Corrections officer to plead guilty in connection with man’s death in an Alabama jail

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A corrections officer on Wednesday agreed to plead guilty to federal charges in the case of a mentally ill man who froze to death in an Alabama jail.

Braxton Kee is the 14th employee who has been indicted or pleaded guilty to contributing to the death of Tony Mitchell, 33, who died after being incarcerated in the Walker County jail in January 2023. Kee’s plea agreement, like many other deals that were filed before his, said that a culture of retaliation made him afraid to report Mitchell’s deadly conditions.

Kee plead guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, which carries a maximum sentence of one year and up to a $100,000 fine.

Mitchell was arrested on Jan. 12 after a relative asked for a welfare check on him. The sheriff’s office said at the time that Mitchell was talking about portals to hell and asserted that he had fired a weapon at officers. When he arrived at the jail, Mitchell was disoriented, had trouble standing and walking, prosecutors wrote in the plea agreement.

The jail had a nurse and a mental health professional staffed throughout Mitchell’s period of incarceration.

Mitchell was held in a concrete cell sometimes referred to as the jail’s “drunk tank,” with no bedding, bathroom or running water. Previous court documents described Mitchell as “almost always naked, wet, cold, and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket.”

Kee worked 10 of the 14 nights that Mitchell was held at the jail. On numerous occasions, Kee raised concerns about Mitchell’s conditions to colleagues, the jail’s medical staff and supervisors, the plea deal said. Kee’s concerns were also brought to the attention of the jail’s captain.

Mitchell’s conditions remained unchanged.

At one point, Kee repeatedly kicked Mitchell’s arm as he “lay naked and barely moving on the floor for several minutes” so that a lieutenant could drag Mitchell back into “the cruel and inhumane conditions” in his cell, officials said.

Eventually, two weeks after he was arrested, Mitchell became mostly unresponsive to officers. Kee told the nurse on shift that she should call an ambulance but she insisted that they wait until the lieutenant arrive — even though she had called an ambulence earlier in the shift for another inmate without the lieutenant’s permission.

The lieutenant, Benjamin Shoemaker, agreed to plead guilty in January to contributing to Mitchell’s death. In Shoemaker’s plea, he said he was instructed to manufacture terrible conditions to use Mitchell “and his cell as a prop” when a county commissioner visited the jail two days before Mitchell died.

Mitchell’s death certificate lists his cause of death as hypothermia and sepsis from medical neglect.

At the instruction of an unnamed co-conspirator, Shoemaker delayed taking Mitchell to the hospital for over three hours after nurses insisted Mitchell needed urgent medical attention, according to his plea document.

An attorney for Kee did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Thursday afternoon.

___ Riddle is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

By SAFIYAH RIDDLE
Associated Press/Report For America