“We killed him”: Jail officer pleads guilty in death of Alabama man
source: Equal Justice Initiative
published: 12 October 2022
Image Credit: artur84 at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Toshua Conner Jones, a former correctional officer with the Walker County Sheriff’s Office in Jasper, Alabama, pleaded guilty last week to federal charges stemming from the death of Anthony “Tony” Mitchell in 2023.
Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Jones for conspiring with other Walker County Jail staff to violate Mr. Mitchell’s constitutional rights by “depriving him of humane conditions of confinement including, but not limited to, adequate food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, and medical and mental health care,” which resulted in his death.
The plea agreement does not identify Mr. Mitchell by name, but Mr. Jones’s lawyer confirmed it relates to Mr. Mitchell’s death.
Tony Mitchell, 33, was arrested and taken to the Walker County Jail by sheriff’s deputies responding to a request for a mental health welfare check on January 12, 2023. In a detailed plea agreement entered last week, Mr. Jones says he and other correctional officers were told that Mr. Mitchell had shot at deputies.
Mr. Mitchell “could not walk or stand on his own” when he arrived at the jail, according to the plea. He was “disoriented, non-combative, and could not follow instructions,” so “helpless that he was not capable of undressing or dressing himself,” and it was “obvious to everyone” that he needed to be taken to a hospital.
Instead, Mr. Jones said officers put him in the drunk tank—'a cement box with a small grate on the floor' that “did not have a sink, a toilet, access to any running water, or a raised platform to be used as a bed” and was “notoriously cold during winter months and the temperature on the bare cement floor was even colder”—and denied him medical attention until the day he died two weeks later.
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