AUGUSTA STATE MEDICAL PRISON

Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP) is the Georgia Department of Corrections' (GDC) primary medical facility, housing incarcerated individuals with significant medical, surgical, and psychiatric needs. Despite its designation as a medical prison, the facility has accumulated a substantial public record of in-custody homicides, federal court findings against the GDC originating from ASMP litigation, and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that surfaced violence and oversight failures specific to the facility. The analysis below traces three connected threads: a sustained pattern of in-custody homicides between 2020 and 2024, a seven-year federal First Amendment case (Benning v. Oliver) that culminated in the GDC Commissioner being held in contempt of court, and the broader institutional context — including the 2024 DOJ findings and a statewide gang violence event in January 2026 — within which ASMP's specific failures sit.

A Decade of In-Custody Homicides Inside the State's Medical Prison

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has documented a sustained run of homicides inside ASMP that begins, in the public record, with the June 2016 death of 19-year-old Jimmy Lucero. Lucero, who had been suffering from hallucinations and deteriorating mental health at Wilcox State Prison without receiving mental health services, was transferred to ASMP and placed in solitary confinement; the AJC reported that he was placed there without receiving required medical checks, fell into a catatonic state, and starved to death. A federal court treated the case as one in which Lucero's death followed his placement in solitary at the medical prison.

The pattern continued through the early 2020s. The AJC reported that Eddie Gosier, 39, was killed by ligature strangulation on May 2, 2020, hours after guards moved Daniel Luke Ferguson — an inmate with a documented prior history of strangling an inmate at Hays State Prison — into Gosier's cell. On October 28, 2020, Thomas Henry Giles, 31, died of inhalation of products of combustion after officers left him in his smoke-filled cell for hours while evacuating inmates from nearby cells; the GBI medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and the state of Georgia later agreed to pay Giles's family $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.

Subsequent years produced a steady cadence of additional deaths reported by the AJC: Terry Lee Bennett II, 43, died on January 10, 2021 from blunt impact to the head; Ali Lamont Tanner, 45, died on July 2, 2021 from a stab wound to the neck; William Taylor Bodge, 61, died on February 5, 2022 from delayed complications of blunt force head injuries sustained on January 20, 2022; Raphael Zachery Milligan, 41, died on July 21, 2022 from blunt force injuries and strangulation, with another prisoner charged in his death; Amos Bennett Huff Jr., 60, was strangled by his 26-year-old cellmate on March 30, 2023; and Randall Joey Futch, 61, died on June 8, 2023 from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma. In 2024, the AJC reported three additional homicides at the facility: Thomas Preston Johnson, 56, on April 12; Rodarick Lee Hayes, 29, stabbed to death on May 25; and Lamar Wesson Phillips, 39, killed in an inmate-on-inmate assault on June 8.

The Hayes case proved especially significant for institutional accountability. The AJC reported that two prisoners and a correctional officer were charged with murder, with the officer accused of aiding in the attack. The DOJ's subsequent investigation of Georgia prisons found that Hayes had been attacked on multiple occasions before his death, suggesting a failure to protect.

Benning v. Oliver: Seven Years of Litigation Ending in Contempt

The single most consequential piece of federal litigation arising out of ASMP in recent years is Benning v. Oliver, a First Amendment case filed in 2018 by Ralph Harrison Benning, an inmate at the facility. Benning challenged the GDC's policy restricting inmate email contacts to twelve people drawn from the in-person visitation log who had passed a background check. In 2024, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Benning's favor, concluding the GDC could not impose that twelve-person limit. Following remand, U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III issued a 29-page summary judgment order declaring the email-contact restriction a First Amendment violation and enjoining GDC from enforcing it.

The GDC did not comply. In November 2024, Benning, represented by attorney Elizabeth Crowder, filed a motion alleging that GDC officials were "willfully and intentionally" refusing to comply with the appellate court's order and that he "continues to be subject to email-contact restriction." Judge Self responded by setting a contempt hearing. The AJC reported that on February 11, 2026, Self held a 35-minute hearing in Macon during which he summoned GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver to the witness stand and held him in contempt for willful violation of the court's First Amendment order. Self called the agency's defiance "shocking" and "unbelievable," and characterized the GDC as acting as if it were "above the law." Early in 2026, following Self's order demanding an explanation for non-compliance, the GDC sent a directive to all wardens and superintendents instructing them to stop enforcing the email-contact limit — roughly seven years after Benning first filed suit.

The AJC also noted that two years before the 2026 contempt hearing, a federal judge in Middle Georgia had issued a separate 100-page order finding the GDC in contempt for willfully disregarding requirements to improve conditions in a high-security wing near Jackson. Read together, the two contempt findings establish a documented pattern of institutional defiance toward federal courts that extends well beyond a single case.

DOJ Findings, Trafficking from Inside, and Statewide Lockdown

ASMP's specific record of homicides and litigation sits inside a broader institutional context. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice released a lengthy report describing horrific violence, sexual assaults, and gang-run prisons across the GDC, attributing the conditions to a culture of indifference. A two-year investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented rampant corruption, massive understaffing, and record homicides within GDC, even as state officials clamped down on releasing information about prison deaths.

ASMP also figures directly in federal narcotics enforcement: news reporting documented that Joseph Collins, an inmate at ASMP, and Eric Gilbert, an inmate at Calhoun State Prison, directed a heroin and methamphetamine trafficking network from inside Georgia prisons. Collins was sentenced to 240 months in federal prison and Gilbert to 228 months — a finding that, alongside the DOJ's broader findings about gang-run prisons, undercuts the premise that contraband control is a solved problem inside Georgia facilities.

In January 2026, news outlets reported a coordinated statewide outbreak of gang violence across the Georgia prison system, framed in coverage as a "Blood on Blood" factional war between the ROLACC and G-Shine sets. Reporting documented multiple stabbings across five facilities, two life-flight helicopter dispatches, the deployment of 50-person TAC squads, and a statewide lockdown affecting 13 facilities. At Washington State Prison, four people were killed in gang violence on January 11, 2026 — including Jimmy Trammell, who had 72 hours remaining on his sentence; the facility was placed on continuous lockdown and, as of news reporting, had not reopened. While the immediate fatalities occurred at Washington, the lockdown enveloped the entire state system, including ASMP.

Patterns Reported to GPS

GPS has received recurring reports from family members of incarcerated individuals at ASMP describing a consistent set of conditions inside the facility: prescribed medications — including post-surgical pain medication and psychiatric medication — going unfilled or being abruptly discontinued, with mental health medications resumed at full dose without titration after multi-week lapses; lower-bunk medical waivers tied to seizure histories being disregarded after housing reconfigurations, in at least one case followed by a fall and hospitalization; extended lockdowns of several weeks during which incarcerated individuals reportedly receive only limited cell-delivered meals, no outdoor time, and no air conditioning; and a grievance process described as non-functional, including for property destroyed or scattered during shakedowns. GPS has also received accounts of staff-on-inmate use of force at ASMP in 2026, of denial of essential daily care to an incarcerated person with severe physical disabilities in 2026, and of sexual assaults occurring during a facility relocation period in which incarcerated individuals reportedly did not report due to fear of retaliation. These accounts are noted here for receipt; corroborating documentation has not yet surfaced in the public record.

GPS has additionally received accounts regarding a 2025 visit to ASMP by members of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, during which a small group of long-serving incarcerated individuals — reportedly those who had served 30 or more years — was interviewed for parole consideration. As of early 2026, sources report that none of the selected individuals had been released, raising concerns within the family-and-source community that the process may have functioned as a procedural exercise rather than substantive parole review.

Sources

This analysis draws principally on reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution covering in-custody deaths at Augusta State Medical Prison, the Benning v. Oliver litigation, the 2024 U.S. Department of Justice report on the Georgia Department of Corrections, and the January 2026 statewide gang violence event; on federal court orders issued by U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III, including the summary judgment and contempt rulings in Benning v. Oliver; on the civil settlement record in the Thomas Henry Giles wrongful death matter; and on accounts from incarcerated individuals and family members collected by GPS staff.