According to multiple reports received by EJI, Mikheal Gilliam, 28, was stabbed in a dormitory at Elmore Correctional Facility in Alabama on October 26. Mr. Gilliam was reportedly taken to a hospital but died of his injuries.
Mr. Gilliam is at least the ninth incarcerated person killed at Elmore in the past three years, and the third in the past 12 months. In six of the nine cases, no suspect has been publicly identified by the Alabama Department of Corrections. Only one person has been formally indicted for any of the nine homicides.
The lack of transparency and accountability for the murder of people in prison causes agony for their families, who are often left in the dark for years about what happened.
In letters and testimonials to legislators and the public, Alabama families have described being unable to reach prison staff after hearing their loved one may have died, not receiving autopsies or death certificates, and living with the pain of not knowing how their sons and brothers died.
Robbie Deason’s son, Nolan Deason, died at Fountain Correctional Facility in April 2025. He told AL.com that when a prison staffer called to tell him his son had died, “she notified me about his death like she was telling me to pick up my dry cleaners.” In the months since Nolan died, Robbie Deason has received no answers from prison officials, and the warden has not returned any of his calls.
Kerry Presnell’s son, Kerry Presnell Jr., was fatally beaten at Elmore in November 2024— months before he became eligible for parole. When ADOC announced Mr. Presnell’s death, they said only that he was found “behaving strangely” in a dormitory shower before being pronounced dead. Mr. Presnell told AL.com a captain hung up on him when he asked what happened.
Only after days and dozens of phone calls did a warden tell Mr. Presnell that his son had been beaten by a group of incarcerated men and collapsed in the bathroom. His family still had not received an autopsy report even six months after his death.
Statewide, at least nine people have been killed in Alabama prisons in the past 12 months. The prison crisis has now for its seventh year since the Justice Department notified ADOC that conditions within the state’s prisons are unconstitutional. A lawsuit against the state and ADOC remains ongoing.
The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.
Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons.