A former Alabama jail officer pleaded guilty in a case involving a mentally ill man who succumbed to hypothermia after spending two weeks naked in a concrete cell, The Associated Press reports. The officer, Joshua Conner Jones, entered into a plea agreement with prosecutors over the treatment of two prisoners at the Walker County jail. The plea agreement indicated there were five co-conspirators in the mistreatment that led to the 2023 death of prisoner Tony Mitchell, an indication that the investigation is ongoing and more people could be charged. The plea agreement said Mitchell, 33, died January 26, 2023, after being held in a concrete cell at the jail for two weeks. Mitchell entered a hospital emergency room with a body temperature of 72F (22C), according to a lawsuit filed by his mother.
The plea agreement said that the man “was almost always naked, wet, cold, and covered in feces while lying on the cement floor without a mat or blanket.” By the second week of incarceration, he was “largely listless and mostly unresponsive to questions from officers”, but the conspirators did not take action to alleviate his suffering. Prosecutors wrote in the plea agreement that Jones admitted that “collectively we did it. We killed him.” Mitchell, who had a history of drug addiction, was arrested after a cousin asked authorities to do a welfare check on him. Prosecutors wrote that when Mitchell’s deteriorating condition would be mentioned, the co-conspirators would reply that “‘he gets what he gets since he shot at cops’ or words to that effect”. Jones will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to deprive an inmate of their rights related to Mitchell’s death. He also pleaded guilty to a separate rights-deprivation count related to the assault of another inmate.
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