"We Feel Like Slaves."
As paroles drop to unprecedented lows, despair grows in Alabama’s minimum-security work centers.
BY BETH SHELBURNE, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, CAMPAIGN FOR SMART JUSTICE
Red Eagle Community Work Center was supposed to be the last stop before David Files came home. He’d been there for almost two years, building a positive work record through the menial jobs he was assigned- picking up trash, mowing grass, cleaning streets- each paid him just $2 a day. But David, who turned 40 on October 15, was glad to do the work because it allowed him outside the walls of jail or prison for the first time since he was 21-years old.
“I like to work, so I looked at it as an opportunity to get some fresh air and get in shape,” David told me on one of several phone calls we’ve had in the last few months. “I thought they were testing me to be released.”
In 2006, David was convicted of murder and received a life sentence with parole eligibility after 15 years. The case stemmed from the 2004 shooting death of his girlfriend, Carlie Little, an incident he maintains was accidental while they were under the influence of meth. The state presented a different theory, that David was angry and shot Carlie on purpose, based exclusively on testimony from witnesses, two who have now recanted their stories.
“Carlie lost her life that night because of my actions,” David wrote to me in a letter. “I hate myself for what happened so I can’t blame anyone for hating me. But it is also a fact that it was not intentional murder, but a very sad accident.”
David Files with his parents, David and Diane Files.
David has served the majority of his sentence in overcrowded and violent maximum and medium security prisons operated by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), so he was thrilled to be transferred to the minimum-security Red Eagle facility in 2018 after ADOC reduced his custody to the lowest level allowed for his conviction.
“Getting my custody dropped and moved to Red Eagle really created an expectation in me that they would grant me parole, especially because I was doing everything they asked me to do,” David said.
Instead, Alabama’s parole board denied David’s release at his parole hearing in February, and decided they would not consider him again until 2025, the maximum time allowed. This was all the more baffling to David and his family given his risk of reoffending. Two weeks before the hearing, David met with a parole officer who evaluated him and gave him a risk assessment score of zero, indicating the lowest possible risk that he would commit a new crime. The board’s reasons for denial were limited to factors that David cannot change- the severity of the offense and negative input from stakeholders.
“It really hurt, it damaged my faith,” David said. “I have questioned God because of this. I did everything required, but they still denied me and allowed the prosecutor to retry the case at my parole hearing. What more can I do to prove I deserve a second chance? No one can give me an answer on this.”
Red Eagle Work Center is a minimum-security facility located near Montgomery.
ADOC’s online description of Red Eagle’s mission is to “assist male inmates to reintegrate into society.” However in 2020, Alabama’s parole bureau could only identify one person among 237 incarcerated at Red Eagle that had been granted parole. An analysis of data shows parole releases from ADOC’s 11 minimum-security community work centers like Red Eagle have fallen 80 percent in the last three years, representing the most dramatic drop in paroles throughout the entire prison system, even compared to dwindling paroles in maximum and medium security facilities.
Parole releases at minimum-security work centers have fallen 80 percent in three years.
“This is causing a level of despair throughout the entire system we have never seen,” said Carmone Owens, Executive Director of 2nd Chance Lifesavers, a nonprofit organization focused on helping people re-enter society after prison. Owens said David is among hundreds of men and women who have fulfilled the guidelines for parole- keeping a clear prison record, taking classes, getting their custody reduced- but are still being denied based exclusively on their convictions. He testified in favor of David’s release at his parole hearing in February.
“The whole system has gotten away from its own mandates,” Owens said. “Traditionally, folks in a level 2 facility like Red Eagle have the highest probability of parole because they have the lowest custody. They have already been deemed by the system itself to be the lowest risk. There is absolutely no sense in keeping someone like David Files in a work center long term.”
The denied parole of David Files is just one example of a dramatic pivot away from paroles that’s occurred within Alabama’s parole agency in the last two years. David is one of dozens of men and women who have reached out to me in letters and phone calls after being denied parole.
Most of the men from Red Eagle were also denied based on the severity of their offense and negative input from stakeholders, no matter how much time they had served or how many programs they had completed in prison. The parole board seems stuck on looking at their past and not what they’ve done since they were convicted and sent to prison. It’s a reality these men did not anticipate when they entered minimum-custody, a status that used to mean you were one step away from going home.
Now facing at least five more years in ADOC custody, many of the men feel exploited and have grown suspicious of the prison system benefitting from their continued incarceration. Unlike ADOC’s work release centers, in which incarcerated people work for businesses and ADOC keeps 40 percent of their earnings, community-based work centers enter into agreements with city, county or state government agencies that pay ADOC varying amounts for the labor of incarcerated people, but ADOC only pays the workers $2 a day.
One contract obtained through an open records request between Red Eagle and Alabama’s Department of Transportation (AL-DOT) from April, 2019, showed AL-DOT paid Red Eagle $50 a day per worker to weed eat, put up signs and guard rails, and cut trees and limbs for a total of 18 days. The total price of the contract was $7,150. A $2 per day wage means workers would have been paid a mere $286 from this contract, allowing the facility to keep $6,894. David estimated that his $2 a day wage for what he calls “basically slave work” came out to between $35-$45 a month.
“A month’s pay doesn’t even last a week,” he said. “If you use that to buy some hygiene items and a few things to eat at the canteen, that whole month’s check is gone. No one is able to save money here. We feel like slaves. How can they say I’m fit enough to work out in the community for $2 a day, but I’m not fit to provide for my family or have a life? It doesn’t add up.”
A 2019 invoice Alabama’s Department of Transportation paid for labor from Red Eagle Work Center.
Since 2018, parole grants have fallen an unprecedented 87 percent and releases have dropped 74 percent. The results have been catastrophic inside Alabama’s already overcrowded prisons, which currently have the ninth highest death rate from COVID among correctional systems across the nation.
Since 2018, parole grants have fallen 87 percent and parole releases have fallen 73 percent.
In January 2020, the Campaign for Smart Justice forecasted in a report that Alabama’s prison population would continue to skyrocket unless parole hearings and grants dramatically increased. Despite our relentless reporting on the crisis throughout the year, the board continued to deny release to the vast majority of people eligible for parole.
HOW WE GOT HERE
The shift away from parole began in July, 2018 when Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall blamed the parole board after a man on parole was arrested for the murders of three people. Jimmy Spencer had served 29 years of a life sentence for second degree burglary and had been in and out of prison since 1984.
In November 2017, the parole board granted his parole, but in early 2018, Spencer left the halfway house where he was assigned to live as a condition of his parole. For reasons that have never been made public, his parole was not revoked when he left the halfway house and he was later arrested for the murders. In hindsight, Spencer’s case seems to highlight a problem with supervision rather than something the parole board could have foreseen. Regardless, the case created a noticeable chilling effect, with the board granting less than half as many paroles in the months after the murders.
The legislature responded by passing House Bill 380, a bill written by Marshall’s office and supported by Ivey. It gave the Governor new power over the structure of the parole board and allowed her to appoint the Executive Director, an administrative position that was previously merit-based and outside the pull of politics.
Ivey appointed retired Judge Charlie Graddick, a former Alabama attorney general who had long supported harsh sentencing and opposed programs that allowed for early release from prison. Graddick recently resigned after serving just over one year, but under his leadership the number of parole hearings and grants fell to historic lows. On November 17, Ivey tapped Republican Senator Cam Ward to replace Graddick. Ward was one of the sponsors of the 2018 parole legislation and over the last five years, established himself as the legislative leader on criminal justice and prison reform. His first day on the job was December 7.
The undercurrent to Graddick’s appointment came in April, 2019, when the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) found ADOC prisons to be unconstitutionally violent and overcrowded and issued a scathing report. It pointed to Alabama’s exceptionally high incarceration rate as a major contributor to the crisis, the fourth highest in the nation and much higher than surrounding southern states. Graddick was the architect of Alabama’s merciless habitual felony offender law and in the past, had publicly called for harsher prison conditions. Ivey’s choice of Graddick just two months after the DOJ findings seemed at total odds with the recommendations to reform the system.
STORIES FROM RED EAGLE
Gregory Rogers, 72, was denied parole in July despite serving 33 years in prison for a 1987 second degree burglary in Etowah County. He was sentenced to 50 years under Alabama’s habitual offender law because he had prior convictions from New York including forgery and selling drugs. He told me the parole board cited his institutional conduct as one reason they denied his parole, but his last disciplinary infraction was in 2014, over five years ago.
Gregory told me on a phone call that before his parole hearing, he was accepted into a halfway house program that could line him up with a job. “I had my ducks in a row,” he said. He was looking forward to spending time with some of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom he has never met. He’ll be 76 the next time he’s considered for parole, but somehow, he maintains a positive attitude.
“I can’t let bitterness overwhelm me,” he said. “I know the system is unfair, but I have to deal with my time in a positive way.”
Michael Tolbert is another man that contacted me after he was denied parole. Before all the changes that occurred in 2018, Michael applied for a “parole cut,” which meant he could be considered for parole earlier than the 15 years required for his 25-year sentence, if the agency decided he met the criteria.
He submitted the list of achievements he’d made in prison- he’d gotten baptized, completed dozens of classes, and like David Files, ADOC had lowered his custody so he could work in minimum-security work centers. The parole board must have been impressed with his prison record, because they agreed to consider him seven years early. But when Michael’s parole hearing came in February 2018, the board turned around and denied his release, setting him off five years. Michael experienced what felt like whiplash- extreme disappointment after getting his hopes up when the board granted him early consideration.
“My cut didn’t mean a thing,” Michael said. “I doubt that they even looked at my jacket (prison record). I think they already had made up their mind before my hearing.”
HB 380 tightened up the rules surrounding parole cuts, requiring people like Michael, who was convicted of a Class A offense, to serve 85 percent of their sentence or 15 years, whichever is less. It also added strict oversight of granting early parole, giving the Governor and Attorney General the right to object in any case. All of these new rules narrow the possibilities for men inside facilities like Red Eagle, adding to a changed psychology inside the work centers that used to be one of hope, but has moved to despair.
“It’s been very hard because we’re used to going to work, but now we can’t even do that because of COVID,” said Michael. “Everyone is feeling uncertain. I am trying to find positive things to do with my time, but being cooped up inside of one building with so many complex attitudes, it’s difficult. I’ve been praying a lot.”
DAVID’S PAROLE HEARING
David Files was hopeful about his chances for parole until he heard about Graddick’s appointment. He knew Graddick’s reputation as a “lock-em-up” prosecutor and even though Graddick was not a voting member of the parole board, David feared Governor Ivey naming him as executive director of the bureau signaled a new, ruthless era in which making parole would be next to impossible for people like him with a violent conviction.
David became eligible for parole in July, 2019, but because of a massive backlog within the agency, the bureau did not set his hearing until February 11, 2020, six months after he became eligible. With his parent’s help, he’d lined up a “home plan” and a spot in the re-entry program 2nd Chance Lifesavers, directed by Carmone Owens, which would provide transitional housing and programs to help David find a job. He hadn’t received a disciplinary in prison since 2015 when he got caught with a cell phone.
John Covington testified in favor of David’s parole. Covington, a Tuscaloosa business owner, met David at Bibb Correctional Facility when Covington volunteered with a prison ministry group, teaching a 12-week course at the prison that allowed him to get to know the men in his class.
“David is a very spiritual young man who has been through a transformation,” Covington told me. “He’s a good guy. I would feel very comfortable with David living in my neighborhood.”
Covington had never testified at a parole hearing, but decided to speak up for David because he believed David deserved the chance to start a life outside prison. At the hearing, Covington sat with David’s supporters, including his parents, David and Diane Files, plus Carmone Owens and an attorney the family had hired. Covington told the parole board that David served as an informal leader in the class he taught, and was no longer the young man who struggled with drug addiction before he came to prison.
Once David’s supporters had spoken for him, they sat and listened to the other side, beginning with William Dill, the attorney who prosecuted David. Dill spoke dramatically, recounting the details of David’s crime, telling the parole board that David should remain locked up for life because he is a danger to the community.
Carmone Owens, who regularly attended parole hearings before they were closed due to COVID, told me he’d never witnessed a prosecutor review a crime in such horribly graphic detail at a parole hearing.
“He did closing arguments all over again,” Owens said. “Nobody will deserve parole if you retry the case. The criminal case against David Files has already been litigated and the man was convicted and sentenced to prison. This had nothing to do with determining whether he’d done enough behind the fence to warrant a second chance.”
Owens believes the parole board needs a stricter structure for hearings in order to improve the process for the people being considered.
“There needs to be time limits and restrictions on what can be presented,” Owens said. “The whole culture of the parole board needs to change and the mission needs to be clearly defined.”
Covington was also perplexed by the events of the hearing.
“I think he just totally buffaloed the parole board,” Covington said of Dill’s testimony. “He hadn’t seen David Files in two decades, but he portrayed him as the guy he was 20 years ago, and that’s not who he is.”
When I contacted Covington, six months had passed since David was denied parole. Covington had reflected on the hearing and was left with lingering dissatisfaction about the process and the outcome. He deduced the duty of the parole board to a single yet complicated question: had David Files been punished enough?
In Covington’s estimation, the mere fact that David was eligible for parole meant some metrics in the system pointed to yes, he had been punished enough. Covington also knows David, and does not believe David is a threat to society, based on the months he spent teaching him in an intimate setting.
“The whole culture of the parole board needs to change and the mission needs to be clearly defined.
“I think he’s been redeemed and if you have any belief in redemption, then you believe people can do this,” he said.
Yet at the parole hearing, the victim’s mother and sister expressed their views that David had not been punished enough based exclusively on the pain of their loss.
“He has all these things that he’s getting to do and I just don’t think it’s fair,” the sister of the victim said.
“I just feel like he needs to be where he is and stay there,” the victim’s mother added.
Board members deliberated for a few minutes and then announced their decision to deny David’s parole. Before the hearing, the bailiff told David’s parents that once the board announced its decision, the hearing was over and they were not allowed to react, so they quietly filed out of the hearing room and prepared to drive back to Walker County. About 30 minutes later, David called them from the prison and they told him the news.
“He wasn’t surprised,” remembered Diane Files. “He actually took it a lot better than we did. We were totally devastated when he got turned down.”
“We were totally devastated when he got turned down.”
Diane and David Files Sr.
Covington sums up the overarching dilemma of whether or not to grant parole this way:
“If the board didn’t give David parole because they think he’s a menace to society, then they made a mistake, but if it was because they think he hasn’t been punished enough, how do they make that determination?”
According to state law and the parole board’s own guidelines, the board members may use all of the factors presented at the hearing in making the determination- a person’s risk assessment, prison record, testimony from supporters and those opposed to release and the facts of the crime. But state law also leaves a lot of room for how much weight to give those factors. While the statute says parole guidelines “shall promote the use of prison space for the most violent and greatest risk offenders,” it also allows that “the decision concerning parole release shall be at the complete discretion of the board.”
In other words, if an Alabama parole board wants to deny release to essentially everyone with a violent conviction, it absolutely can and there is no process or mechanism available to challenge those decisions.
David’s Crime, Trial and Incarceration
David Files grew up in Walker County and before he was arrested for Carlie Little’s murder, he’d never been in trouble with the law. The two met in 1999 when David was a senior in high school, around the time he began experimenting with drugs, first marijuana and drinking, then pills. David said he and Carlie began dating and fell in love. She became pregnant while she was still in high school and David said Carlie moved in with him at his parent’s home while he worked two jobs trying to save money.
“I am ashamed to admit that during this time I was also selling drugs,” he wrote in a letter.
Their daughter was born in December, 2000 and the three moved into a trailer on Carlie’s family property in 2001. David was working, but also using oxycontin. Soon, he said he and Carlie both began using crystal meth and they were quickly addicted.
“It seemed everything started to get crazy and out of control,” David wrote. “I was using and selling and started receiving threatening phone calls. We were afraid someone was trying to kill us.”
David’s parents also received threatening phone calls and were worried sick about their son and his family. David said during this time, he and Carlie would stop using drugs for short periods of time, but couldn’t manage to sustain their sobriety or get their lives under control.
“We know so much more about meth addiction now than we did when I was on trial,” David said. “The level of irrational thoughts and paranoia it causes is unreal.”
The night Carlie died, they were both using meth, and David said he hadn’t been to sleep for several days. While they were high, they spotted lights flickering in the woods around their trailer that looked like flashlights. David and Carlie sat in the dark and watched for the flashlights out the window, his shotgun and 9mm handgun nearby. He remembers eventually telling Carlie to go to the back bedroom with their daughter and stay there, her nodding and leaving the room.
David doesn’t know how long he watched out the window with his face pressed against the wall. It was quiet, until he heard a clicking noise inside the trailer. He thought someone was trying to break into the window of the trailer’s middle bedroom, so he grabbed the shotgun and went down the hall. David remembers his heart pounding and when he heard what sounded like the blinds bouncing off the window in the bedroom, he turned into the doorway and fired off three shots.
“I reached over and turned the light on and seen that it was Carlie who had been kneeling at the window and she was dead,” he wrote in a letter. “I dropped the gun and ran to her crying her name over and over but she was dead. To this day I will never be able to forgive myself for what happened.”
The next three and a half years leading up to David’s trial were a blur, most of it spent in the Walker County jail. The district attorney in Walker County recused himself from the case because a relative was dating David’s sister, so a prosecutor from the attorney general’s office, William Dill, took over. The court appointed two attorneys to represent David, but he only saw them twice during the years he was in jail awaiting trial. His family decided to raise money to hire a private attorney, but he ended up being a terrible disappointment.
At the trial, the state called numerous witnesses who testified that David was abusive to Carlie, but there was no record of abuse- no past arrests, no medical records and no evidence from the autopsy of past injuries. David’s attorney never objected to this testimony and did not call any expert witness to dispute the allegations. David and his family had not seen it coming.
“The state had free rein to paint a false picture of domestic violence and unhappiness, making me out to be a low-life monster,” David said. “It was really hard for me to sit there and listen to that.”
David decided to take the stand, but in hindsight, he was not prepared. He told the jury everything that happened- the drugs, the threats and paranoia, him mistakenly shooting Carlie who he thought was in the back bedroom. Dill aggressively cross examined David for several hours, “he took me behind the woodshed,” David remembered, at one point ordering David to point the gun at him while Dill knelt on the floor. Even recounting this memory of the trial was difficult for David, who became choked up as he told me what happened.
“The sad thing is I had faith in the justice system,” David said. “I believed I would go into that courtroom and the truth would prevail. I had no idea I was about to get blindsided with so much false testimony. It was not about justice or the truth, it was about getting me convicted.”
The jury deliberated for about three hours and found David guilty of murder. Since then he has filed numerous appeals, including a motion for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence after two witnesses for the state recanted their testimony in sworn affidavits and said they were paid by the victim’s mother to lie on the stand.
“I had never seen David be abusive to Carlie,” one witness stated. “All I had seen him do was be loving towards her.”
Despite this, the courts have denied all of David’s appeals. His family has spent tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys and their resources have dwindled. When David was first arrested he was 21-years old, today he is 40. His parents have talked to lawmakers to no avail, but continue to relentlessly advocate for their son.
“We have lived with lies for over 18 years,” said David Files, Sr. “We just want the truth to come out because this has always been more about revenge against David than justice for Carlie.”
When David first went to prison he was angry and scared, and continued to use drugs when he could get them behind bars. He was hit with a lock during a fight at Draper Prison and his jaw was broken. On another occasion, he was hit in the head with a walking cane and bears a scar on his forehead from the assault. He felt hopeless and adrift, caught up in the violence and substance use so common in Alabama prisons.
“For a stretch I just about gave up,” he told me, “but finally, I just got tired. I was in lockup at St. Clair and flushed my drugs down the toilet in the cell. I prayed, really for the first time with my whole heart. I truly surrendered to God and that’s when things started to change for me.”
David was transferred to Bibb Correctional Facility and accepted into a program called “transformational ministry,” where he met John Covington and began to build positive relationships inside prison. When he graduated from the program, he was assigned the job of “healthcare runner,” where he fell in love with hospice work and caring for men as they were dying.
“I grew spiritually in that process and it brought me peace,” David said. “Not to say I’ve turned into some kind of saint,” he added. “I’m not perfect, I’ve had bumps in the road, but I’m a different person. I’m not the same person who came here that was using drugs.”
Carmone Owens recognized David’s transformation and believes that kind of evolution in prison should carry more weight in the parole decision than the facts of a crime.
“He was a criminogenic substance abuser coming into prison,” Owens said, “but the key thing to see is that after maturing and taking programs and being in a structured environment, you can see David was no longer getting disciplinaries. He changed and started to follow the rules, and that’s not easy. You are at a decided disadvantage in Alabama prisons when you want to toe the line.”
Owens also recognized the arbitrary nature of parole decisions that ebb and flow with the political bent of each board. Owens served eight years in Alabama prisons for a 35-year sentence for robberies, but was paroled early in 2015.
“I shudder to think if I came up now, I would not have made parole,” he told me. “And if David Files would have come up two years ago, he would have been a slam dunk.”
“What more can I do to prove I deserve a second chance? No one can give me an answer on this.”
For David, the denial of parole and the reality that he won’t be considered for another five years are not the hardest things about all the recent developments. He told me the most painful aspect of what came out of his parole hearing is that his daughter will no longer speak to him. She was 14-months old when her mother died and her father was arrested for murder. David said throughout his incarceration, he’s worked to build a relationship with his daughter and months before his parole hearing, they had spoken on the phone. Since attending the hearing, she told David’s family she doesn’t want to see him again and they haven’t spoken or written.
“That right there was devastating,” David said. “I can accept being denied parole, but turning my daughter away from me based on lies hurt worse than anything. It took my whole incarceration to establish my relationship with her and that was destroyed in a 30-minute hearing. I pray the truth can come out and God can help me repair the damage that’s been done.”
Beth Shelburne is an investigative reporter for the Campaign for Smart Justice with the ACLU of Alabama. For investigative reporting on Alabama’s prison and pardons & paroles systems, follow her on Twitter at @bshelburne.