The Jefferson County Coroner’s office confirmed on Friday that another incarcerated man died at Donaldson Correctional Facility last week.
Antoine Devaugh Rudolph, a 33-year-old incarcerated man at the Jefferson County Facility, was found unresponsive inside a private cell by correctional officers on Thursday morning. He would be pronounced dead later that same morning.
The coroner’s office performed an autopsy the following day but was unable to determine the cause and manner of death, according to the coroner’s office, with the final results pending “additional laboratory studies.”
Sources in the Alabama corrections system with knowledge of the incident told APR last week that Rudolph’s death is believed to be an overdose. This is yet to be confirmed by the coroner’s office or the Alabama Department of Corrections.
The ADOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division is investigating Rudolph’s death.
Earlier last week, Kenneth Earl Ray II, a 32-year-old incarcerated man at Donaldson Correctional facility, succumbed to injuries sustained on Monday after an assault by another incarcerated individual within the facility.
Ray’s death is being investigated as a homicide, according to the coroner’s office.
The same Monday, U.S. Department of Justice investigators visited the facility as “part of the normal discovery process” for the federal government’s ongoing lawsuit with the state of Alabama and the ADOC, a spokesperson for the ADOC confirmed on Thursday.
The Justice Department’s ongoing lawsuit with the state, which was amended as recently as November of last year, alleges state officials are “deliberately indifferent” to the conditions within the prison system, which were described as “unconstitutional” by the amended lawsuit.
The homicide rate within the state prison system is more than seven times the national average, according to the lawsuit.
