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5th former Ala. CO to plead guilty in inmate’s 2023 death

The coroner ruled Anthony Mitchell’s death a homicide, citing hypothermia and sepsis “resulting from infected injuries obtained during incarceration and medical neglect”

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Photo/Maranda Mitchell via AP

By Howard Koplowitz
al.com

WALKER COUNTY, Ala. — A fifth former Walker County corrections officer has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the 2023 death of inmate Anthony “Tony” Mitchell, according to federal court records.

Grayson Colin Woods, who worked the night shift for a portion of Mitchell’s two-week confinement, has agreed to plead guilty to deprivation of rights under color of law, according to the agreement filed Thursday in federal court in Jasper.

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. Subsequent court documents have detailed the horrific conditions of his time in the jail and death.

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.”

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Woods, who believed Mitchell wasn’t in “his right mind” because the inmate wasn’t lucid, wasn’t eating and “regularly appeared to be covered in feces” while in the jail, approached an unnamed nurse and other jailers about the conditions of Mitchell’s cell. The nurse told him, according to the agreement, that the jail’s command staff ordered Mitchell to be in a cell described in court filings as “essentially a cement box with a small grate on the floor that opens into a hole for fluids to drain from the cell.”

Woods should have done more, according to the agreement.

He “contacted no one other than a fellow jailer, his shift Lieutenant, and Nurse #1, despite realizing that they were unable or unwilling to meet Individual # 1 ‘s most basic needs. At the time that he approached Nurse # 1, who abdicated responsibility for Individual # 1 ‘s welfare, he recognized that Individual # 1 was likely going to continue to be denied his basic human needs for the duration of his detention,” the agreement stated. “Woods was so certain that Nurse # 1 abdicated her responsibilities that he lied in an official proceeding to protect her, falsely claiming that he could not remember which nurse he consulted, when in fact he had a clear recollection.

“As such, defendant Woods did not take reasonable steps to alert appropriate authorities about the objectively harmful conditions of [Mitchell’s] confinement,” the agreement signed by Woods went on to say. “Instead, he sought to avoid scrutiny from Jail managers by joining others in the jail who permitted [Mitchell] to suffer from the cruel conditions under which he was housed.”

Woods is the fifth former jailer at the Walker County lockup to plead guilty in connection with Mitchell’s death.

On Monday, Heather Lasha Craig agreed to plead guilty to deprivation of rights under color of law while Bailey Ganey, a former corrections officer who witnessed Mitchell’s deterioration over his two-week confinement, will plead guilty to conspiracy against rights.

In August, jailers Karen Kim Elsie Kelly and Joshua “Conner Jones — pleaded guilty in the case.

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