‘Sunshine is the best antiseptic:’ How AL.com helped free hundreds behind bars

By Challen Stephens & Ivana Hrynkiw, AL.com

It’s not easy to make a dent when reporting on Alabama prisons. The system is jam-packed, cruel and deadly. Reform tends to happen only when the state is forced by the courts.

But in 2024, something surprising happened. 

After we began reporting on the bottleneck at the state parole board, the system began to change. The public took notice. Lawmakers from both parties demanded answers. More lawyers and nonprofits began to attend parole hearings, asking that people be released.

And early last year, two of the three parole board members began to do just that, freeing more and more prisoners — letting hundreds of people charged with nonviolent crimes out of a dangerous system where overcrowding, according to a current DOJ lawsuit, fuels murder and rape that is “too common, cruel, of an unusual nature, and pervasive.”

We knew Alabama’s prisons were at nearly double capacity and violent. We had covered the federal government’s challenge of the prisons as unconstitutionally dangerous. We knew we needed to do something. And we searched for something new, something readers in Alabama did not already know about their prisons. After months we found a new development at the tail end of a bottlenecked system. 

We learned that the parole board was now denying most everyone a second chance and found astounding tales. The board denied parole to a burglar who had become quadriplegic in prison. They denied people who had grown marijuana in the 80s and a man who shoplifted a nail gun. They denied the elderly and the dying. They denied parole to people otherwise let out to work at McDonald’s and Dairy Queen during the day. In one case, they even denied a man who had died a week earlier. 

Alabama in 2017 paroled 54% of eligible inmates. But under new leadership, paroles fell to just 8% by 2023. That’s despite the parole board’s own guidelines suggesting more than 80% of the prisoners should qualify for a second chance.

None of this was easy. We had to do dogged records reporting and navigate prison interviews, to tell personal stories of treatment that was neither just nor fiscally responsible. The state did not compile data on parole votes by board members or parole rates by race, age or types of crime. We compiled that by attending meetings and collaborating with others who did the same. We convinced people still in state custody and at risk of repercussion to share their stories. 

We also found state prosecutors misrepresented cases before the parole board, and were given wide latitude to make their case, while prisoners are not permitted to attend their own hearings. We detailed how a lawyer from the attorney general’s office officially opposed the parole of an inmate at one hearing, even while acknowledging to the board that “I kind of believe he has shown he could be worthy of parole.”

We also told personal stories that show how Alabama profits from loaning out prisoners to fast food chains, keeping 40% of each paycheck, and then denying parole.

We took a unique approach to the overall structure of the project, drawing inspiration from Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who in an opinion piece declared that Alabama prisons housed only dangerous criminals and “there is simply nobody else to ‘reform.’” 

We wondered: What would happen if we tested that theory and let readers decide? 

We knew from past efforts that features about individual prisoners would not work alone, as Alabama readers in the past have had little appetite for that kind of reporting. And deeper investigative pieces on prisons are often ignored, as it’s an accepted fact that Alabama prisons are overcrowded, understaffed and deadly. So we decided to combine the two, each reinforcing the other, to both explain what was happening while also allowing readers to decide for themselves what they thought about it.

We chose narrowly focused investigative pieces, with clear takeaways and new information. We started in January with a deep dive on the change in parole board voting patterns. And we traced the changes back to a single person, the new chair: former state prosecutor Leigh Gwathney. At the same time, we launched a series of profiles, the Faces of the Denied, on prisoners who did not get a second chance.

We continued alternating features and investigative pieces throughout the year.

The connection to Alabama readers surprised us. We had planned to run a handful of profiles and investigative pieces over two months. But the immediate impact led us to continue all year. 

We saw instant interest from Republicans and Democrats alike — a good indicator of impact in Alabama. And we saw emotional responses from readers with no obvious link to prisons, people who just have an interest in the state or maybe in fairness. 

Families attended packed hearings to ask why their relatives died or were murdered in prison while awaiting parole. Lawmakers of both parties demanded to know why the board wasn’t letting anyone out. The profiles of the denied were some of our most read and shared stories.

“I don’t know what they want him to do,” pleaded one mother, as her son was again denied parole despite a clean record in prison and at his job at Dairy Queen. 

Even victims’ families offered forgiveness and asked for release. Brenda Trammer pleaded with the board to release the men serving time for her son’s killing under Alabama’s accomplice liability law.  

“I have no faith in that parole board thing,” she said.

The board rejected the very notion of forgiveness. Barbara Eckes said in a 2021 affidavit that she forgave the man who killed her son. But, the board wouldn’t listen. 

“Every time I called an official from the state of Alabama, I was met with resistance because my family and I have chosen to forgive Mr. Layton and our hope is that he will be granted parole and given a second chance at a good life,” she said.

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2017, even went to argue with the parole board.

“People want justice,” Moore said. “They want bad people to stay in, they want people that are worthy of parole to get out. That’s the system. 

That’s what it’s supposed to be. But that’s not what it’s been.

“What it’s been is a representative of the attorney general’s office controlling the parole board in my opinion.”

Almost immediately, the broken system began to change: 

• Two of the three parole board members began to change their voting patterns, opting to let more people out of prison.
• Alabama’s parole rate rose to 20% in the month after the first article, and finished 2024 at 20%, according to data from the Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. That comes out to roughly 250 more people getting out of prison last year than in 2023.
• Criticisms and concerns of the parole system poured in from both sides of the aisle. In a rare move, two former chief justices of the Alabama Supreme Court, one Democrat and one Republican, separately went to Montgomery and argued with the board chair for the release of inmates.
• Lawmakers held hearings and demanded answers. They said reporting increased public scrutiny on an issue lawmakers were already tracking. 

“This sort of accountability has changed things,” State Rep. Chris England said last summer. 

We continue to see some of the people we featured find lawyers or get new hearings that result in their release from prison. State lawmakers, prisoners, lawyers and even a former state supreme court chief justice have credited AL.com’s series.

“There’s an old phrase that sunshine is the best antiseptic,” said former Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb. “The sunshine that AL.com has brought upon the decisions by the Alabama parole board chair exemplifies this old adage.”

In Alabama, prison reform tends to happen only through legal intervention. 

Alabama only stopped chaining prisoners to a hitching post when blocked in 2002; Alabama adopted prison doctors when forced to in 2004. And Alabama only stopped male guards from patrolling women’s showers after a federal investigation in 2014. 

But something unusual happened around paroles in 2024, after our reporting. Things improved without a court order or federal intervention. People who had served their time began getting out of prison again, even if the parole board chairperson continued to vote “no” on almost every case.

Gwathney, the chair and former prosecutor, never agreed to speak with AL.com about our reporting. But she appeared to single out AL.com during one unusual parole hearing. At one point, she said that the board takes time to research each case. Gwatheny also talked about how the board’s files are secret, but many victims write to them and are unable to take the time to show up at hearings in order to oppose an inmate’s release. She spoke about the price of gas needed to attend a board hearing. “Well, I bet AL.com can imagine that it’s a tough world out there, right?” 

The other two board members offered no public criticism in 2024, as they began to vote against Gwathney and release more eligible inmates. 

Halfway through last year, we went back to Marshall to ask whether he still stood by his position that there was no one left to reform in Alabama prisons. 

His office said: “We do not have anything further to add as we disagree with the premise of every article you have written on the topic.” He did not reply to AL.com after that.

In May of this year, Marshall announced he was running for the U.S. Senate.

And in July, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, over objections from Marshall, removed Gwathney from the parole board. Ivey said she was appointing a “tough-on-crime, fair and pro-law enforcement candidate with leadership experience” to replace Gwathney.

Hal Nash, the new chair, on his first day issued a statement mentioning his belief that reform is possible, “While remembering that people can choose to change for the better, this task will require weighing the safety of all the citizens of Alabama first. 

“I pray for the wisdom to recognize both as I strive to serve the very best I can.”