Alabama Denies Parole to Dead Prisoner
Having granted release to a whopping 3% of eligible state prisoners so far in 2024—that’s 25 parole grants out of 792 hearings—the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles (BPP) likely surprised no one when it denied release to Frederick Bishop on March 9, 2024. But the callousness with which BPP casually extends incarceration for so many in the state’s absurdly dangerous prisons came into full view that day because Bishop had died 12 days earlier at Easterling Correctional Facility on February 27, 2024.
That’s right: Alabama denied parole to a dead prisoner.
Bishop, 55, had already been paroled once from a 20-year sentence for a 2008 robbery conviction, but a probation violation returned him to prison in 2018. After he was found unresponsive in his cell, he was transferred to the prison healthcare unit, where he was pronounced dead. An unnamed source at the state Department of Corrections (DOC) said the death was a suspected drug overdose. His mother, Dorothy Jean Bishop, 79, attempted charity at first, saying of BPP, “I can’t believe they did that.” Then she stopped and corrected herself.
“I believe it,” she said. “Because they don’t care.”
An Institutional Parole Officer should have conducted an interview with Bishop on February 7, 2024, 30 days before his hearing. It’s unclear if that interview took place, though. It’s also unclear whether DOC hadn’t updated its database or BPP simply failed to check it. Carla Crowder, Executive Director of Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, said it wasn’t surprising if BPP was in the dark about Bishop’s death, “given that [DOC] does not consistently inform Alabama families when their incarcerated loved ones pass away.”
With 32 prisoner deaths in the first 74 days of 2024, DOC is below the blistering pace it kept in 2023, when 270 prisoners died. But it’s not much better, and there is a lot of 2024 to go. For its part, BPP issued an apology “for any confusion this may have caused interested parties.” It also misspelled Bishop’s name.
Sources: Alabama Political Reporter, Birmingham News
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