$250,000 Settlement But No Charges After Alabama Guards Beat Prisoner To Death
by Anthony W. Accurso
The Alabama Department of Finance issued a $250,000 payment on behalf of the state Department of Corrections (DOC) on August 16, 2024, settling a suit filed by the survivors of state prisoner Steven Davis, who was beaten to death by guards in October 2019 in the “behavioral modification unit” (BMU) at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. (The BMU is also known as a “hot bay.”)
According to eyewitnesses, Davis was armed and attempted to attack another prisoner when a guard intercepted him. Fellow guards claimed that the prisoner refused to drop his weapons and also attempted to conceal another knife while being disarmed. But other prisoners who witnessed the events claimed Davis had disarmed himself even before the first guard reached him. That first guard was then joined by fellow guards, who dealt Davis a fatal beatdown with punches, kicks and baton strikes until well after he went motionless.
The DOC argued that the guards felt threatened. But “Stevie was in a confined area” in the Donaldson “hot bay,” said his mother, Sondra Ray, who filed the suit as representative of her son’s estate. “He wouldn’t create an altercation,” she added. “He didn’t want to die. He was coming home to take care of me.”
After the beating, Davis was airlifted to the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital on October 4, 2019, and his mother was notified. She arrived at the hospital just in time to witness his removal from life support. A medical examiner then classified Davis’ death as a homicide that was caused by “blunt force injuries of head sustained during an assault.”
Bessemer District Attorney Lynneice Washington recused herself from the criminal investigation after learning that an assistant prosecutor was related to one of the guards implicated in Davis’s death. State Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) then declined to file charges. In a report that surprised exactly no one, the DOC’s internal investigators determined that “the officers’ use of force against Davis was justified.”
Ray then filed suit against the DOC and the guards involved, claiming they violated her son’s civil rights. “The blows to Davis’ head are considered deadly force and would have been excessive even if Davis was resisting the officers,” the lawsuit argued. The federal court for the Northern District of Alabama agreed on February 22, 2023, that the allegations were sufficient to defeat the Defendant guards’ claims for qualified immunity, also largely refusing their motion to dismiss the suit on November 2, 2023. See: Ray v. Gadson, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29248 (N.D. Ala.); and 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 196958 (N.D. Ala.).
As PLN reported, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) released a July 2020 report concluding that DOC guards frequently use unconstitutional excessive force, citing Davis’ death as an example; the “hot bays” were cited in an earlier DOJ investigation that found Alabama prisons not only exceptionally violent but also exceptionally repressive, with prisoners “not allowed to leave the dormitory for meals or the canteen line” yet also “not given a microwave or television,” nor “allowed to attend any outside programs or jobs.” [See: PLN, Nov. 2020, p.30; and Sep. 2019, p.44.]
On top of the settlement payout, the state spent another $393,000 in legal costs and fees to defend the DOC against Ray’s allegations over her son’s fatal beating, according to reports reviewed by the Alabama Reflector under an open records request. The state refuses to consider records requests from non-residents, like PLN. But no small share of the fees it paid attorneys to defend this suit apparently went toward efforts to obfuscate documentation of DOC business; a magistrate reviewed Defendants’ requests for protective orders on October 19, 2023, which the district court then adopted on February 13, 2024. See: Ray v. Gadson, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 235237 (N.D. Ala.); and 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24982 (N.D. Ala.).
The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. But Hank Sherrod, an attorney representing Ray, said that she “would trade every dollar to have her son back or to see the officers who murdered her son go to prison, but she is glad to close this chapter in her life.”
Sources: ACLU of Ala., Alabama Reflector, Birmingham News
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