Alabama man alleges prison officials punished him for speaking to press

A formerly incarcerated Alabama man sued three prison officials Tuesday, alleging they punished him for speaking to The New York Times about forced labor in Alabama prisons, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents him.

Carlos Anderson alleges that Bradley Smoke, Pamela Butler and Prince Etheridge violated his First Amendment rights. He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. The center said the discipline cost Anderson wages and caused him severe emotional distress.

In 2023, while incarcerated at Frank Lee, a minimum-security prison, Anderson was assigned through a work-release program to Ju-Young, a Hyundai parts plant in Montgomery. The center said Anderson told a Times reporter that incarcerated people had little choice but to accept what he described as exploitatively low wages through work release. Otherwise, he said, they could be forced to work without pay or face other punishment. Under a Department of Corrections regulation, the prison system deducts 40 percent of work-release participants’ gross pay to help cover the cost of their incarceration.

Shortly after the Times published the article, Smoke, a lieutenant at Frank Lee, called Anderson into his office, showed him the article and told him he had “messed up” by speaking to the reporter, the center said. Smoke issued a disciplinary citation that Butler, then a captain, and Etheridge, a sergeant, approved.

The center said officials required Anderson to do 30 days of unpaid labor and suspended his phone, visitation and canteen privileges for 30 days.

The center also alleged that Smoke falsely told other incarcerated men that Anderson’s interview had prompted Ju-Young to end its contract with the Alabama Department of Corrections. Men who believed Anderson had cost them their jobs repeatedly harassed and threatened him, the center said.

Fearing for his safety, Anderson asked for a transfer to another minimum-security prison. Officials sent him to Kilby Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison where he could not participate in work release.

The center did not specify which part of Smoke’s alleged statement was false. Ju-Young ended its arrangement with the Department of Corrections after the Times published the story, Prison Legal News reported, citing a December 2024 Times report.

“It’s hard to imagine a clearer First Amendment retaliation case,” D. Korbin Felder, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement. “The citation itself says Carlos was punished for his speech.”

Felder said officials cited Anderson before his parole hearing, jeopardizing his chance of release.

“This case is very important because we have to show ADOC they cannot just violate people’s rights,” Anderson said in the statement.

Anderson was released on parole in October 2025, the center said.

Legal challenges to Alabama’s prison labor system have continued since voters approved a new state constitution in 2022 that removed language allowing slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. In December 2025, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals upheld the dismissal of a state lawsuit the Center for Constitutional Rights brought on behalf of incarcerated workers. The suit argued that the Department of Corrections’ labor policies amounted to involuntary servitude.

A November 2025 Columbia Labor Lab report found that about 13 percent of workers at Hyundai supplier plants in Alabama participated in work release. Hyundai told APR at the time that some suppliers had participated in the program and that Hyundai played no role in those decisions.