PUNT BAMA PUNT

“To me, it's been interesting to put side by side. The conditions that Judge Johnson described in his 1976 order and the conditions that the Department of Justice described in their [2019] report. There are very, very eerie similarities. It's just like it was in 1976, only the population is significantly greater.”

— John Carroll, former judge and lawyer who represented inmates during a class-action lawsuit in the 1980s

Judge Frank M. Johnson was well-known, famous for his rulings in support of the civil rights movement, and deemed “the most hated man in Alabama” by the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1976, his attention turned to the state’s prison system.

Judge Johnson issued a landmark opinion detailing horrific violence and calling for drastic change.

He wrote, “the conditions in which Alabama prisoners must live … create an atmosphere in which inmates are compelled to live in constant fear of violence, in imminent danger to their physical well-being, and without opportunity to seek a more promising future.”

The ruling led to more than a decade of federal intervention in Alabama’s prison system. 

Today, Alabama is back in federal court for nearly the same reasons.

Episode 2 of Deliberate Indifference recounts the bitter battle that unfolded almost 50 years ago and how it was shaped by a history of racism and forced labor.

“Getting Blacks to be criminalized was actually not that hard because whites controlled the police force, the sheriff’s department, the courts. And they would convict them oftentimes of quite minor charges.” 

— Bob Corley, retired history professor in Birmingham

“I do think a federal judge has no business running a state institution such as prisons and schools and mental institutions. But the state has defaulted in those areas or the federal judge wouldn't find it necessary to step in.”

— Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. speaking with Bill Moyers in 1980