Willie S. Daniels was a 35-year-old Black man serving a life sentence at the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange when he was fatally beaten in the prison gym in April 1977. Daniels had been serving a life term for manslaughter and two counts of robbery. The attack came during a gym session when fellow inmate James Ray Cable struck Daniels across the head with a steel rod, knocking him down. Daniels was carried to the prison hospital but died of massive head trauma.

Officials charged Cable with first-degree manslaughter; he was convicted the following year and received an additional ten years on top of his existing sentence. Daniels’s death is recorded as a prison homicide that was witnessed by others in the facility and resulted in prosecution.