It's an unimaginable situation an Andalusia pastor and his wife found themselves in last October when they learned their son had been stabbed to death inside Donaldson prison.
That’s the unimaginable situation an Andalusia pastor and his wife found themselves in last October when they learned their son had been stabbed to death inside Donaldson prison.
“We watch the news and we see what he’s talking about as they’re showing it on TV what’s going on in Donaldson,” says Alfagus Smith, Denarieya “DL” Smith’s dad. “In our mind, we got a son up there. That’s what’s on our mind all the time, it could happen to him. The main concern, even though he was there and we talked to him, the main concern on the back of my mind was ‘when are we gonna get this call’?’ You’re scared, you’re scared.
“I fell out the bed on the floor hollering “no,” remembers Linda Smith, DL’s mother. “I just couldn’t believe it. It’s heartbreaking, don’t understand why this had to happen to him. I just walked around in a daze for the next few days really.” “They’re people too, and although they’re there to serve a sentence, they’re not sentenced to death,” says Joel Caldwell, the Smith family’s attorney.
DL Smith was one of at least 89 inmates who died in just the last 3 months of 2022. The Alabama Department of Corrections says 225 inmates died in the fiscal year that ended last September, but that’s all they will say about deaths as they’ve now changed their policy on reporting inmate deaths. They’re now leaving it up to a legislative committee to release death numbers for the system - a committee that hasn’t met since 2019.
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