AUGUSTA STATE MEDICAL PRISON

Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP), located at 3001 Gordon Highway in Grovetown, Richmond County, is the flagship close-security medical facility of the Georgia Department of Corrections. Opened in 1983 and led by Warden Deshawn Jones, it combines general housing with an on-site hospital providing acute-care, long-term-care, crisis, and pre- and post-operative beds for seriously ill and high-acuity incarcerated people transferred from across the state system. Designed for 535 people, the facility now operates at a capacity of 1,326 and houses approximately 1,165 — a more-than-doubling of its original design that frames every operational pressure described below. GPS-tracked records document 371 deaths at the facility, with a sustained monthly cadence of mortality through late 2025 and into 2026. This page assembles what the public record, federal courts, news reporting, GDC's own documents, and firsthand accounts show about how care, custody, and accountability function at Georgia's principal prison hospital.

A Mortality Pattern That Outpaces the Headlines

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's running coverage of homicides inside Georgia prisons has identified ASMP as a recurring location across multiple years. The AJC reported that Terry Lee Bennett II, 43, died on January 10, 2021 from blunt impact to the head; that Ali Lamont Tanner, 45, died on July 2, 2021 from a stab wound to the neck; that William Taylor Bodge, 61, died on February 5, 2022 from delayed complications of blunt force head injuries suffered weeks earlier on January 20, 2022; that Raphael Zachery Milligan, 41, was killed July 21, 2022 from blunt force injuries and strangulation, with another prisoner charged with his murder; that Amos Bennett Huff Jr., 60, was strangled by his cellmate on March 30, 2023; that Randall Joey Futch, 61, died on June 8, 2023 from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma; that Thomas Preston Johnson, 56, died in a homicide on April 12, 2024; that Rodarick Lee Hayes, 29, was stabbed to death on May 25, 2024 in an attack a Department of Justice investigation later concluded he had survived multiple prior times before officials failed to protect him; and that Lamar Wesson Phillips, 39, died on June 8, 2024 in an inmate-on-inmate assault classified as murder.

GPS's mortality database extends and deepens this picture beyond what news outlets have surfaced. In the eight-month window from August 2025 through April 2026 alone, GPS recorded 24 deaths at ASMP, with subjects ranging from 33-year-old Dequan Osborne (February 17, 2026) to 86-year-old Sidney Dorsey (March 2, 2026). Among these is Jerry Wayne Merritt, 59, who died on January 20, 2026 in what GPS reporting describes as a stabbing by a young Crip-affiliated incarcerated person over a $15 commissary debt — a killing tied to the wider pattern of statewide coordinated gang violence GPS has documented across the Georgia prison system, including the Blood-on-Blood factional war between ROLACC and G-Shine sets that triggered system-wide lockdowns and multiple stabbings and life-flight dispatches across thirteen facilities. The Washington State Prison gang war on January 11, 2026, in which four incarcerated people were killed and the facility was placed on a continuous lockdown that GPS reporting says had not lifted, frames the environment in which ASMP — Georgia's destination facility for the system's most medically fragile people — was simultaneously receiving casualties.

Thomas Henry Giles, Jimmy Lucero, and the Civil Cost of Indifference

Two of the most documented deaths at ASMP have already produced court-verified findings. The AJC reported that Thomas Henry Giles, 31, died on October 28, 2020 of inhalation of products of combustion after he was left for hours in his smoke-filled cell while officers moved inmates in nearby cells to safety; the GBI medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. The State of Georgia subsequently agreed to pay Giles's family $5 million to settle the resulting lawsuit. The AJC separately reported that 19-year-old Jimmy Lucero, who had been suffering from hallucinations and deteriorating mental health without receiving services at Wilcox State Prison, was transferred to ASMP, placed in solitary confinement without the required medical checks, and fell into a catatonic state and starved to death in June 2016. The AJC also reported that Eddie Gosier, 39, was killed by ligature strangulation on May 2, 2020 hours after guards moved Daniel Luke Ferguson — who had a prior history of strangling an inmate at Hays State Prison — into Gosier's cell.

These cases are not historical curios. They form the evidentiary backbone of the federal Department of Justice's 2024 report, which the AJC summarized as describing horrific violence, sexual assaults, and gang-run prisons across the Georgia Department of Corrections, "enabled by a culture of indifference." The DOJ's finding regarding Rodarick Lee Hayes — that he was attacked on multiple occasions before his death, and that a correctional officer is among those charged with murder for aiding the attack — captures the failure-to-protect architecture in a single case. GPS records corroborate the pattern at scale: in the twelve-month window through May 2026, GPS's intelligence system logged ten distinct sources reporting inmate-on-inmate assault allegations at ASMP across four months, four sources reporting deaths in custody, and four reporting PREA violations, with external referrals reaching the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the DOJ Civil Rights Division.

The Anthony Shedd Case and the February 2026 CNA Incidents

A concentrated cluster of staff-misconduct allegations surfaced at ASMP in mid-February 2026. News reporting identified Anthony P. Shedd (GDC ID 0000567033), a quadriplegic patient housed in the facility's medical wing, as the subject of a complaint alleging that a CNA identified as Williams cursed at him on February 15, 2026, refused to empty his catheter bag, refused to help him eat, and locked the door of his room. GPS staff observations characterize the reported refusal to assist Shedd with eating and the alleged interference with catheter management as denial of basic medical care. The same news reporting alleged that one day earlier, on February 14, 2026 around dinnertime, CNA Janette Shields struck inmate Bruce Charles Smith — described as disabled, requiring assistance with daily living tasks, and weighing 103 pounds per GDC records (111 pounds per the news article) — with an open hand in the medical wing. News reporting indicates Shields was arrested on February 14. The same coverage further alleged that the ASMP warden made threats of retaliation against Shedd for reporting CNA Williams, communicated via a phone call to a contact identified as Cindy Robertson on approximately February 20–21, 2026.

GPS staff observation has registered both a pattern of staff abuse allegations at ASMP involving multiple incidents in close succession across 2024–2025, and a documented pattern of staff abuse coupled with administrative cover-up. GPS staff have also noted that ongoing harm — continued inadequate care, retaliation, and unclear cancer treatment — may bear on statute-of-limitations calculations for Shedd's claims. GDC's live database lookup as of April 17, 2026 continued to show Shedd as active at ASMP. GPS has additionally received accounts of denial of basic medical care for a person entirely dependent on staff for activities of daily living, and accounts of staff retaliation tied to PREA reporting at this facility in the same window.

The Nurse-Round Form and the Vital-Signs Threshold

The GDC's own Infirmary/OPHU Nurse Round Progress Note form — designation Infirmary/OPHU I006.1, last revised May 24, 2022, with Karina Purcell listed as Form Owner — defines the thresholds at which an ASMP nurse is required to contact a health care provider: systolic blood pressure ≥180 or ≤90, diastolic ≥110 or ≤60; pulse ≥110 or ≤60; respirations persistently ≤10 or ≥20; temperature greater than 101°F; oxygen saturation under 90%. The parallel protocol at Walker State Prison goes further, requiring STAT provider contact at substantially the same thresholds and mandating emergency transport without delay if the provider cannot be reached, with vital-signs reassessment every 10–15 minutes while awaiting transport. Walker's protocol also explicitly prohibits ordering ibuprofen for patients presenting with stomach pain, for patients with a history of GI ulcers or GI bleeding, or for patients on anticoagulation therapy or aspirin. These are the documented standards. Whether they are followed at ASMP is the question much of the rest of the record places under strain. GPS has received recurring reports of medication management failures at the facility — including prescriptions, both routine and psychiatric, going unfilled for extended periods, and resumed psychiatric medications being restarted at full dose without titration.

A 2026 firsthand account published through GPS's Tell My Story series, "Watching Someone You Love Die While the System Looks Away" by an author writing as MysticRaven, describes a loved one who entered the system healthy, repeatedly told staff he was dying, was moved farther from the nurses' station "so they wouldn't have to hear him calling for help," and ultimately emerged from approximately seven months of ignored complaints as a quadriplegic with double pneumonia, kidney cancer, and paraneoplastic syndrome. The account describes calls and emails to the warden going unanswered as the patient deteriorated, and notes that a second prison facility refused to receive him at the door, with the ambulance driver told he was dying and needed a hospital. The account is consistent with the patient profile in the Shedd matter without identifying him; the public record indicates Shedd is the subject of a separate medical-negligence case file referencing Wheeler Correctional Facility (operated by CoreCivic) as a prior facility of housing.

Benning v. Oliver and a Federal Finding of Institutional Defiance

In 2018, Ralph Harrison Benning — an inmate at ASMP — filed a federal lawsuit challenging GDC restrictions and censorship of inmate emails, including a policy limiting email contacts to twelve people drawn from the in-person visitation log. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that in 2024, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted Benning a favorable ruling holding that GDC could not impose the twelve-contact limit. In November 2024, Benning filed a motion alleging that GDC officials were "willfully and intentionally" refusing to comply with the appellate order and that he "continues to be subject to email-contact restriction." Judge Tilman E. Self III subsequently issued a 29-page order granting summary judgment in Benning v. Oliver, enjoining GDC from enforcing the email-contact restriction as a First Amendment violation, and held GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver in contempt for willful violation of the order. The AJC quoted Judge Self as finding it "shocking" and "unbelievable" that GDC ignored a court order from the 11th Circuit, suggesting the department acts as if it is "above the law." On February 11, 2026, Judge Self held a 35-minute hearing in Macon during which he summoned Commissioner Oliver to the witness stand and scolded the department for failing to follow court orders on inmate email access. Following that order, the GDC issued a directive to wardens and superintendents to no longer enforce the email-contact limit.

The contempt finding at ASMP sits inside a broader pattern of GDC noncompliance the AJC has documented: two years prior to the 2026 hearing, a federal judge in Middle Georgia found GDC in contempt for willfully disregarding requirements to improve conditions in a high-security prison wing near Jackson, issuing a 100-page order. Brown v. Plata, the 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision on prison overcrowding as a constitutional question, supplies the doctrinal frame GPS analysis applies to a facility operating at 218% of its original design capacity. In the twelve months through May 2026, GPS records show six sources contributing external-complaint signals at ASMP — escalations referencing the 11th Circuit, the appellate court, the AJC, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, GPS Press, and the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division — and five sources contributing due-process-violation signals across two months.

Classification Drift, Overcrowding, and the Architecture of Failure

GPS's own investigative reporting has published a report titled "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People," documenting medium-security facilities housing close-security populations without the staffing or infrastructure those populations require. GPS reporting describes this as "classification drift": facilities operating, in practice, at security levels above their formal designation. ASMP itself is designated close-security, but the dynamic GPS reporting documents — population pressure that outstrips physical and staffing capacity — is intensely present at the medical prison, whose original 535-bed design now holds approximately 1,165 people. The same GPS analytical thread frames the constitutional dimension: when a facility built for fewer than 600 people houses more than twice that number, overcrowding-against-design-capacity becomes the structural condition under which all other failures cascade.

The deputy warden roster at ASMP reflects continuity: Barbra Colon (Programs/C&T), Michael Frank Paschal (Security), Orbey Harmon (Security), and Latasha M. Harris (Security) have all served in deputy-warden roles at the facility from at least 2021 through 2025, with Samantha Denise Carter taking over the Deputy Warden of Administration role on January 16, 2026 following Remona Annette Holloway. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a facility in which severe staffing shortages have allowed gang structures to function as a de facto authority, in which buildings are at times left unmonitored as staff congregate away from posts, and in which deaths have been discovered hours after they occurred. GPS has received reports of an in-custody assault during a medication-distribution period at ASMP in 2026 in which a staff member was injured and force was subsequently used against the incarcerated person; in the same twelve-month window, GPS records show three sources contributing excessive-force signals at the facility.

The Trafficking Corridor and the Drug Economy

The AJC reported that Joseph Collins, an inmate at ASMP, was sentenced to 240 months in federal prison for directing a heroin and methamphetamine trafficking network from inside Georgia prisons; his co-defendant Eric Gilbert at Calhoun State Prison received 228 months. The case underscores the degree to which contraband communications and narcotics distribution have penetrated the operational fabric of facilities meant to be the system's most controlled. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe contraband phones as the primary reliable means of communication available to incarcerated people at ASMP, with JPay email kiosks frequently non-functional — a corroboration of the conditions Benning's litigation sought to address.

DPH Food-Safety Inspections — The One Measure That Looks Clean

The Georgia Department of Public Health has conducted multiple routine food-safety inspections of ASMP across the past three years. Inspector Derek Buzhardt scored the facility 91 (Grade A) twice and 98 (Grade A) once on February 26, 2026; 99, 99, and 90 (all Grade A) on August 15, 2025; 100, 100, and 91 (all Grade A) on April 11, 2025; 97 (Grade A) on December 4, 2024 and 95 twice on December 3, 2024. Inspector Jasmine Anderson scored the kitchens 100, 100, and 96 (all Grade A) on June 25, 2024, and three perfect-100 Grade A scores were recorded on December 19, 2023. These are the only externally-administered inspection results in the public record for the facility, and they consistently fall in the high A range — a marker that the food-safety protocol is technically met, even as accounts collected by GPS describe the experience of eating at GDC facilities in starkly different terms, including in the Tell My Story account "Surviving on Scraps: Ten Years of Prison Food in Georgia" by an author writing as Stony, which describes mystery meat with bone shards, roaches at intake, and budget cuts that left guys "begging for money from friends and family just to survive." The DPH grade speaks to bacterial-load compliance in the kitchen, not to portion size, nutritional adequacy, or what reaches the tray.

A Parole Process That Did Not Result in Release

GPS has received recurring reports concerning a 2025 visit by members of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to ASMP, during which facility administration was asked to identify life-sentenced individuals — generally those who had served 30 or more years — for parole consideration. GPS has documented reports that as of early 2026, none of the individuals selected had been released. GPS has also received reports characterizing the process as performative rather than as a genuine parole review. The facility-aggregated GPS signal data shows four sources contributing PREA-violation signals and three contributing PREA-retaliation signals over the twelve-month window, alongside three sources reporting grievance-obstruction patterns — a constellation that locates the parole-visit reports inside a wider environment of constrained channels for raising concern.

Aggregate Posture

In the twelve months ending May 2026, GPS's intelligence system recorded, at ASMP: ten sources reporting inmate-on-inmate assault, seven reporting medical neglect, six reporting external complaints filed (to entities including the AJC, the DOJ Civil Rights Division, and the 11th Circuit), five reporting due-process violations, four reporting deaths in custody, four reporting PREA violations, four reporting staff misconduct involving unnamed officers, three reporting excessive force, three reporting families in fear for an incarcerated loved one's life, three reporting grievance obstruction, and three reporting PREA-related retaliation. February 2026 alone concentrated six external-complaint signals and four due-process signals — a clustering that aligns with the Benning contempt hearing, the Shedd matter, and the Shields arrest landing inside the same news cycle. April 2026 then concentrated five sources reporting inmate-on-inmate assault at the critical-severity level. These are records of patterns, not of individual incidents, and they reinforce the analytical thread that runs through everything above: at the state's flagship close-security medical facility, the gap between the protocols on file and the conditions in the housing units has been the subject of contempt findings, DOJ findings, news investigations, civil settlements, and a sustained flow of firsthand and family accounts.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, including its multi-year homicide-tracking coverage of Georgia prison deaths and its two-year investigation of GDC corruption, understaffing, and homicide rates; federal court filings and rulings in Benning v. Oliver, including Judge Tilman E. Self III's summary judgment, his contempt finding against the GDC Commissioner, and the 11th Circuit's 2024 ruling; the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 report on conditions in Georgia prisons; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; GDC's own Infirmary/OPHU Nurse Round Progress Note (form I006.1, revised May 24, 2022) and the parallel Walker State Prison clinical protocol; GPS's own mortality database, personnel records, and intelligence-system aggregates; firsthand narratives published through Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story; and family and inmate accounts collected by GPS staff.