Family has unanswered questions about the death of a loved one in an Alabama prison

Clinton Willard Bridges had served 14 years of a 20-year sentence for burglary and theft. He called his parents and other family members every day from St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Alabama, until his calls to home stopped in early September.

Concerned that something was wrong, Mr. Bridges' parents repeatedly called the prison asking for information about their son's welfare. After days of trying, Mr. Bridges' mother reached someone in prison who told her he could not release any information about her son because his death was under investigation. That was how she found out for the first time that her son was dead. She started screaming.

The prison has not provided the Bridges family with information about how their son died or even when he died, nor has it responded to their requests for his belongings. The only call the grieving family received from prison was from an official urging them to submit an “inmate donation form” at their own expense so that the prison could use the last penny in Mr. Bridges' account for a prison fund .

Clinton Bridges was 39 years old and the family was not given a cause of death. Alabama law requires Autopsies in all cases of unnatural deaths, but the Alabama Department of Corrections did not perform an autopsy. Instead, they sent his body to his family for burial.

The ADOC's failure to perform an autopsy in Mr. Bridges' death followed earlier protests from families over the shocking discovery that organs had been removed from incarcerated people during autopsies without consent.

The director of the Bridges family funeral home stopped the burial process after observing signs of severe trauma, including stab wounds to Clinton Bridges' neck and bruises all over his body. The undertaker called the police and asked why an autopsy had not been performed.

Mr Bridges' body was then taken from the funeral home for an autopsy. A month later, the results of the autopsy were not shared with the family and no cause of death was given. The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences reports that the case remains under investigation.

Clinton Bridges' family members now believe their loved one was beaten and tortured before his death, but ADOC will not acknowledge this tragedy.

Alabama prisons have seen a sharp rise in mortality in recent years, with 2022 and 2023 each setting new annual records for the most deaths among prison inmates. This is due in large part to the increase in deaths from non-natural causes such as homicides, suicides and drug overdoses.

According to ADOC statistics reports, 87 of 275 (32%) Alabama prison deaths in 2022 were due to homicide, suicide or drug overdose.

In 2023, when the total number of deaths in the state's prisons rose to 326, at least 136 (42%) were recorded as unnatural deaths, three were recorded as having an undetermined cause, and 42 were still under investigation.

In St. Clair, where 28 incarcerated deaths occurred in 2023, at least 43% were confirmed to be due to unnatural causes – two homicides, two suicides and eight drug overdoses – while in one case the cause of death could not be determined.