WALKER COUNTY, Ala. (WIAT) -- Walker County Sheriff Nick Smith spoke with CBS 42 about two WCSO deputies who were recently indicted for allegedly abusing Anthony "Tony" Mitchell during his arrest in 2023.
Mitchell was arrested in January of 2023 following a welfare check, where he reportedly fired a gun at deputies. Two weeks later, Mitchell died while in custody. In February of 2024, the Walker County Coroner's Office reported that Mitchell's death was ruled as a homicide caused by "medical neglect."
Since Mitchell's death, eight former employees of the jail, as well as a psychiatric nurse, have pleaded guilty to various crimes in the Mitchell case. A list of people who have pleaded guilty can be found here.
"Obviously, over the last two years, we're talking two years and two months, most of the individuals who have taken plea deals, they've been gone from the department," Smith said. "They resigned from the department in the early goings of all of this. I think there's a lot of misinformation that all these people are still working for the Sheriff's Office. They haven't worked at the Sheriff's Office in over two years."
Earlier this month, deputies Carl Loften Carpenter and James Matthew Handley were indicted on charges of deprivation of rights and witness tampering. Carpenter and Handley were placed on administrative leave pending a due process hearing. On Friday, Carpenter's attorney confirmed that Carpenter was admitted to the psychiatric ward at the VA Hospital in Tuscaloosa due to an "acute mental breakdown."
"Those last two indictments, yes, those were two people that were still employed with the Sheriff's Office," Smith said. "They've been put on administrative leave, which is policy and protocol. It will be determined at a later date whether that's with pay, without pay. Obviously, being that it's an ongoing investigation, it challenges us a little bit on giving them the proper due process. That's pretty much where I stand on it. This is a policy that's gone back 30 years."
Smith encouraged community members in Walker County to be patient as the case proceeds.
"Obviously, we want to resolve it so we can move forward. I know that the public wants a resolve to it, so we can just move together and heal as a community," Smith said.
"When an indictment comes about, discovery will about," he added. "And when that discovery comes about, I think that there will be a different side of the story. Like I said, there's always two sides of a story, and somewhere in the middle is the truth."