Alabama said he was too dangerous to parole. He’d been dead for 10 days.
On a spring day last year, the Alabama parole board split over the fate of Fredrick Bishop. But the board missed a key detail in the case: He was already dead.
www.al.com
Denied: Alabama's broken parole system
Alabama said he was too dangerous to parole. He’d been dead for 10 days.
- Published on Feb 01, 2024
Fredrick Bishop was dead when his parole hearing happened. AL.com photographed mugshots in a chair before the parole board, but Bishop's mugshot wasn't available after his death. This image shows a blank frame instead of his mugshot. (Photo Illustration/Tamika Moore) Tamika Moore | tmoore@al.com
By Ivana Hrynkiw | ihrynkiw@al.com and John Archibald | jarchibald@al.com
EDITOR'S NOTE
Last year, Alabama’s top prosecutor said the parole system is working, and “dangerous offenders are largely the only ones left behind bars.” Was he right? Thousands of people in Alabama lockups are eligible for parole, and each year fewer and fewer are freed. In this series, Denied: Alabama's broken parole system, AL.com highlights several recent cases. You can decide if Attorney General Steve Marshall was right when he said "there is simply nobody else to 'reform.'"
On a spring day last year, the Alabama parole board split over the fate of Fredrick Bishop. They voted 2-1 to send him back to prison. But the board members missed a key detail in the case.
The man was already dead.
Bishop, who was 55 and from Lineville, was serving 20 years in prison for a 2008 robbery conviction.
“Fredrick was a good boy,” his mother, Dorothy Jean Bishop, told AL.com last year.
He came up for parole in March of 2023, and two out of the three members at the time denied his release.
But Bishop had died 10 days earlier. He was incarcerated at Easterling Correctional Facility in Barbour County, and that’s where he was found unresponsive. Prison officials said he was taken to the prison’s healthcare unit and later died. The cause of death hasn’t been released.
He wasn’t actually set to appear in front of the board, anyway. Prisoners in Alabama don’t get to attend parole hearings where the board decides their fate in just minutes.
In fact, Bishop’s not the only prisoner to be ordered back to prison despite already being dead.
The victim and opposition side of the hearing room at the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles in Montgomery, Alabama, January 9, 2024. Tamika Moore | AL.com
Hearings are brief.Many prisoners lack representation, so no lawyer or family member even shows up to the hearing in downtown Montgomery. Those who do show up get just two minutes to speak. An inmate is reduced to pieces of paper, a list of check marks to grade their disciplinary record, severity of past offense, time served, and other factors.
And in 2023, the parole board looked at those forms and rejected nearly all of them, blocking release of all but 8% of the prisoners.
That’s despite the board’s own criteria showing about 80 percentwho came up for parole were recommended to be released. That’s despite a prison system at 168% capacity, a system so dangerously overcrowded it’s being sued by the Department of Justice for unconstitutional conditions.
Bishop’s mother, Dorothy Jean Bishop, said what happened to her son was incomprehensible.
“I can’t believe that,” said the 79-year-old. “But I believe it, because they don’t care.”
Fredrick Bishop died on Feb. 27, 2023. His parole hearing was on March 9.
DENIED: ALABAMA'S BROKEN PAROLE SYSTEM
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- Alabama has even stopped paroling the elderly: ‘They put us in there to die.’
- He missed a meeting with a parole officer. Alabama sent him back to prison for life.
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After members of the media called out the error, the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles communications director sent a statement: “Typically, inmates who are deceased are removed from the parole hearing docket; however, the Board was not aware at the time of the hearing that Bishop had recently passed away. "
“The Bureau apologizes for any confusion this may have caused interested parties and will continue to take steps to avoid this and similar situations in the future.”
Dorothy Jean Bishop sighed while talking to AL.com. “They don’t care about regular people.”
The day her son came up for parole, the board heard 22 cases. They granted just one.
“The people that are doing it are not human.”
Dorothy Jean Bishop, whose son died in prison before he was denied parole
In Alabama prisons, hundreds of people die each year. According to the latest available report from the prison system, which had numbers through September 2023, 337 death investigations had been opened during the fiscal year.
Brandon Clay Dotson met a similar fate as Fredrick Bishop. Dotson, 43, was found dead at Ventress Correctional Facility on November 16 – the same day as his parole hearing.
He, too, was denied.
Dotson died in prison, and his body was eventually returned to his family following an autopsy at the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. His family later discovered he had been returned without a heart.
There’s no clear data on how many inmates have a parole hearing after they die behind bars.
“What can be done about it?” asked Dorothy Jean Bishop. “Nothing?”
She said her son had a lot of friends. She said he was a really good athlete, and he was. Records show he was an all-state linebacker for 3A Lineville High School in 1984.
This image shows Alabama inmates who were up for parole in April 2023. That month, 299 were denied, 12 had their hearings continued and 40 were paroled. In this series, Denied: Alabama's broken parole system, AL.com highlights several recent cases. Justin Yurkanin | jyurkanin@al.com
He often wrote and called his mom. She had planned a trip down to see him, but he died before they got there. Had he been paroled earlier, she said, maybe he would have gotten to see his mom again.
“Some of them are not even human beings,” said Dorothy Jean Bishop of the board. “The people that are doing it are not human.”
This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.
