Cason Helms, 41, was killed at Elmore Correctional Facility in central Alabama on Sunday. According to multiple reports received by EJI, Mr. Helms was beaten to death in an attack by a group of other incarcerated men.
Mr. Helms is the ninth person killed in an Alabama prison in as many months.
Five of these homicides have occurred at Elmore. In addition to Mr. Helms, Mikheal Gilliam died on October 30 after being stabbed four days earlier, Eric Sanders was beaten to death in a dormitory on December 9, and Damon Calhoun and Londell Nunn Jr. were stabbed to death on January 15.
Researchers at EJI have documented more than 100 homicides of incarcerated people inside Alabama’s prisons since 2019.
Elmore Correctional Facility has a longstanding pattern of serious violence that includes violence between incarcerated people as well as fatal beatings executed or instigated by correctional officers.
Violence at Elmore and other Alabama prisons is fueled by an underground economy in drugs, weapons, and other contraband (often brought in by staff) where extortion is commonplace and violence is used to collect debts.
Combined with a lack of officer supervision, these factors have led to a sharp rise in violence at Elmore. Assaults doubled between 2021 and 2025 and the prison’s homicide rate from 2023 to 2025 was more than 20 times the national average homicide rate in state prisons.
In 2019, the Justice Department notified state officials and the Alabama Department of Corrections that its “inability to control the flow of contraband into and within the prisons, including illegal drugs and weapons; and ineffective prison management and training” had contributed to an unconstitutionally “high level of violence.”
Despite this warning, violence in Alabama’s prisons continued to increase, leading the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to compel the state to improve the safety of its prisons. In a court filing, federal prosecutors wrote in 2021 that since it notified Alabama that it was violating the Constitution, “prisoners at Alabama’s Prisons for Men have continued daily to endure a high risk of death, physical violence, and sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners.”
The Justice Department determined in 2021 that Alabama’s failure to comply with constitutional requirements voluntarily had made “judicial action…necessary to remedy the violations of law identified…and to vindicate the rights of the individuals incarcerated in Alabama’s prisons for men.”
Since that time, ADOC has spent millions of dollars on lawyers to defend its unconstitutional practices in court.