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 situation of a mentally ill man who froze to death in an Alabama jail Braxton Kee is the th employee who has been indicted or pleaded guilty to contributing to the death of Tony Mitchell who died after being incarcerated in the Walker County jail in January Kee s plea agreement like a great number of other deals that were filed before his stated that a custom of retaliation made him afraid to document 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 fine Mitchell was arrested on Jan after a relative demanded for a welfare check on him The sheriff s office stated 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 robustness 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 reliably naked wet cold and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket Kee worked of the nights that Mitchell was held at the jail On numerous occasions Kee raised concerns about Mitchell s conditions to colleagues the jail s therapeutic staff and supervisors the plea deal stated 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 bureaucrats revealed Eventually two weeks after he was arrested Mitchell became mostly unresponsive to officers Kee stated 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 explained 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 diagnostic 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 therapeutic 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 Description for America Statehouse News Initiative Analysis for America is a nonprofit national utility initiative that places journalists in local newsrooms to statement on undercovered issues Source