A deputy sheriff in Alabama’s Walker County Jail pleaded guilty on April 1, 2025, to a federal charge of depriving the civil rights of a mentally ill detainee with a brutal kick to the groin during his arrest in January 2023. Carl Lofton Carpenter, 55, admitted to “us[ing] his shod foot to stomp on the genitals” of detainee Anthony “Tony” Mitchell, 33.

“This is how we treat seizures in Walker County,” Carpenter then told him.

Mitchell had been reported raving about demons and allegedly fired shots at Carpenter and fellow Dep. James Matthew “Matt” Handley when they responded to conduct a welfare check. They then took him to the county jail, where he froze to death in a cell called “the freezer” because guards vented the winter air inside; a doctor who examined his corpse noted Mitchell’s internal body temperature was just 72 degrees Fahrenheit. A total of 10 jail staffers charged in his death have pleaded guilty, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.45.] 

Carpenter’s indictment in federal court for the Northern District of Alabama was shared with Handley, the twelfth charged in Mitchell’s death. Handley testified to a grand jury in August 2024 that Mitchell walked to the patrol car when arrested and “chose” not walk from it after arriving at the county jail. Prosecutors say both statements were lies; Mitchell was too injured to walk after Carpenter stomped him in the groin. Handley pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. See: United States v. Carpenter, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 6:25-cv-00103.

County Sheriff Nick Smith said that Carpenter and Handley were on administrative leave. His other 10 employees were no longer working at the jail. After Carpenter and Handley’s indictment in March 2025, Smith deactivated his department’s Facebook page, saying it had become a “platform for hate, negativity, and vitriol.” Smith also removed mug shots of arrestees from his department’s website.

Meanwhile yet another of Smith’s employees was in the same federal court for sentencing on April 15, 2025, for covering up abuse of another detainee by former jailer Joshua Jones—one of those who pleaded guilty in Mitchell’s death. He admitted to assaulting the unnamed other detainee, hitting him in the face so hard with a can of pepper spray that the trigger broke off. For filing a report omitting those details, guard Betty Jo Cooley, 58, pleaded guilty earlier in 2025 in an agreement that would have sent her to prison for just 10 months.

But at her sentencing, federal judge Annemarie Axon rejected that deal, citing sentencing guidelines that called for at least 27 months behind bars. “I am not a big fan of those who use their position to treat others poorly,” Axon told the disgraced guard. She gave Cooley an unspecified period to reconsider her plea agreement or proceed to trial. See: United States v. Cooley, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 6:24-cr-00415.

Sheriff Smith’s puddle of personnel problems continued to spread on April 1, 2025, when the County Civil Service Board ordered him to reinstate Dep. Jim Brown, whom Smith fired for conducting an unauthorized investigation into fellow Dep. Andrew Neves-MacDonald. That began in January 2025 when Brown heard that the deputy may not hold required certification from the state Peace Officers’ Standards and Training (POST) Commission. Smith fired him the following month when Brown sent a request for background information to the Arizona law enforcement agency where Neves-MacDonald worked before Smith hired him in 2024. 

POST Commissioners then informed Smith in February 2025 that Neves-MacDonald was “ineligible in Alabama for law enforcement appointment” because his certification was suspended in Arizona for misconduct. That also put him on the National Decertification Index for law enforcement. Nevertheless Neves-MacDonald showed up at Brown’s hearing wearing a badge and a gun, admitting to Board members that his Arizona suspension followed an arrest in which he ended up holding a gun to a suspect’s head. His current employment status in Walker County was unclear.  

Additional sources: Hanceville Today, WBRC, WIAT

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