Last updated November 1, 2026.(DS)

Calhoun State Prison: Classification Drift, a Population Swap, and the Deadliest Kind of Paperwork

Calhoun State Prison sits on the edge of Morgan, in Calhoun County, a medium-security prison for adult male felons that the state built for 500 people and now rates for 1,677. It opened in 1994, was renovated in 1999 and 2008, and houses men mainly in double-bunked cells and dormitory units, with a segregation and disciplinary area. It runs standard work details and limited programming. What the facility's own numbers show is something else: a medium-security prison whose population has been quietly reclassified toward close custody, whose long-term residents have been shipped out in waves, and where GPS has recorded 30 deaths since January 1, 2020 — seven of them homicides — including a 24-year-old man who died of dehydration in a segregation cell after, a federal lawsuit alleged, staff shut off his water.

A Medium-Security Prison Holding Close-Custody Men

GDC's own population figures, as compiled by GPS, show the drift clearly. In October 2025, Calhoun held 487 close-custody people out of 1,657 total — 29.4 percent. By September 2026, the close-custody count had risen to 619 of 1,516, or 40.8 percent. The overall population fell by 141 while the close-custody count rose by 132 over that span. A facility designated medium-security was, by the fall of 2026, holding a population that was more than four in ten close custody.

That mismatch is the analytical center of GPS's reporting on what it has called classification drift — medium-security prisons operating as de facto close-security facilities without the staffing or infrastructure that designation implies. GPS has documented the pattern across Georgia's medium-security system, and Calhoun's numbers are among the starkest. The facility's rated capacity of 1,677 against an original design capacity of 500 is itself a measure of how far the plant has been stretched.

The consequences are not abstract. The U.S. Department of Justice, in findings reported by WALB, concluded that staff at Calhoun State Prison failed to follow classification and housing assignment procedures, contributing to a 2022 homicide. That homicide was the death of DaQuavious Cachone Lackey, 21, who died on May 16, 2022, from a stab wound of the neck and multiple blunt force injuries. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the DOJ found Lackey was killed after staff failed to follow procedures when moving his assailant between segregation and general population, resulting in Lackey being housed with and killed by his cellmate — beaten with a fan motor in a net bag. The Calhoun County coroner's record lists the manner of death as homicide and the cause as a stab wound of the neck, with multiple blunt force injuries.

The Deaths GPS Has Recorded

GPS's mortality registry records 30 deaths at Calhoun State Prison since January 1, 2020. The full list is maintained at gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/calhoun-state-prison/. By cause, GPS's registry classifies 14 as Unknown/Pending, seven as Natural/Medical, seven as Homicide, one as Suicide, and one as Deliberate Indifference. The most recent 25:

• Randy Walton died August 21, 2026, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 67.
• Freddie Lee Patterson died May 13, 2026, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 51.
• Jimmy McMullen died January 28, 2026, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 67.
• Matthew Len Nutt died December 21, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 37.
• Thomas Haugabook died September 25, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 67.
• Tyler Jackson died June 28, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 30.
• Gary Bernard Duncan died May 4, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 67.
• Theodore Roundtree died January 19, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide.
• Charles Owens died January 6, 2025, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending.
• Kent Tyrik Robinson died November 5, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 26.
• Willie Andrew Willis died October 21, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 27.
• William Dutton Maddox died August 1, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 62.
• Terry Paul Smith died July 20, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 62.
• Gonzalo Colmenero-Ayala died July 17, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 54.
• Tyler Jackson Blackwell died July 13, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 31.
• Kenneth Scott Piper died May 4, 2024, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 37.
• Martel Orlando Dorsey died November 24, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 32.
• Randy Dixon died November 23, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 63.
• Paul Russell Gordon died November 13, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 63.
• Sergio Andres Lopez-Herrera died July 15, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 41.
• Reginald Jerome Jr Jacobs died February 6, 2023, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Deliberate Indifference. He was 24.
• Timothy Edwin Bryant died October 11, 2022, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 64.
• James Thomas Ennis died September 30, 2022, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 63.
• Daquavious Lackey died May 16, 2022, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 21.
• Christopher Edward Oliva died April 9, 2022, at Calhoun State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 43.

The coroner's records behind several of these deaths were obtained by GPS through open-records requests to Calhoun County, received July 2, 2026. They are specific. Christopher Edward Oliva's death certificate (2022GA000046578) lists hanging as the cause and suicide as the manner; the GBI Division of Forensic Sciences autopsy, case DOFS 2022-4001634, performed by Medical Examiner Natasha Grandhi, certified both, and postmortem toxicology demonstrated an illicit substance. Martel Orlando Dorsey's certificate (2023GA000096069) lists homicide by stabbing. Theodore Roundtree's (2025GA000097802) lists sharp force abdominal trauma. Thomas Haugabook's (2025GA000083341) lists intracranial hemorrhage from a ruptured cerebral artery, manner natural. Jimmy McMullen's (2026GA000015376) lists pancreatic cancer, manner natural, with no autopsy performed. Matthew Len Nutt's (2025GA000097757) lists blunt force trauma, manner homicide, and states he was assaulted by another individual.

The Dehydration Death in J Building

The death GPS classifies as Deliberate Indifference is Reginald Jerome Jacobs Jr., 24, and it is the most documented in the facility's recent record. The Calhoun County coroner's record (2023GA000063933) lists the manner as natural and the cause as dehydration with renal failure. Jacobs had been held in solitary confinement in Calhoun's J Building from at least December 21, 2021, through his death — a period exceeding a year.

The verified First Amended Complaint in Jacobs v. GDC, 4:25-cv-00111 (M.D. Ga.), alleges that a GDC employee disabled the water supply to Jacobs's cell around January 27, 2023, and that, contrary to GDC SOP 209.06, no 30-minute segregation rounds were provided and no alternate drinking water was supplied through his death. Jacobs was found emaciated on February 5, 2023, roughly seven to eight hours before he died. The AJC reported that a 24-year-old prisoner at Calhoun died of dehydration with renal failure after staff cut off his food and water following an incident in which he threw water through his cell door flap; the coroner believed he had been dead seven to eight hours before being found. The DOJ, as reported by WALB, documented that an incarcerated person at Calhoun died of dehydration after staff shut off his water, closed the door flap, and did not deliver meals for two days.

The case was removed from Muscogee County State Court (SC2024CV002716), settled per a Notice of Settlement filed August 15, 2025, and closed via an all-defendant Stipulation of Dismissal filed December 16, 2025. The Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger, obtained through open records, records a state liability payout of $3,250,000 to Reginald Jacobs Sr. for the Estate of Reginald Jacobs Jr., tied to Calhoun State Prison.

Violence Inside the Walls

The homicide record at Calhoun is not confined to the Jacobs case. Willie Andrew Willis Jr., 27, died October 21, 2024. WALB reported that he suffered catastrophic injuries from a fall at Calhoun State Prison and later died, with medical records listing sepsis as the cause; his family alleges he was thrown from a balcony by other inmates and that nearly an hour passed before he was airlifted. The family also alleges that nurses gave a conflicting account, claiming he came to get Tylenol and returned to his dorm before collapsing, while the family states he was paralyzed from the waist down and on a ventilator.

Gonzalo Colmenero-Ayala, 54, died July 17, 2024, following an inmate-to-inmate assault, per incident report data cited by the AJC. Kenneth Scott Piper, 37, was killed in an inmate-to-inmate assault on May 4, 2024, per the same reporting. Martel Dorsey, 34, was stabbed by other prisoners on October 4, 2023; the AJC reported that GDC told a television station several witnesses saw Dorsey run out of a dorm as he was chased by other prisoners.

GPS records show a sustained pattern of alleged inmate-on-inmate violence at Calhoun over the past year — 28 distinct sources across nine cases between January and October 2026, with September 2026 alone accounting for ten. GPS has additionally received recurring reports of staff-on-inmate assaults and excessive force at the facility, and of medical neglect, in the same period. These are accounts GPS has received, not findings.

The Quiet Purge: Who Left and Who Arrived

Separate from the violence is a demographic transformation that GPS's transfer data documents and that no GDC announcement has explained. GPS staff analysis identified Calhoun as a statistical outlier in transfers of life-sentenced people — a disproportionate share of all statewide medium-to-close-security lifer transfers. GPS's internal analysis recorded a substantial volume of outgoing transfers, a large majority of them life-sentenced, with a notable acceleration in a single month. A large majority of the lifers transferred out were Black, a significant portion were 60 or older, and a large majority had been convicted of murder. GPS data indicates those transferred were not classified as Life Without Parole.

The incoming side is the mirror image. GPS's analysis found that a large majority of incoming transfers to Calhoun are short-term sentences with release dates inside a short horizon, and that most incoming transfers from Level 5 close-security facilities are non-lifers being reclassified downward. The net effect, as GPS's analysis describes it, is a population swap: stable long-term residents shipped to close-security prisons while younger short-timers arrive from those same facilities. GPS staff analysis assessed the transfer pattern as consistent with pre-planned transport scheduling rather than ad hoc movement.

GPS has received recurring accounts from inside and from families describing transfers of life-sentenced people out of Calhoun and of close-custody people into it, and describing a facility leadership goal of removing long-term residents. Those accounts are consistent with the transfer data; GPS has not established the reason behind the pattern.

Contraband, Contraband Everywhere — and the Cases That Evaporated

Calhoun's contraband problem has a documented staff dimension. GPS's analysis of GDC's own contraband reports found that Calhoun appears among the facilities whose reports most often name GDC's own staff — 28 staff-class people across 159 incidents, second only to Dooly State Prison in that measure.

The AJC's June 2025 investigation traced what happened to the cases. Correctional officers Corlethia Lattimore and Imani Ferguson were arrested in February 2020 after arriving for their shifts with Hot Pockets packages allegedly containing methamphetamine and tobacco — 112 grams of methamphetamine in Lattimore's, four times the amount for a trafficking charge, and tobacco in Ferguson's. Both were immediately fired. Charges were dismissed in July 2023 because there was no crime lab report or law enforcement report to support them, and the four-year statute of limitations had run. GDC investigator Ruby Long took out the arrest warrants but, the AJC reported, failed to submit the drug evidence to the crime lab.

The pattern was wider than two officers. Nearly two dozen cases leading to 33 arrests between 2018 and 2021 related to Calhoun State Prison were dismissed by District Attorney Joe Mulholland because drug evidence was never submitted to the GBI crime lab — five prison employees and dozens of other suspected smugglers walked free. The Calhoun County Sheriff's Department failed to submit drug evidence in 12 dismissed cases despite the sheriff's claim that deputies had sent evidence to the state lab. The AJC reported that GDC's public statement about the number of dismissed cases conflicted with what it found in court files. On June 2, 2025, a grand jury heard 35 cases related to Calhoun State Prison; more than 300 remained pending afterward, according to the Superior Court clerk.

Contraband cellphones at Calhoun powered something larger. In January 2026, a federal jury convicted Joey Amour Jackson and Lance Riddle, both incarcerated at Calhoun, of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering after a five-day trial. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that Jackson was sentenced to 120 months and Riddle to 200 months in federal prison, consecutive to any state sentences. Callers used Voice Over Internet Protocol to spoof police department numbers and posed as officers telling victims they had arrest warrants for missing jury duty, demanding bond payment; some victims were instructed to undress in a Target restroom and film a self-conducted cavity search, then received lewd messages and violent threats. A Florida sheriff, the AJC reported, says a "huge scam" operation is being run out of Calhoun State Prison and Wheeler Correctional Institution; Annie Ashley of Atlanta was charged with grand theft in connection with a network that took $15,000 from a woman near Daytona Beach.

The facility has also been a base for drug trafficking. The AJC reported that Jonathan Alvin Pope led a drug ring operating in at least seven Georgia counties from Calhoun, with 13 others indicted, seven of them also incarcerated; he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Edwin Murillo brokered major meth sales in several northeast Georgia counties and was sentenced to 300 months in federal prison in April 2019, later receiving life for directing a 2021 torture and murder. Pedro Barragan Valencia brokered at least 250 kilograms of meth and was sentenced to 400 months in December 2023. Irvin Falcon, 23, used a contraband cellphone to direct meth deliveries in the Fitzgerald area and was sentenced to 260 months. In 2019, officer Temperess Johnson was caught attempting to smuggle eight cellphones and 2.6 pounds of meth in a GDC van and was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Food, Fire Exits, and the Gap Between Scores and Conditions

The Georgia Department of Public Health's routine food-safety inspections at Calhoun have produced near-perfect scores: 100 on July 14, 2026; 96 and 98 on January 7, 2026; 100 and 99 on July 23, 2025; 100 and 98 on January 8, 2025; 100 and 99 on July 25, 2024; 96 and 98 on January 10, 2024; 100 and 97 on July 19, 2023. The violations cited were minor — thermometers, handwashing facilities, physical facilities maintained and clean, and once, in July 2023, insects, rodents, and animals not present.

GPS has documented a systemic pattern in which DPH scores fail to capture food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens, because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. GPS's reporting describes accounts from inside Georgia prisons of broken tray-sanitizing dishwashers, roach and rodent infestation, and meals served on contaminated trays. The Marshall Project independently reported in May 2026 on rats in kitchens, insects in food, and moldy trays across Georgia facilities. At Calhoun specifically, GPS has received recurring accounts describing unsupervised dorm food distribution in which security threat group members control and allocate meals, and describing group punishment that withholds commissary from entire housing units — accounts that, if accurate, describe a food system operating well outside what an inspection score measures. GPS records three food-quality complaint signals at Calhoun in July and September 2026.

GPS has also received accounts describing welded plates, bolts, and padlocks added to fire exits at Calhoun in the past year, and describing a State Fire Marshal characterization of those exits as improper. GPS records four equipment-failure signals at the facility in September and October 2026, with the State Fire Marshal named among external entities. These are accounts GPS has received; they have not been independently confirmed.

Leadership and the Record of Accountability

Charles Leonard Hudson has served as warden since June 1, 2026. His deputies are Sawanda Owens (Deputy Warden of Administration, since August 1, 2026), Tracey Scott (Deputy Warden of Care and Treatment), Curtis Tyrone Johnson (Deputy Warden of Security, since May 16, 2025), and Gwendolyn A. Spencer (Deputy Warden of Security). The facility's leadership has turned over substantially in 2026.

The state's own settlement ledger records what Calhoun's conditions have cost. Beyond the $3.25 million Jacobs payout, the DOAS Risk Management ledger lists $998,715 to Angel M. Ortiz (2019 incident), $10,000 to Asmar Rasheed (2018), and $1,400 to Lasharon Brantley (2020).

GDC has also paid for perimeter security. The AJC reported that in the first three months of 2025, GDC made payments totaling nearly $127,000 to Calhoun County Sheriff Josh Hilton and eight of his deputies for off-duty perimeter patrol of Calhoun State Prison at $45 per hour.

What the Record Shows

Calhoun State Prison is a medium-security facility holding a population that is 40.8 percent close custody, in a plant built for 500 and rated for 1,677, where a 24-year-old died of dehydration in segregation after his water was allegedly shut off, where the DOJ found classification failures contributed to a 21-year-old's killing by his cellmate, where seven deaths since 2020 are classified as homicides, and where the state has paid $3.25 million to settle one family's claim. Around that core, GPS's data shows a population being swapped — long-term residents out, short-timers in — and a contraband economy that ran through staff, through cellphones, and through a prosecutorial pipeline that let nearly two dozen cases evaporate for want of a lab test.

GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020.

Sources

This analysis draws on the Georgia Department of Corrections' own mortality reports and population data; Calhoun County coroner and GBI Division of Forensic Sciences records obtained by GPS through open-records requests received July 2, 2026; the verified First Amended Complaint and docket in Jacobs v. GDC, 4:25-cv-00111 (M.D. Ga.); the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger; Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records; GDC's published contraband reports; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, WALB, and FOX 5 Atlanta, including the AJC's June 2025 investigation of dismissed drug cases and its coverage of the DOJ's October 2024 findings; The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food; GPS's own mortality registry and transfer analysis; and inmate, family, and anonymous accounts collected by GPS staff.