Seth Donnelly desperately wanted to get out of the kitchen. Ever since the 29-year-old got his HVAC certification in prison, he applied for maintenance jobs — highly sought-after assignments in lockup — but a dumb tattoo always seemed to get in the way. Three years before he pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence in 2012, Donnelly had the words “Dirty White Boy” needled onto his chest. Not surprisingly, the ink attracted unwanted attention behind bars. Each time he arrived at a new unit, prison guards assumed he was part of a similarly named white supremacist gang and put him on grunt jobs like kitchen duty. “The major and I didn’t get off on good terms,” Donnelly wrote to his sister after one transfer. “He’s convinced I’m a gang member because of my stupid chest tattoo. God I wish I never would’ve never gotten it.”
Donnelly’s mother, Deborah, says her son feared working in the kitchen at the Robertson Unit in Abilene, where he landed a couple years ago, worried he’d end up either hurt or in trouble there. Then, two months ago, Donnelly called home, ecstatic about a new job training dogs to catch escaped prisoners. Deborah was happy but grew nervous once she learned more about the assignment: the hours her son spent outside the prison gates laying scents for the hounds to track; the trees he climbed to hide from the dogs; the stifling, 75-pound “fight suit” he wore for protection when the dogs attacked.
