Woman found dead in Alabama jail just days after being detained

On Saturday, Leanna Washington, 36, of LaGrange, Georgia was found dead in the James Morgan County Detention Facility in LaFayette, Alabama. Washington had only been in jail for a matter of days after being detained on drug charges on Dec. 28, 2024.

According to the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office, authorities found Washington unresponsive in an assigned holding cell at around 11:45 a.m. Deputies and medical personnel began lifesaving measures and were later joined by Lafayette Fire and EMS before Washington was pronounced dead.

According to Sheriff Jeff Nelson, no other inmates or deputies were involved in the incident, though the nature of Washington’s death has not yet been made public.

The jail has a 256 inmate capacity with a staff of 10 support personnel and 24 detention deputies, per the sheriff’s website. Nelson has requested that the State Bureau of Investigation conduct an independent investigation into Washington’s death. 

This death is just the latest in a lasting and disturbing trend found in Alabama prisons. In 2023, 325 people died while in the Alabama Department of Corrections’s custody, and over 1,000 incarcerated individuals have died in the state since 2019, when an investigation by the Department of Justice found Alabama’s prison conditions to be unconstitutional. 

According to Alabama Appleseed, a non-profit focused on addressing injustice in the state, deaths that occur due to violent conditions in state prisons are often misclassified as being due to “natural causes” or “accidents.” The non-profit also reports that ADOC provides grieving loved ones with little communication and can take weeks or months to complete investigations into in-custody deaths.

Overcrowding in Alabama’s prisons only exacerbates the state’s high inmate mortality rate, while the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles continues to grant parole at a shockingly low rate — even denying parole to chronically ill and elderly inmates convicted of nonviolent offenses. And yet, many of those same inmates who are denied parole are deemed safe enough to farm out as cheap labor for corporations like McDonald’s and Wendy’s through the state’s work-release program.

Barring any significant policy action in the upcoming legislative session, 2025 will likely see overcrowding, understaffing, and in-custody deaths persist unabated in Alabama’s prisons.