By Carol Robinson
al.com
WALKER COUNTY, Ala. — A former Walker County Jail corrections officer has agreed to plead guilty after being charged in connection with the 2023 death of Anthony “Tony” Mitchell and the assault of another inmate the year before.
Joshua Conner Jones, according to federal court records, this week signed plea agreements involving the death of Mitchell and in a 2022 case in which an inmate was beaten in the head and face with a chemical spray can.
The documents do not name either inmate, but the dates of “Individual 1″ and the circumstances of his arrest are as Mitchell’s case.
Mitchell’s attorney, Scott Brower, confirmed the proposed plea agreement deals with Mitchell’s death.
The Walker County Sheriff’s Office had no comment.
According to the 18-page plea agreement made public late Wednesday, Jones has agreed to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter involving reckless conduct in Mitchell’s death and faces up to life in prison.
He is set for arraignment on Aug. 15, at which point a federal judge will set a date to accept Jones’ plea.
Mitchell, 33, died Jan. 26, 2023 at Walker Baptist Medical Center, just over two weeks after he was arrested on charges that he shot at Walker County deputies as they responded to a welfare check requested by his family.
The county coroner’s death certificate listed Mitchell’s manner of death as homicide and listed the causes as hypothermia and sepsis “resulting from infected injuries obtained during incarceration and medical neglect.”
Lawyers for Mitchell’s mother, Margaret Mitchell , filed a federal lawsuit in March 2023, claiming that jail deputies tased Mitchell and locked him in a freezer, causing his death.
The lawsuit alleges abuse and medical neglect of Mitchell at the hands of Sheriff Nick Smith and staff at the county jail, including corrections officers, nurses and an investigator.
A response to the lawsuit filed by jail nurses disputed Mitchell’s family’s claims that he was locked in a freezer.
Attorneys for the sheriff’s office also said Mitchell was never placed in a freezer, and asked that the allegation be removed from the lawsuit.
“He was not held in a freezer,’’ the document stated. “In fact, the only times that he left the booking area was to attend his 72-hour hearing and to be transported to the hospital.”
Mitchell family attorneys responded by saying the claim was mischaracterized.
They said the claim about the freezer was not definite, but rather a likely possible explanation for Mitchell’s death and that a physician they interviewed for the case told them as much.
“If defendants had another means of bringing an inmates’ body temp. to 72 degrees or lower, plaintiff will uncover that during the discovery phase of this case,” the family’s lawyers argued.
The plea agreement states that the Walker County Jail had eight booking cells that could be directly observed by officers at the booking desk several feet away. Among the eight cells, BKF was unique in that it was essentially a cement box with a small grate on the floor that opens into a hole for fluids to drain from the cell, documents state.
“BK5 was often referred to as the drunk tank in that it could easily be hosed down when inebriated people held there would vomit,’' documents state.
BK5 was unlike all other cells in the jail, but for observation cell AH3, which had no hole in the floor and was used only for detainees for hours at a time. It did not have a sink, toilet, access to any running water or a raised platform to be used as a bed.
“BK5 was notoriously cold during winter months and the temperature on the bare cement floor was even colder,’' the plea agreement states.
Medical and mental health services were provided by an outside contractor hired by Walker County. As part of the booking process, all detainees were supposed to receive a medical and mental health screening to ensure that emergent and urgent health needs were met.
On Jan. 12, 2023 , Walker County deputies responded to a mental health check at Mitchell’s home. He was arrested after authorities said he allegedly fired a gun while deputies were on his property, the documents state.
Jones, the documents state, was informed that he was being brought in because he “shot at deputies.”
When Mitchell arrived, he was met at the jail sallyport by corrections officers and supervisors including Jones and and five other unnamed “co-conspirators.”
Mitchell could not walk or stand on his own, was disoriented, non-combative and could not follow directions, records show.
“These observations were obvious to everyone who removed Individual #1 from the car and defendant Jones believed that Individual #1 needed to be taken to ta hospital or mental health facility rather than being incarcerated at the jail,’' the plea agreement states.
Mitchell was taken to a changing room to put on a jail uniform and was not capable of undressing or dressing himself. After several attempts, records state, officers “simply wrapped a suicide smock around him” which is known as a turtle suit.
Mitchell was taken by wheelchair to the medical unit which was attended by the health services administrator, two nurses, and four of the unnamed co-conspirators. The nurse told the group that “she wanted to wait” referring to instructions from one of the co-conspirators to deny the initial fit for confinement screening.
Mitchell was taken by wheelchair and placed in BK5.
Jones said in the plea agreement that Mitchell never received any medical evaluation until the morning of his death, two weeks after he was arrested.
The corrections officer said he worked seven shifts during Mitchell’s two-week incarceration and said neither he nor any of the other jailers made efforts to provide him with medical care nor alter the conditions of his confinement.
To the contrary, the document states, Jones and the co-conspirators actively denied medical access to Mitchell by falsely telling medical staff that Mitchell was too combative to be evaluated “when in truth that was not the case.”
“Calling (Mitchell) combative was an excuse to mistreat him,’' documents state. “There was no conduct that could have been committed by (Mitchell) that would have justified the denial of medical access.”
The efforts to deny Mitchell medical and mental health care persisted event though he was frequently expressing severe mental health symptoms such as talking incoherently about “demons” and “portals.”
“He was often covered in feces, which was an indication that he could not care for himself,’' records state.
Jones, in his plea agreement, said he observed Mitchell deteriorate over the course of his incarceration.
“At the time he passed, (Mitchell) was almost always naked, wet, cold, and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket,’' the records state.
By the second week of being jailed, the agreement states, Mitchell was largely listless and mostly unresponsive to questions from officers.
Repeatedly during Mitchell’s incarceration, records show, corrections officers actively chose not help him and would dismiss his needs by saying, “(Expletive) him, he gets what he gets since he shot at cops, or words to that effect,’' the document states.
The officers also repeatedly made comments that Mitchell “should have been killed because he shot at deputies rather than being brough to the jail,’' the document says.
“At times, Jones (and the other jailers) spoke directly to (Mitchell) saying that he was now in their ‘house’ and that he had to deal with them (the officers),’' records show.
On the morning of Jan. 26, 2023 , one of the unnamed officers told Jones that a nurse had seen Mitchell and ordered that he be taken to a hospital.
The officers were told by the nurse that Mitchell could die if he was not taken to the hospital, according to documents, and one of the co-conspirators replied, “I’ll tell you what, next time you’re on the toilet taking a (expletive), I’ll call you to bother you with something unimportant.”
According to Jones, two co-conspirators - both jail supervisors - failed to arrange for Mitchell to go to the hospital for more than three hours after officers reported the nurse’s urgent instructions.
Jones said after he transported several detainees to court, he was instructed to join others at Walker Baptist Medical Center Hospital where Mitchell had been taken in the back of a patrol car - rather than an ambulance.
Jones said in the plea agreement that when he arrived, he learned that Mitchell’s mother had been called to the emergency room and overheard her giving permission to medical staff to remove Mitchell from life support.
In the case of the second inmate, “Individual 2″ was a pre-trial detainee held in A-Dorm. The inmate was placed in a cell with two other inmates that would have caused the cell to be unnecessarily overcrowded, records state.
When the inmate complained, an unidentified officer placed him against a wall in the cell and hit him. Jones then hit the inmate in the face three times with a can of O.C. spray that he carried with him, according to the plea agreement.
The investigation found that no force was necessary, and that Jones hit the inmate so hard that the lever or trigger on the chemical spray can broke with the force of the blows and O.C. spray was dispersed throughout the cell.
Jones and the other unidentified officer then wrote false reports stating that inmate advanced on them in a way that justified force.
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