On Thursday morning, the state Contract Review Committee approved four $200,000 contracts for legal services in the cases William Rhinesmith v. Jesse Cobb, et al, Angela Murray v. D’Marcus Sanders, et al and William R. Smith v. Jefferson Dunn, et al.
The committee’s consideration of the contracts came at the close of the just over thirty-minute meeting as committee chairman and state Senator Dan Roberts, R-Birmingham, was quickly running through the final few state agencies with contracts awaiting review.
“Corrections, and we have several of these,” Roberts said. “That will go through page 30, any questions on these? Thank you, ma’am.” Katherine Robertson, the chief counsel to the attorney general of Alabama and person designated to answer legislators’ questions about the proposed Department of Corrections contracts, was up at the podium for around ten seconds before being dismissed.
For three of the contracts, the reason given for needing to retain external legal counsel was a “conflict of interest.” The fourth contract is justified as the renewal of a previously approved contract that is “needed in order to protect ADOC employees’ interests in this matter.”
All three cases involve the alleged mistreatment of inmates by employees of the Alabama Department of Corrections.
The complaint in Rhinesmith v. Cobb, et al, filed in October of last year, states that correctional officers at Limestone Correctional Facility “punched, kicked, and beat Bill with a broom handle until he lost consciousness, continuing to beat him after he was unconscious.” It also reports that Rhinesmith suffered from a “bilateral subdural hematoma … usually caused by traumatic injury” that required significant surgery and has had long-lasting consequences for his health.
In Smith v. Dunn et al, the complaint also alleges that correctional officers assaulted an inmate, Michael Smith, who was declared dead days later as his health continued to decline.
The doctor who admitted Smith, according to the complaint, recorded that the injury Smith had sustained was a “head injury, reportedly sustained by falling off top bunk.”
Murray v. Sanders et al also revolves around the death of an inmate, Rubyn Murray, and alleges that the death was the result of a guard allowing several correctional officers and inmates into Murray’s cell in order to assault him. The filing specifically states that because the defendants did “not call for medical help,” Murray went undiscovered for three hours and was not breathing when someone did check on him.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a suit against the Alabama Department of Corrections in 2020 over “unconstitutional conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men” and the state and DOC’s refusal to improve those conditions. The case is still ongoing.
Additionally, a report published by the Alabama Reflector found that the Alabama Department of Corrections spent over $57 million defending lawsuits against specific officers over five years and that the department had settled a total of over 90 excessive force lawsuits between 2020 and 2024.
