Former Army National Guardsmen Latoni Daniel Jailed for 17 Months is Pregnant, Family Wants Investigation

Latoni Daniel, 26, is in an Alabama jail charged with capital murder and facing the death penalty, accused of being the getaway driver in a robbery and murder committed by her former boyfriend.

Latoni Daniel

Daniel is now expecting a baby boy, due at the end of May. But she and her family say she wasn’t pregnant when she entered the Coosa County Jail 17 months ago.

Mickey McDermott, a civil attorney representing Daniel, said he believes she was raped in the Coosa County Jail while she was taking legally prescribed sedatives to treat a seizure disorder. Daniel has no memory of a sexual encounter.

According to her family, they don’t know why she was being given sedatives because she had never had a seizure before going to jail. The family also hasn’t heard anything from law enforcement about an investigation into how Daniel got pregnant. Jeff Willis, the district attorney in Coosa County, recently said her pregnancy is being investigated.

When she revealed her pregnancy, she was transferred to the jail in neighboring Talladega County, about 40 miles north of Rockford, Alabama.

“Pregnant incarcerated people are one of the most marginalized and forgotten groups in our country,” Dr. Carolyn Sufrin, an OB-GYN at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and an author of the study, “Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 2016–2017,” told NPR in March.
“People, in general, don’t often think about what happens to people behind bars. People think even less about the fact that there are pregnant women behind bars, or even consider it as a possibility.”

Coosa County’s sheriff department is almost all white and male. According to their website, their Corrections Officers/E911 Dispatchers team is made up of 11 white men and one white woman.

Daniel is a former Army National Guardsmen and was honorably discharged.  She has no prior felony convictions.

Related

Trending Now

Follow us

Most Popular

Join Our Newsletter

Get the top workplace fairness news delivered straight to your inbox