrote them off on “enemies” reports.
Enemies reports are brief listings of disputes between inmates that are used as a reason to separate inmates or have them moved. They are not investigated or adjudicated as disciplinaries or crimes. So those incidents – and the following ones – were treated as if the issues were merely a question of two people who could not get along.
Before that, according to DOC investigations and official complaints from prisoners, Inmate X was accused of making enemies by:
- Threatening a man’s life in 2021 because of a debt.
- Sexually assaulting a man at Bibb Correctional Facility in 2020. The victim was taken to a hospital.
- In 2019 attempting to stab a man who claimed Inmate X “had been pressuring him to be in a relationship.”
- Repeatedly chasing a man through a dorm in November 2019, and “harassing him daily for sex.”
- Sexually assaulting another inmate in May of 2019.
- Sexually assaulting another inmate in April of 2018.
On it goes.
In June of 2017, a guard saw Inmate X slap an inmate twice, resulting in a fight. “It was determined (Inmate X) was making sexual advances” to a man who tried to defend himself.
In February 2017, a man placed in segregation with Inmate X said he was stabbed and sexually assaulted. An investigator said the evidence corroborated his story, but ADOC did not follow up.
And in 2015 guards found an inmate slumped and unresponsive, covered in blood with stab wounds to the head, neck, chest, back and arms. An investigation found the weapon in the trash outside Inmate X’s cell, and his clothes were covered in blood.
Last year, eight years after the stabbing, Inmate X was charged with attempted murder. He was convicted of assault, but ADOC took little or no action to prevent him from roaming the prison.
Inmate X had 18 disciplinary charges between 2012 and 2018, but despite the above incidents he has not faced a formal disciplinary charge since July 9, 2018, when he was cited for possession of a weapon. So he did not face restrictions that would limit his movement or put him under more observation.
On Oct. 22 of last year, according to ADOC’s records, Inmate X was among those who assaulted young Daniel Williams.
“Inmate Williams was found unresponsive on (Inmate X’s) assigned bed,” a DOC report says. “It appeared that victim had been assaulted. (Inmate X and two others) were believed to be involved in this incident.”
Alabama prison officials wrote that report on Nov. 8, the day before Williams was taken off life support, two weeks after the assault, and only after Williams’ family hired a lawyer.
Williams was declared dead the next day.
The assault was not written up as a crime or disciplinary charge. Guards wrote it merely as an “enemies report.”
Inmate X’s story tells more about ADOC than many Alabamians want to believe. It really is a lens into the horrors too many of us would rather hold – like the inmates themselves – out of sight and mind.
“ADOC staff received numerous reports of rampant sexual violence against other incarcerated men but failed to take disciplinary measures that would have resulted in (Inmate X) being placed in segregation,” Crowder told lawmakers.
Williams’ death “could have been prevented by the State of Alabama,” she said. “Instead, choices were made over and over again to take no investigative or corrective action in numerous cases of sexual assault at five different prisons.”
Alabama prison officials knew. Alabama allowed it.
The guards, the wardens, the administration, the Legislature, the state itself does too little, even after the U.S. Justice Department sued Alabama in 2020 for ignoring the constitutional rights of inmates and failing to protect them from violence, sexual abuse, and death.
The Justice Department, beginning under Trump and continuing in the Biden administration, argued in court documents that Alabama prisons habitually encourage or allow sexual predators “to move from unit to unit without intervention.”
Prison workers downplay rape and violence “and dismiss alleged sexual abuse as ‘homosexual activity,’ implying the sexual act is consensual.”
The DOJ lawsuit, updated in 2021 and now headed toward trial, argues that ADOC is to blame for encouraging the terror, with its own acts and omissions, by:
- Commingling sexual predators with victims.
- Failing to properly investigate complaints.
- Discouraging prisoners from reporting assaults.
- Allowing prisoners to be assaulted in retaliation for reporting sexual abuse.
- Punishing victims who report being sexually abused by isolating them and taking away their privileges.
- Failing to stop the flow of drugs, and failing to adequately investigate sexual abuse that occurs as a result of drug debts.
- Using the presence of drugs to diminish incidents of sexual assault and murder.
The Justice Department found, just as Menefee described in the case of Daniel Williams, that prisoners frequently report suffering sexual abuse after being drugged.
So a toxicology report – of the type ADOC continues to await before it classifies Williams’ death – does not provide the answer. Not in that case or in others.
A dirty drug test would just be an excuse for Alabama’s failures, a way to blame the dead and ignore the assailant. To assume no responsibility.
The Inmate Xes of the world know it. Alabama knows it, too.
Inmate X is far from an outlier in Alabama prisons. He is merely an example of its barbarism, of a standard in which inmates run the prisons, and guards – cowed, negligent, poorly paid, understaffed or corrupt – refuse to intervene or file the paperwork to begin disciplinary procedures.
The Justice Department compiled example after example of heinous abuse and its consequences. These are just a few, from a four-month period between December 2017 and March 2018:
- A prisoner at Bibb was drugged, and awoke in the middle of being raped.
- A prisoner at Bullock cut his own wrist after an attempted gang rape “because he feared being in population and needed to be placed in a single cell.”
- A prisoner at Donaldson cut his wrist with a razor, saying he had been sexually assaulted in a bathroom.
- Doctors had to perform emergency surgery on a Donaldson inmate to remove a broomstick from his rectum.
- A prisoner at Fountain reported he had been sexually assaulted every day since his arrival at the prison.
- A Holman prisoner said he passed out from smoking the synthetic drug “flakka.” He said he awoke to one prisoner punching him in the eye. “Then four or five prisoners put a partition around his bed and took turns raping him.”
That’s just a few of many. The Justice Department examples go on and on, yet says the list is in no way comprehensive, and that such cases rarely result in real punishment or action.
The prison system argued in 2021 that individual examples such as those were just anecdotal. But the DOJ suit pointed out that Alabama doesn’t track or prosecute violence well, at times mistaking or misrepresenting homicides for deaths by natural causes or drug use.
So if DOJ is correct, there are no reliable stats. Just like Inmate X accusations and cases mostly lead nowhere. If no crime is recorded, there is no punishment. Nothing to see here.
It amounts to no justice.
Rep. Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa, sits on the Prison Oversight Committee. He is deeply disturbed not only by the case of Williams and Inmate X, but by an avalanche of tragedies, and the state’s lack of will to change things.
“That case is awful,” said England. “Unfortunately it appears to be almost a common occurrence, just another day for the Department of Corrections.”
DOJ in its report repeatedly pointed to overcrowding as a cause for the mayhem. Staton, where Williams was later killed, had a 257% occupancy rate in 2021. Kilby had 201% occupancy at the time of DOJ’s visit, while Bibb, Bullock, Donaldson, Easterling, and Ventress all had occupancies above 140%.
ADOC’s own records indicate it hasn’t changed much. In November of last year, the latest figures available, Alabama prisons held 20,403 inmates in prisons designed to hold 12,115 people. That’s a 168% occupancy rate, and an overall increase from the year before.
The troubles are compounded by a parole board that has stifled paroles in recent years, often disregarding recommendations of its administrative staff. Last year fewer than 10% of eligible inmates were granted parole, down from more than 50% in 2018.
The Sentencing Project surveyed 29 states with similar parole systems and found Alabama had the nation’s lowest parole rate in 2022.
England said he lacked the vocabulary to describe just how bad the prison and parole systems really are. He does not.
“At this point we’re all complicit,” he said. “I mean, the blood is on all of our hands.”
It’s true. Damning Justice Department reports and higher-than-average death rates have done nothing to change behavior. In Inmate X’s case, prison officials have been less aggressive in discipline than they were before the DOJ intervened, his records show.
“I think a very good argument can be made that we’re worse now than we were when we got the (Justice Department) report,” England said.
Perhaps a civil suit is not enough. Alabama prisons seem more like a crime.
“I wish the FBI would go in and arrest most of the correctional officers, wardens and even higher up ADOC officials,” Menefee said. “Instead of having a DOJ lawsuit investigation, there should be a DOJ criminal investigation into what’s going on.”
Or an Alabama Attorney General’s investigation. If Steve Marshall had the will, and the respect for all life and law.
Or investigations by county sheriff’s and DAs. They have the authority, if not the will.
Of course it is the rest of us in Alabama who grant them every bit of their authority.
That’s the real story.
It is how we continue to label people to rationalize their deaths. It is how we know of rape, and torture, and our own state’s disinterest, and find no will to demand change.
It is our story, Alabama. This is who we are.
This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.
Ad Choices