Alabama's Executions Are Done By Guards With Violent Histories

As the leader of Alabama’s execution team, Brandon McKenzie is sometimes the last person to touch a prisoner while they’re still alive. He has played a key role in executions, directing a team of around a dozen prison guards on execution nights and performing tasks that can impact how long it takes for someone to die or whether they feel pain.

Alabama prison officials gave McKenzie these responsibilities even after a prisoner accused the guard of smashing his head through a window, then driving him head-first into a concrete floor.

The injuries McKenzie inflicted were severe and lasting, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the prisoner, Lawrence Phillips, in May 2020. Phillips lost consciousness and was taken from Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore to a Mobile hospital. Medical records show he was treated for bleeding in his brain and received sutures, staples, and a neck brace.

“I’ve not been the same since, and my memory fades in and out at the time,” Phillips wrote in his complaint. “I have nightmares, accompanied with post traumatic stress from the fears of this happening to me again.”

McKenzie, who was promoted to captain two months after Phillips filed the lawsuit, claimed that he was acting in self-defense; attorneys from the state who represented the officer wrote in a legal filing that Phillips “angrily lunged” at McKenzie, who reacted by “using his elbow to protect himself and push inmate Phillips away, and they then collided with a glass window nearby.” Another incarcerated person who witnessed the altercation submitted an affidavit supporting Phillips’s account.