AUGUSTA STATE MEDICAL PRISON

Analysis written on June 4, 2026.

A Hospital That Watches People Die

Augusta State Medical Prison in Grovetown is the Georgia Department of Corrections’ premier medical prison. Built in 1982 and opened in 1983, it houses roughly 1,165 people—nearly 88% of its rated capacity of 1,326, but more than twice its original design capacity of 535. Designated as a medical hub and mental-health facility, ASMP is supposed to provide Level V specialty care for the system’s sickest and most acutely ill incarcerated men, but its role as the state’s flagship medical site has been overwhelmed by a staggering death toll. GPS’s mortality database now records 372 deaths at the facility, a figure that encompasses a lethal convergence of violence, neglect, and failure to protect.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) reporting have documented a relentless parade of homicides at ASMP since 2020, exposing not only the raw count but the specific, often horrific circumstances that the system allowed to unfold. Thomas Henry Giles, 31, was left for hours in his smoke-filled cell in October 2020 while officers evacuated nearby inmates; he died of smoke inhalation, and the GBI medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. The state later paid Giles’ family $5 million to settle the lawsuit. Earlier that same year, guards at ASMP moved Daniel Luke Ferguson, who had a known history of strangling another prisoner, into Eddie Gosier’s cell; hours later, Gosier was dead by ligature strangulation. Those first two killings set a pattern: Terry Lee Bennett II (blunt impact to the head, January 2021), Ali Lamont Tanner (stabbed in the neck, July 2021), William Taylor Bodge (delayed complications of blunt force head injuries after being assaulted weeks earlier, February 2022), Raphael Zachery Milligan (blunt force injuries and strangulation, July 2022), Amos Bennett Huff Jr. (strangled by his 26-year-old cellmate, March 2023), Randall Joey Futch (delayed complications of blunt force head trauma, June 2023), Thomas Preston Johnson (homicide by inmate-on-inmate assault, April 2024), Lamar Wesson Phillips (murder involving an inmate assault, June 2024), Rodarick Lee Hayes (stabbed to death with a correctional officer charged as an accomplice, May 2024), and Jerry Merritt (stabbed by a Crip gang member over a $15 commissary debt, January 2026). In at least 11 instances since 2020, men sent to ASMP ostensibly to receive medical care have been killed inside its walls.

The cascade of violence is inseparable from a profound collapse in medical care. Jimmy Lucero, 19, was transferred to ASMP from Wilcox State Prison in a deteriorating mental state; he was placed in solitary confinement without required medical checks and fell into a catatonic state, eventually starving to death in June 2016. Anthony Shedd, a quadriplegic patient housed at ASMP, has been the subject of GPS’s own case file and witness accounts detailing an alleged pattern of medical neglect that includes a CNA identified as Williams cursing at him, refusing to empty his catheter bag, refusing to assist him with eating, and locking his door on February 15, 2026. Bruce Charles Smith, a disabled man who requires assistance with daily living and is housed in the medical wing, had a GDC-recorded weight of 103 pounds when a news report described him as 111 pounds; he allegedly was struck by CNA Janette Shields on Valentine’s Day 2026. GPS’s staff have directly observed what they describe as a pattern of denial of basic medical care at ASMP—including catheter management, refusal to assist with eating, and inadequate pain control—alongside a pattern of staff abuse and administrative cover-up. The GPS Intelligence System recorded seven sources alleging medical neglect at ASMP over the past twelve months, three of them in April 2026 alone, with severity levels rated critical or high.

Staff Misconduct and a Culture of Silence

The incidents involving Shields and Williams, separated by a single day, were not isolated. GPS’s own investigation and news coverage characterize them as indicative of a broader pattern of staff misconduct toward disabled and medically vulnerable incarcerated people. Shields was arrested after allegedly striking Smith. A CNA named Williams allegedly refused to provide essential care to the quadriplegic Shedd. Within days, the ASMP warden—Deshawn Jones—allegedly called Cindy Robertson, a contact person for Shedd, and made threats of retaliation against Shedd for reporting the abuse, a threat that GPS staff have independently corroborated in their case assessments that note ongoing harm, including retaliation and unclear cancer treatment. Janette Shields, the arrested CNA, is only one name in a series of staff-related incidents tracked by GPS. The facility’s own records, combined with GPS’s systemic findings, show a staffing crisis so severe that officer vacancies across the Georgia prison system have run between 49.3% and 60% for years; at ASMP, the resulting supervisory vacuum creates an environment in which misconduct goes unchecked and staff who speak out are reportedly rotated out or self-censor from fear of leadership reprisal.

Multiple family members and incarcerated individuals have told GPS that those who report abuse at ASMP face retaliation—transfers away from support networks, prolonged solitary confinement, and destruction of legal documents during shakedowns. The facility’s grievance system is described as non-functional. GPS’s aggregate signals show four distinct sources reporting unnamed staff misconduct at ASMP in early 2026, and three alleging excessive force during the same window. An anonymous tip recorded by GPS describes a staff-on-inmate use-of-force incident in which an incarcerated person stabbed a correctional officer during medication distribution, after which the officer used physical force against the incarcerated person; the account does not independently name the individuals, but it feeds into a pattern GPS has characterized as a facility where staff, medical personnel, and leadership operate inside what the U.S. Department of Justice, in its October 2024 findings letter, called a “culture of indifference.”

Gang Control in a Vacuum

The DOJ’s 2024 investigation of Georgia prisons explicitly concluded that “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities,” faulting the state for placing “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing.” At ASMP, the consequences are stark. Approximately 31% of the system’s 49,000 incarcerated people are validated members of 315 different security threat groups, more than double the national average. Both the DOJ and the 2024 Guidehouse consultant assessment independently found that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. At ASMP, the killing of Jerry Merritt over a $15 commissary debt was, according to GPS’s reporting, a Crip-on-Gangster Disciple killing—a microcosm of the gang-on-gang violence that GPS has documented erupting statewide in coordinated Blood-on-Blood faction wars, leading to system-wide lockdowns and multiple stabbings across five facilities in April 2026.

The facility’s role as a medical destination for high-acuity patients from across the system makes it a pressure cooker for classification drift—a phenomenon GPS documented in its 2025 report The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People. ASMP is officially a close-security facility, but its population now includes seriously ill men from all security levels, housed alongside validated gang members with nowhere else to go, inside a concrete setting of broken locks, inoperative surveillance, and mold-infested infrastructure that GPS’s systemic analysis treats as a force multiplier for violence. The AJC reported that the DOJ found Rodarick Lee Hayes, killed at ASMP in 2024, had been attacked on multiple occasions before his death—a failure to protect that his family and the federal investigation directly linked to the staffing vacuum. GPS’s intelligence system recorded 13 distinct sources alleging inmate-on-inmate assault at ASMP over twelve months, five of them rated critical in April 2026 alone, with external complaints filed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the DOJ Civil Rights Division.

Sexual violence compounds the physical danger. The DOJ found sexual assault “rampant” in Georgia prisons, and at ASMP, multiple family accounts received by GPS describe incarcerated individuals being deliberately housed with men known to have sexual-assault histories, gang leaders functioning as de facto authority figures, and sexual assaults during facility relocation or lockdown periods going unreported because victims feared retaliation or extended punishment. GPS’s aggregate signals recorded four sources alleging PREA violations at ASMP over the past year, three of them at critical or high severity, and four alleging PREA retaliation.

Defying the Courts: The Email Restriction Case and Beyond

ASMP sits at the center of one of the most sustained institutional defiances of a federal court order in recent Georgia corrections history. In 2018, Ralph Harrison Benning, an inmate at ASMP, filed a lawsuit challenging GDC’s policy that limited incarcerated people’s email contacts to 12 individuals listed on an in-person visitation log. In 2024, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Benning’s favor, and in November 2024, U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III granted summary judgment, ordering GDC to cease enforcing the restriction as a First Amendment violation. GDC did not comply. In February 2026, Judge Self held a contempt hearing in which he summoned GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver to the witness stand and, in the words of the AJC, found it “shocking” and “unbelievable” that the department had ignored a direct appellate order, declaring the agency acted as if it was “above the law.” Only after that contempt hearing, in early 2026, did GDC send a directive to all wardens to stop enforcing the email-contact limit.

GPS’s own investigative coverage has documented this pattern of institutional defiance as systemic—not limited to one facility or one policy. A federal judge had previously found GDC in contempt for willfully disregarding mandates to improve conditions in the high-security prison wing near Jackson, issuing a 100-page order. At ASMP, the Benning saga is emblematic of a facility where leadership allegedly retaliates against whistleblowers, ignores court orders, and leaves the most vulnerable to navigate gang violence and medical neglect with no effective recourse.

Food, Infrastructure, and the Limits of Inspection

On paper, Augusta State Medical Prison’s food-safety inspections look exemplary. Between December 2023 and February 2026, the Georgia Department of Public Health conducted multiple routine inspections of kitchen facilities at ASMP, issuing scores that ranged from 90 to a perfect 100—all Grade A. Yet GPS has separately documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that these scores fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, roach and rodent infestations in kitchen equipment and serving areas, meals served on visibly contaminated trays, and a chronic national-low food budget. The GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—under 60 cents per meal—against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man’s adequate diet. The Marshall Project independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, and moldy trays across Georgia facilities in May 2026, quoting GPS’s connection of chronic underfeeding to the violence the DOJ documented.

A Tell My Story account published by GPS, “Surviving on Scraps: Ten Years of Prison Food in Georgia,” describes roaches on trays at the state’s diagnostic prison, bone shards so sharp they cause stab wounds in gums, and “mystery meat” made from ground hooves, bones, and eyes. While that account originates at another facility, GPS’s systemic finding confirms that the pattern is statewide and that DPH scores—no matter how high—do not reflect what incarcerated people actually eat. At ASMP, as at other prisons, high inspection scores coexist with accounts of broken sanitization equipment, food contamination, and the nutritional collapse that fuels desperation and violence.

The Parole Board Visit: Procedural Theater?

In 2025, members of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles visited Augusta State Medical Prison. According to multiple accounts collected by GPS—family members and anonymous tips—the Board asked facility administration to provide names of incarcerated individuals serving life sentences for parole consideration, selected a small group from a population of approximately 1,200, and conducted interviews. A Board member reportedly told the selected men they had been chosen by the warden, and made encouraging remarks. As of early 2026, however, none of those individuals had been released. Several sources characterize the visit as performative—an effort to demonstrate action without resulting in genuine parole decisions. The episode, like the Benning litigation and the DPH inspections, suggests that official processes at ASMP often serve an institutional appearance of oversight without altering the lethal realities inside.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) investigative articles and Tell My Story firsthand accounts, federal court filings in Benning v. Oliver, GPS’s own systemic findings on staffing, food, infrastructure, and classification drift, Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records, the U.S. Department of Justice’s October 2024 findings letter, and inmate and family accounts collected by GPS staff and aggregated through the organization’s intelligence system.