BESSEMER, Ala. — Three correctional sergeants at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility have been arrested on charges that they failed to protect an inmate despite advance warning of an impending assault, adding a new criminal case to scrutiny of an Alabama prison system facing a federal lawsuit over violence, sexual abuse and unsafe conditions.
The Alabama Department of Corrections said Saturday that Neicko White, Michael Underwood and Devontay Jackson failed to take reasonable protective measures before other inmates attacked a prisoner Oct. 25 at the prison in western Jefferson County.
White and Jackson were arrested Nov. 5, and Underwood was arrested Nov. 6. Each faces a misdemeanor charge of failure of duty or violation of law by a guard or person in charge of convicts. All three were released from the Jefferson County Jail’s Bessemer Division after bond was set at $3,000 each, according to reporting by AL.com based on court and jail records.
The arrests come as Alabama prepares for a trial scheduled to begin Nov. 30 in Huntsville over whether conditions in its men’s prisons violate the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The Justice Department contends that state officials have failed to protect prisoners from violence and sexual abuse, prevent excessive force by officers and maintain safe, sanitary facilities. Alabama disputes that its prison conditions are unconstitutional.
The Donaldson case centers on an allegation of an ignored warning. According to charging documents described by AL.com, another corrections officer told the three officers that members of the Bloods gang were preparing to assault the inmate. The attack subsequently occurred, though authorities said the inmate was not seriously injured.
The corrections department said investigators presented their findings to the Jefferson County district attorney’s office in Bessemer, which authorized the charges. Arrest warrants were issued Nov. 2. The charges are allegations, not convictions.
The reports reviewed did not establish whether the three sergeants remained employed after their arrests. AL.com reported Friday that its efforts to obtain their employment status from the corrections department were unsuccessful.
The arrests follow renewed attention to other cases at Donaldson involving allegations that prison employees failed to respond to people in danger.
In May, the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy organization, detailed an April 28 federal court opinion describing video of staff members failing to help Kenneth Gilchrist after he was stabbed at Donaldson in July 2021. According to the organization’s account of the opinion, Gilchrist, 31, showed signs of life and visible distress while officers and a nurse passed him without providing assistance.
The court’s description of the footage showed Gilchrist spending more than 33 minutes on a barbershop floor before a sergeant entered and tried to rouse him, the organization reported. The opinion said he died after an extended period without medical care.
The same report described the December 2020 death of Tommy Rutledge, who died of hyperthermia at Donaldson with a body temperature of 109 degrees. In litigation over his death, a federal court found that officers falsified temperature logs and allowed his cell to reach between 101 and 104 degrees, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.
A separate, more recent death at Donaldson was reported Nov. 2. Daquavion Kyrique Brown, 25, was found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead Oct. 31, according to the Jefferson County coroner’s office. An autopsy found no evidence of trauma or foul play, and the cause remained pending laboratory studies in that report.
The accounts reviewed do not link Brown’s death to the Oct. 25 assault underlying the sergeants’ charges.
The broader federal litigation concerns conditions throughout Alabama’s men’s prisons, not just Donaldson.
The Justice Department sued Alabama in December 2020 following a multiyear investigation and more than 20 months of negotiations that failed to produce a settlement. Federal officials had formally notified the state of alleged constitutional violations in April 2019 and again in July 2020. The lawsuit seeks court-ordered changes rather than monetary damages.
In a September court filing described by AL.com, federal prosecutors argued that violence remained widespread and that overcrowding, inadequate supervision and contraband continued to endanger prisoners. The filing said Alabama’s prisons had been overcrowded since at least 2000.
According to that reporting, federal court records described an average of about one prisoner-on-prisoner killing a month and, since 2022, approximately 30 documented inmate-on-inmate sexual assaults a month. Prosecutors cautioned that the figures did not capture all incidents. Those figures concern the prison system, not Donaldson alone.
The government’s allegations also include mold, malfunctioning toilets, failures to enforce housing assignments and assaults by correctional officers that left prisoners with broken bones or brain injuries. Those claims form part of the disputed federal case; they are not findings against the three newly charged sergeants.
Alabama’s attorneys maintain that the state has taken substantial steps to improve conditions, including recruiting and retaining officers, revising use-of-force policies, providing training, investigating misconduct and disciplining employees. In an August filing described by AL.com, state attorney Bill Lunsford argued that those efforts undercut the government’s allegation that officials were deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ safety.
U.S. District Judge Harold D. Mooty III is scheduled to hear the case without a jury. The proceeding will address the state’s constitutional responsibilities across its men’s prison system, while the Donaldson criminal cases concern the individual sergeants’ alleged failure to act before a specific assault.