Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

Ware State Prison: A Close-Security Facility Where the Dead Are Counted and the Killers Are Not

Ware State Prison sits outside Waycross in Ware County, a men's close-security facility opened around 1990 with an original design capacity of 500 and a current rated capacity of 1,546. It holds a mix of dormitory housing and high-security cellblocks, including Tier II special-management units, and maintains a CERT team and other tactical resources. Its current population is 1,443 — roughly 93 percent of rated capacity — and it is led by Warden James Clarence Spann, who has held the post since October 2024, with Deputy Wardens Lutria Jamil Jones, Martella L. Walker, and Aiyesha Johnson rounding out the command.

That administrative profile describes a facility operating within its stated limits. The record below describes something else: a prison that has produced 88 deaths since January 2020, at least 21 of them homicides; a 2020 hostage-taking riot that GDC publicly minimized; a federal civil-rights finding that a stabbing victim here waited half an hour for help while other prisoners beat on a window; and a documented pattern of gang control over housing, weapons saturation, and fire exits bolted shut.

The 2020 Riot GDC Called a "Disturbance"

On August 1, 2020, malfunctioning doors at Ware State Prison allowed incarcerated men to walk out of their rooms. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, those prisoners took two guards hostage, beating and stabbing one, and ultimately hundreds of inmates ransacked the prison. GDC records cited in that reporting show 33 homemade weapons were used, 55 security staff were directly involved, and a mass employee exodus followed.

The agency's public framing diverged sharply from its own internal record. The AJC reported that GDC publicly described the incident as merely a "disturbance," while internal records describe hostage-taking, escape attempts, assaults, and use of force. GPS's own coverage has characterized the episode as a riot met with a punitive lockdown response, including power cuts during summer heat.

The 2020 riot was not an isolated rupture. It was the opening of the deadliest stretch in the facility's recent history.

Eighty-Eight Deaths, Twenty-One Homicides

GPS's mortality registry records 88 deaths at Ware State Prison since January 1, 2020 — a figure GPS treats as a floor, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. The breakdown by cause is 37 natural or medical, 21 homicide, 13 suicide, eight overdose, six unknown or pending, two accident, and one other. The yearly progression runs eight in 2020, eleven in 2021, twelve in 2022, sixteen in 2023, fifteen in 2024, fifteen in 2025, and eleven recorded so far in 2026.

The most recent deaths GPS has recorded at Ware, in reverse chronological order:

• David Williams died September 13, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide.
• David Miller Newman died July 15, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 60.
• Reberto Baez died July 9, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 69.
• David Randolph Newcomer died June 30, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 85.
• Kojack Junior Thomas died May 31, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 27.
• Justin Dean Pulley died May 20, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 48.
• Johnathan Cleo Hardman-Simmons died May 20, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 36.
• Anthony Terrell Grover died May 11, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 25.
• Cody Humphrey died February 21, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 72.
• Christopher Henry died February 12, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 48.
• Carlton Atkins Jones died January 24, 2026, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 55.
• Vernon Edward Kennedy died December 12, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Accident. He was 70.
• Christopher Allen Barrett died December 1, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 46.
• Marty Shawn Wright died November 13, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 49.
• Michael Cohen died October 13, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 68.
• Jose Hervert Vazquez died September 9, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 53.
• Matias Elijaone Evans died August 15, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 28.
• Dakota Lee Duffin died July 19, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 29.
• David Michael Dixon died July 14, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 76.
• Barry Lynn Rutherford died May 25, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 36.
• Henry A Hamilton died May 9, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 79.
• Charles Johnny Rice died April 27, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 62.
• Lon Taylor Willbanks died April 19, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 31.
• Antonio Leon Moses died March 22, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 46.
• Demarcus McClarin died January 7, 2025, at Ware State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical.

The full list is maintained at gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/ware-state-prison.

The Killings the State Did Not Prosecute

The AJC reported that ten inmates were killed at Ware State Prison between July 2020 and August 2024, with multiple inmates involved in several of the homicides according to GDC incident reports. The individual cases the outlet documented form a grim chronology of sharp-force and blunt-force deaths.

Robert Lee Wilson III, 31, died July 17, 2020, from multiple stab wounds; an incident report shows 16 other inmates were involved, seven of whom were injured. Christopher Arnett Rawls, 32, died by strangulation on September 5, 2020. Christopher Eli Gresham, 39, died September 30, 2021, from stab wounds to the back and lower extremities, with an incident report noting three other inmates involved. Kyle Anthony Strother, 31, died June 5, 2022, from a stab wound to the chest, and Va'Darian LaVianta Carr, 26, died September 18, 2022, from stab wounds to the chest and back. Alfonso Marquez Moore, 30, died June 19, 2023, from blunt impact injuries to the head; Thomas Jerome McCoy, 38, died October 7, 2023, from a stab wound to the chest, with three other prisoners involved per GDC data. Leonardo Lamonte Anderson, 49, died April 20, 2024, from multiple stab wounds, listed as assault by another with a sharp object. Christopher Michael Drake Taylor, 33, died May 28, 2024, from a stab wound to the torso. Samuel Keith Ellis, 31, died August 1, 2024, from multiple sharp force injuries, in a homicide with three inmates involved.

GPS's own investigative reporting has documented the prosecutorial vacuum around these deaths. A GPS investigation found that at least nineteen men have been killed by other prisoners inside Ware State Prison since 2020, and that Georgia's own autopsies name a suspect in eleven of the deaths — yet GPS could find no record that anyone was ever prosecuted. That finding is drawn from coroner and state crime-lab records obtained through open records request.

The pattern has continued into 2026. Kojack Thomas Jr., 27, was pronounced dead on May 31 at Ware State Prison; the Georgia Department of Corrections is investigating the death as a potential homicide, with the GDC Office of Professional Standards leading the investigation and the body sent to the GBI crime lab. GPS's registry lists Thomas's death as a homicide.

Federal Findings: Half an Hour at the Window

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Offices for the Northern, Middle, and Southern Districts of Georgia released a 94-page findings report on October 1, 2024, following its investigation of Georgia prisons. Among the specific incidents the report documented at Ware State Prison: a stabbing victim who waited half an hour while other prisoners banged on a window for help. The same findings documented prisoners dressing their own wounds and relatives calling facilities to report emergencies inside.

The DOJ's broader conclusions about the system — that GDC leadership had "lost control of its facilities," that the department placed too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing, and that sexual assault in Georgia prisons is "rampant" — frame the conditions at Ware as an instance of a systemwide failure rather than a facility-specific aberration. GPS has documented that officer vacancies across Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, and that Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay.

Gang Control, Overcrowding, and the Weekend Pattern

Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a facility where gang-affiliated individuals exercise control over housing assignments and entire dormitories, where non-affiliated prisoners are displaced to sleeping on dayroom floors, and where large knives are widely carried. GPS records show a pattern of violent incidents concentrated during periods of reduced staffing, with a disproportionate share of recorded incidents falling on weekends.

The aggregate signal data GPS holds for the twelve months from mid-2025 into 2026 reinforces the picture: 23 sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults across twelve cases, ten family safety concerns, six external complaints filed to oversight bodies including the Fire Marshal, GBI, and GDC Ombudsman, six staff-misconduct allegations, four death-in-custody reports, and three overcrowding reports. May 2026 alone accounts for eleven assault signals, five family safety concerns, and three overcrowding reports — a single-month concentration that GPS's internal analysis has flagged as a cross-referenced incident cluster.

GPS has received accounts of an in-custody death at Ware State Prison attributed to violence by a cellmate, and of multiple stabbings at the facility. GPS has additionally received reports of use-of-force incidents and of staff misconduct at the facility. These accounts are unverified and GPS continues to collect corroborating records.

Bolted Fire Exits and the Infrastructure of Neglect

State fire inspectors found barrel bolts on every fire exit at Ware State Prison in June 2026 and told GDC to remove them. When two inspectors from the Georgia State Fire Marshal's Office returned on August 24, 2026 — responding to a second anonymous complaint about steel bars blocking exit doors — Warden James C. Spann walked the buildings with them. They found what the complaint described: barrel bolts on all fire-exit doors in the housing buildings, new ones added since June, plus empty control rooms and staff without keys. GPS's reporting on the inspection describes the same hardware appearing on cell doors inside Georgia's prisons.

The fire-exit findings sit alongside a broader infrastructure picture. GPS has documented that most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with deferred maintenance producing systemwide failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern. At Ware, the malfunctioning doors that enabled the 2020 riot are the same class of failure the 2026 inspectors documented.

Food, Sanitation, and the Limits of Inspection Scores

Ware State Prison's kitchen has passed state inspection repeatedly. The Georgia Department of Public Health scored the facility 95 in April 2023, 95 in November 2023, 94 in May 2024, 94 in November 2024, 98 in March 2025, 97 in August 2025, 98 in March 2026, 90 in July 2026, and 86 in July 2026 — the last a Grade B with three violations including improper cold holding temperatures, improper date marking and disposition, and physical facilities not maintained and clean. The July 1 inspection, five days earlier, scored 90 with violations for cold holding and unclean nonfood-contact surfaces.

Those scores coexist with a different account. GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet.

GPS has received recurring reports from family members at Ware State Prison of undercooked or raw food, short-portioned meals, and foodborne-illness risk. In 2026, family members filed a formal complaint about food safety and meal portions at the facility and requested an immediate health inspection of the Ware State Prison kitchen, directing the complaint to the GDC Ombudsman and Georgia Department of Corrections Administration.

Settlements, Secrecy, and the Segregation Pipeline

Georgia's own risk-management ledger records five liability payouts tied to Ware State Prison: $50,578 to Christopher Stewart (2016 incident), $2,500 to David Michael Slaughter (2015), $10,000 to Denard Brown (2019, linked to a documented death record), $2,500 to Bennie James Johnson (2021), and $20,000 to Jimmy Mack Rice (2023). The settlements are drawn from the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records.

GPS has received accounts from family members alleging that staff at Ware State Prison conditioned an incarcerated person's release from segregation on the family member ceasing contact with staff, and that staff threatened an incarcerated person with return to segregation if they sought legal counsel. GPS has received accounts alleging that a transfer to Ware was intended to restrict an incarcerated person's ability to communicate with oversight authorities, including the DOJ. GPS has received accounts alleging that an incarcerated person was advanced to a higher segregation tier without a documented infraction to justify the progression, and that a written notice indicated release from segregation required authorization from a specific individual. These are family allegations, unverified, and GPS continues to collect records.

Separately, GPS has received accounts alleging that the death of an incarcerated person at Ware State Prison was wrongly classified as a suicide, and that the state provided no answers regarding a wrongful death until the statute of limitations expired in 2024. The Ware County Coroner ruled at least one death at the facility a suicide.

Contraband, Drones, and the Supply Chain

The contraband pipeline into Ware has been documented from the highway. The Butts County Sheriff's Office reported a July traffic stop involving items allegedly destined for Ware State Prison, part of a series of announced suspected smuggling cases. On September 2, 2026, a Butts County deputy stopped a car on Interstate 75 southbound and smelled marijuana; the driver consented to a search. Inside were two large drones and packages of tobacco, marijuana, ecstasy, hydrocodone and other analgesics, prongs, knives, cell phones, and chargers. The AJC has documented 425-plus GDC employee arrests since 2018 for on-the-job crimes, primarily contraband smuggling.

What the Record Shows

Ware State Prison is a facility rated for 1,546 men, holding 1,443, that has recorded 88 deaths since 2020 — 21 of them homicides — and where GPS's own investigation found no record of prosecution in eleven killings for which state autopsies name a suspect. It is a facility where the DOJ documented a stabbing victim waiting half an hour for help, where state fire inspectors found the same bolted fire exits twice in one summer, and where the aggregate signal record shows violence clustering in the months and days when staffing is thinnest. The 2020 riot that GDC called a "disturbance" was not an anomaly. It was the first entry in a record that has not stopped accumulating.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and The Marshall Project; the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division's October 1, 2024 findings report on Georgia prisons; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; Georgia State Fire Marshal's Office inspection findings; and GPS's own investigative reporting, mortality registry, and intelligence records, including accounts collected from incarcerated people and family members at Ware State Prison.