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The family of an Alabama prison inmate who was allegedly tortured, beaten, raped and murdered while at Staton Correctional Facility have filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner John Hamm and three wardens, alleging they failed to perform even minimal duties or provide reasonable safeguards.
According to the lawsuit filed in the Middle District of Alabama Northern Division (Montgomery), Daniel Terry Williams, who was sentenced to a year in state prison for theft and assault convictions, was kidnapped by other inmates while being housed at Staton, held for three days, repeatedly beaten, tortured, raped and forced to ingest illegal drugs against his will. He ultimately died as a result of the beatings, according to the lawsuit, and was removed from life support on the same day he was set to be released from prison. The mother of Williams’ daughter filed the lawsuit.
Another source who was in Staton Correctional Facility with Williams also provided APR with background information on the assault and torture of Williams. The source said they witnessed some of the assault of Williams and that they reported what was happening to guards. They also said other inmates reported the abuse.
Over the course of the three days that Williams was allegedly held hostage in a dormitory to which he wasn’t assigned, officials at Staton failed to perform basic head counts and dormitory counts that might have revealed Williams was missing, the lawsuit states. Additionally, according to the lawsuit and the source who spoke with APR, prison officials failed to take action in a timely fashion when the brutal assault was reported.
Instead, those officials notified Williams’ family that he had overdosed while in custody and had been transferred to a local hospital. When those family members arrived, according to the lawsuit, they found Williams horrifically beaten, with obvious restraint marks on his wrists and “indentations on his head.”
The lawsuit states that inmates and others at Staton have provided Williams’ family with information about the prolonged torture he endured, including providing the family with the location of the assault, specific details of the assault and the name of the man who led the attack on Williams. The lawsuit states that Staton officials located Williams lying unconscious on the bed of his attacker, an inmate named Lamont Wilson, who has a long history of violence within ADOC. (ADOC officials told Williams’ family, according to the lawsuit, that Williams had been “discovered unresponsive in his dorm.”)
However, ADOC officials failed to document much of Wilson’s violent history, leaving Wilson to roam about in a medium-security wing, where he was free to inflict torture and sexual abuse on other inmates. The lawsuit cites nine separate reports of violence perpetrated by Wilson while incarcerated at various facilities, but remarkably none of those reports generated a disciplinary report against Wilson that might have removed him from lower-security dorms.
(Such reports would also be used by the state’s Pardons and Parole Board to determine whether inmates are eligible to be released early from their sentences.)
Additionally, the lawsuit points out that Staton officials failed to perform even the basic duties of counting inmates and ensuring all were in the appropriate and assigned dorms – a failure made more glaring by the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit that documents a long and embarrassing history of ADOC stacking prisons well past their limits, turning a blind eye to the torture and abuse of prisoners, failing to perform basic safety checks and withholding basic medical care.
Williams was 22 years old at the time of his death. Nine days prior to his alleged murder, Williams posted on Facebook that he was ready to leave prison and that he would be doing “drug free.”
