The Joint Legislative Contract Review Committee approved a contract last week to defend correction officers accused of using excessive force against an inmate at an Alabama Department of Corrections facility.
The committee awarded the contract to W. Allen Sheehan, an attorney with Capell & Howard, PC, for two years at a total cost of $200,000. He will be paid $195 an hour.
“The Attorney General’s Office represents 15 correctional officers, and we have a conflict with one of the correctional officers, so Mr. Sheehan is going to represent that individual,” Clay Crenshaw, chief deputy attorney general, said.
The case, Jairo Pal v. Michael Jones, et al., in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, names 17 defendants, along with 10 unnamed correctional officers and 10 unnamed members of the medical staff.
Pal filed the lawsuit, alleging in a federal complaint that correction officers assaulted him while he was in custody, causing physical injuries that went untreated. The complaint says the force was not justified by any legitimate penological purpose and violated his rights under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
Pal claims in the filing that officers beat him and failed to intervene to stop the alleged assault. He also contends that the staff’s actions reflect broader failures in the prison system to supervise and control the use of force. The complaint names corrections personnel and alleges violations of federal civil rights law.
The lawsuit says those alleged failures occurred at a facility strained by chronic overcrowding and staffing shortages, conditions the complaint contends increased the risk of excessive force.
According to the complaint, Limestone Correctional Facility was operating far above capacity at the time of the alleged beating. Although the prison was designed to house 1,628 inmates, it averaged 2,288 prisoners in 2022, about 140 percent of capacity, and remains severely overcrowded.
The complaint also alleges staffing levels were critically low. While the Alabama Department of Corrections said Limestone needed about 368 to 371 full-time correction officers to operate safely, the facility averaged just 124 officers during the quarter that included May 2023, about 33 percent of the staffing level officials said was necessary.
