14th Alabama Sheriff’s Employee Pleads Guilty in Jail Detainee’s Death by Freezing
A guard pleaded guilty in June 4, 2025, in connection with the death of a man held at an Alabama jail who died in freezing conditions in January 2023. The guard, Braxton Kee, 23, pleaded guilty to deprivation of rights under color of law, and could face up to a year in prison and a fine up to $100,000.
According to court documents, Tony Mitchell, 33, who was mentally ill, was arrested on January 12, 2023, after a relative requested a wellness check for him. When officers arrived at his house, they said he was talking about demons and portals to hell. Law enforcement said Mitchell then fired a weapon at an officer.
For the two weeks he was booked at Walker County Jail, guards held Mitchell in a freezing cell that had no bathroom, bed, or running water. Court documents described Mitchell as “almost always naked, wet, cold, and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket.”
According to an Associated Press report, Kee voiced concerns about Mitchell’s condition, but he did not take matters into his own hands when his concerns were dismissed. Mitchell died of hypothermia and sepsis due to medical neglect, according to his death certificate. His body arrived at an emergency room on January 26, 2023, with a temperature of 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
Kee was the 14th employee of county Sheriff Nick Smith who has been indicted or pleaded guilty for contributing to Mitchell’s death. Of those, 11 had been convicted before Kee, including most recently another guard at the jail, Carl Lofton Carpenter, 55, who pleaded guilty in April 2025 to a federal charge of depriving the civil rights of the mentally ill detainee with a brutal kick to the groin during Mitchell’s arrest, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2025, p.33.] Like previous plea deals filed before Kee’s, according to the Washington Post, the former guard blamed a “culture of retaliation [that] made him afraid to report Mitchell’s deadly conditions.”
Source: Associated Press, Washington Post