AUGUSTA STATE MEDICAL PRISON

Analysis written on June 7, 2026.

Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP) occupies 3001 Gordon Highway in Grovetown, a close-security medical hub and mental-health facility that the Georgia Department of Corrections operates as the system’s primary destination for seriously ill and high-acuity incarcerated people. Built in 1982 and opened the following year, ASMP was designed for 535 people. It now holds 1,159, giving it an occupancy rate of 87 percent against an expanded capacity of 1,326 but a population more than double its original footprint. The facility is run by Warden Deshawn Jones, who assumed the post in June 2024, with Deputy Wardens Latasha Harris, Orbey Harmon, Michael Paschal, Barbra Colon, and Samantha Carter. What ASMP is supposed to be—the last refuge for those too sick to survive in general-population lockups—has been erased by a documented pattern of homicidal violence, medical neglect of the most vulnerable, staff-on-inmate abuse, and institutional obstruction that mirrors the crisis consuming Georgia’s entire prison system.

Homicides, Staff Collusion, and a Gang War Inside the Medical Prison

Since 2020, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has tracked a cascade of violent deaths inside ASMP. Thomas Henry Giles, 31, died of smoke inhalation in October 2020 after being left for hours in his smoke-filled cell while officers evacuated nearby inmates; the Georgia Bureau of Investigation medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, and the state later paid his family $5 million to settle a lawsuit. That same year, guards moved Daniel Luke Ferguson, who had a prior history of strangling an inmate at Hays State Prison, into Eddie Gosier’s cell; hours later Gosier, 39, was dead from ligature strangulation. In 2021, Terry Lee Bennett II, 43, was killed by blunt impact to the head, and Ali Lamont Tanner, 45, died of a stab wound to the neck. William Taylor Bodge, 61, succumbed in February 2022 to delayed complications of blunt force head injuries suffered weeks earlier. Raphael Zachery Milligan, 41, was killed by blunt force and strangulation in July 2022, and Amos Bennett Huff Jr., 60, was strangled by his cellmate in March 2023. Randall Joey Futch, 61, died in June 2023 from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma, and Thomas Preston Johnson, 56, died a homicide in April 2024.

The homicide count deepened with the May 2024 death of Rodarick Lee Hayes, 29, from sharp force injury of the torso. The Department of Justice investigation of Georgia prisons later found that Hayes had been attacked on multiple previous occasions before his murder. Two prisoners and a correctional officer have been charged with murder in Hayes’s death; the AJC reported that the officer is accused of aiding in the attack. Lamar Wesson Phillips, 39, died from an inmate-on-inmate assault in June 2024. In January 2026, Jerry Wayne Merritt, 59, a Gangster Disciple, was stabbed to death by a younger Crip gang member over a $15 commissary debt, according to reporting by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS). The Merritt killing unfolded at a facility where gang authority has flourished amid severe understaffing. GPS’s intelligence system records 13 assault-by-inmate signals at ASMP across four months in 2026 alone, with several classified as critical severity and two cases referenced by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The violence is not confined to a single facility. On April 1, 2026, coordinated Blood-on-Blood gang violence erupted across the Georgia prison system. GPS reported that at least 12 prisons were locked down, stabbings occurred at five facilities, and two life-flight helicopters were dispatched. The statewide gang war—a factional conflict between ROLACC and G-Shine Blood sets—killed four people at Washington State Prison in January 2026 and left that facility on continuous lockdown for months. Even ASMP, designated a medical prison, was not insulated: GPS has received accounts of mass stabbings inside the facility and of gang leaders coordinating violence across prisons using contraband phones.

Medical Neglect and the Abuse of Disabled Patients

ASMP exists to provide Level-V specialty care, yet the most vulnerable patients inside have been subjected to direct abuse by the staff charged with their care. In February 2026, a 67-year-old certified nursing assistant, Janette Shields, was arrested after allegedly striking Bruce Charles Smith, an incarcerated man with severe disabilities housed in the facility’s medical wing. GPS’s own coverage of the arrest noted that Smith weighed just 103 pounds per GDC records and required assistance with all daily living tasks. Shields allegedly struck him around dinnertime on February 14.

The following day, another CNA, identified in news reports only as “Williams,” allegedly cursed at quadriplegic patient Anthony P. Shedd, refused to empty his urinary catheter bag, refused to assist him with eating, and locked the door to his room. GPS staff at ASMP characterized the refusal to assist with eating as a denial of basic medical care. Shedd, who became quadriplegic after his decline went untreated at Wheeler Correctional Facility, is entirely dependent on staff for eating, catheter care, and repositioning. According to GPS reporting, after Shedd reported Williams’s conduct, Warden Deshawn Jones allegedly called a family associate, Cindy Robertson, around February 20–21, 2026, and threatened retaliation against Shedd for making the complaint—warning that any future complaints would result in disciplinary reports. GPS’s internal analysis indicates that linking the filing of complaints to disciplinary consequences constitutes retaliation under GDC policies.

The Shedd case lays bare a systematic failure to diagnose and treat progressive neurological illness. Medical records obtained by GPS show that by late 2023, Shedd was reporting numbness in all extremities and difficulty walking. A physical therapy evaluation at Wheeler Correctional in early 2024 documented that Shedd’s ankle strength was unchanged after treatment and that he had lost 40 pounds. A cervical spine MRI at ASMP in 2024 revealed cord compression, yet GPS’s analysis found that no neurosurgical referral was made after the finding. A medical provider reviewed surveillance camera footage and documented that Shedd could turn in bed, language that appeared verbatim in multiple notes and was used to support a narrative of malingering. By April 2024, a sick call note documented no provider examination and no diagnostic orders after Shedd reported progressive neurological symptoms lasting four months. His condition deteriorated until he became quadriplegic.

The pattern extends beyond Shedd and Smith. GPS staff have observed a documented pattern of staff abuse and administrative cover-up at ASMP in 2024–2025, including a medical staff member who faced criminal charges. GPS has received numerous reports—from family members, inmate witnesses, and anonymous tips—describing denial of prescribed pain and psychiatric medications, critical lab values ignored, and mental health medications restarted at full dose after gaps of one to two months. Multiple incarcerated people have reported that counseling and medical staff who raise concerns are rapidly rotated out, and that employees self-censor to avoid conflict with facility leadership.

The deaths of people who needed care and instead received neglect are part of the facility’s history. Jimmy Lucero, age 19, was transferred to ASMP from Wilcox State Prison after developing hallucinations and deteriorating mental health; once at ASMP, he was placed in solitary confinement without required medical checks, fell into a catatonic state, and starved to death in June 2016. The AJC reported Lucero’s death as part of its investigation into systemic neglect.

Above the Law: Defying Federal Courts

ASMP is also the institutional home of one of the most striking recent examples of GDC’s defiance of federal court authority. Ralph Harrison Benning, an incarcerated person at ASMP, filed suit in 2018 challenging GDC’s policy limiting inmates to 12 email contacts tied to their in-person visitation logs. In 2024, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that GDC could not enforce the restriction, and later that year U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III issued a 29-page order granting summary judgment and ordering GDC to cease enforcement. GDC did not comply. In November 2024, Benning filed a motion asserting that GDC was “willfully and intentionally” refusing to obey the order, and that he remained subject to the email restriction.

On February 10, 2026, Judge Self held a contempt hearing in Macon at which he summoned GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver to the witness stand. The AJC reported that Self found it “shocking” and “unbelievable” that GDC had ignored an appellate court ruling, and described the department as acting as if it is “above the law.” A separate federal judge had earlier found GDC in contempt for willfully disregarding mandates to improve conditions in a high-security prison wing near Jackson. GPS documented the pattern in its article “Above the Law: GDC Defies Courts, DOJ, and Legislators,” showing how the department has stonewalled multiple institutions meant to hold it accountable. Only after Self’s contempt hearing did GDC, early in 2026, issue a directive to wardens to stop enforcing the email-contact limit.

The Systemic Engine: Understaffing, Gang Control, and a Classification Collapse

The violence and neglect at ASMP are not isolated; they are produced by a structural collapse that GPS has documented across the GDC system. Officer vacancies run between 49.3 and 60 percent statewide, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. The DOJ’s October 2024 findings letter concluded that “the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities” and faulted GDC for placing “too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing.” At ASMP, family members report that single guards are assigned to entire buildings and routinely leave their posts, leaving housing areas unmonitored for hours—a pattern GPS has corroborated through multiple witness accounts.

Gang authority has filled the void. Approximately 31 percent of Georgia’s incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups—more than double the national average. DOJ and the 2024 Guidehouse consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. At ASMP, families attest that incarcerated people have been deliberately housed with individuals known to have histories of sexual assault, that gang leaders coordinate violence across facilities, and that sexual assaults have gone unreported for fear of retaliation during extended lockdowns.

The food that sustains people inside ASMP is part of the same systemic failure. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food—under 60 cents per meal—while spending 14 times more on medical care for the same population. The Marshall Project’s May 2026 investigation independently documented rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS’s own investigation, “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” found that DPH food-safety inspection scores systematically fail to capture real conditions because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. At ASMP, DPH scores have ranged from 90 to 100 in recent years—yet inmate accounts collected by GPS describe trays contaminated with roaches, meals served on visibly dirty surfaces, and bone shards sharp enough to cut gums in the mystery meat. A Tell My Story narrative published by GPS, “Surviving on Scraps,” describes a gradual post-COVID deterioration in prison food to the point where “the portions are for toddlers” and “pigs would turn up their noses at this garbage.”

The original classification system has similarly broken down. GPS’s reporting on “The Classification Crisis” documented how medium-security prisons now house close-security populations without the staffing, infrastructure, or programming to manage them safely. At ASMP, a close-security facility already handling the state’s most medically complex patients, the influx of individuals who should be housed at other security levels has intensified the lethal strain.

A Mounting Human Toll

GPS has independently tracked 376 deaths at ASMP since 2020—an average of 57 per year, with annual counts of 61, 57, 65, 64, 65, 45, and 19 in the first half of 2026. The ages of the dead tell their own story: Lemarcus Antonio Dunson, 50; Jackie McCoy Blackmon, 72; Walter Caldwell, 49; Edward Eugene Barber, 72; Tristan McLennon Trimm, 42; Ervin Cross, 46; Lenward Brown, 73; Wilburn W. Dobbs, 76; Sidney Dorsey, 86; Alphonso Watts, 54; Dequan Osborne, 33; Shaa-Mil Brown, 34; Donald Miller, 41; Michael Jefferson, 38; John W. Curry, 64; Jefferson Phillips Harvard, 61; Jerry Wayne Merritt, 59; Anthony J. Walker, 74. Many are classified as natural deaths, yet GPS’s mortality records and the individual case narratives of Shedd, Lucero, and others suggest that “natural” often includes physiological decline accelerated by sustained medical neglect.

Families live in constant fear. GPS records have captured three family-fear-for-life signals at ASMP in early 2026, and family attestations describe weeks-long lockdowns with no outdoor access, bunk-bed reconfigurations that removed medical waivers for seizure-risk individuals, and incarcerated people who refuse to identify abusive staff because they face retaliation—transfers, prolonged solitary confinement, or disciplinary reports filed by the same warden the system counts on to maintain order. A parole board visit in 2025 resulted in a handful of long-serving individuals being selected for consideration, but as of early 2026 none had been released, fueling suspicions documented by GPS that the process served a performative rather than genuine purpose.

The $5 million settlement for the death of Thomas Henry Giles is a rare instance of accountability. For most of the 376 dead, and for the many more still inside ASMP reliant on staff for food, catheters, and repositioning, the state has paid no price.

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and The Marshall Project; federal court records and filings in Benning v. Oliver; investigative articles and systemic analyses authored by Georgia Prisoners’ Speak (GPS) including “Above the Law,” “Nursing Assistant Arrested for Striking Disabled Inmate,” “The Classification Crisis,” “Dunked, Stacked, and Served,” and GPS’s mortality database; DPH food-safety inspection reports; firsthand narratives published through GPS’s Tell My Story platform; and multiple family, inmate, and anonymous accounts collected by GPS staff and corroborated against documentary evidence.