Last updated October 11, 2026.(DS)

Georgia State Prison: A Closed Prison's Record of Violence, Neglect, and Erased Reform

Georgia State Prison (GSP) stood in unincorporated Tattnall County, outside Reidsville, and for decades was the state's principal maximum-security institution. The main building was designed by the Atlanta firm Tucker & Howell in a Stripped Classical style, completed in late 1936 at a cost of about $1.5 million with Public Works Administration funding, and the prison opened in 1938. It held Georgia's death row until 1980. Martin Luther King Jr. was moved here from the DeKalb County jail in October 1960 and released on bond that month; the civil-rights organizer H. Rap Brown, now Jamil Al-Amin, was also held here. The Department of Corrections closed the prison on 19 February 2022. The building was not demolished — the state cited its historical value and has since used it for tours and as an emergency evacuation site for people held at other facilities.

That closing date is where most accounts stop. The record GPS has assembled — state settlement ledgers, mortality data, federal court filings, and news reporting — describes what the facility's final years actually looked like, and what was lost when the federal oversight that once governed it was dismantled.

Guthrie v. Evans and the Reform That Was Undone

In 1972, incarcerated people at Georgia State Prison filed a class action lawsuit against prison officials in federal court. The case, Guthrie v. Evans, was brought by Black inmates at the facility and produced what GPS's reporting describes as the most comprehensive court-ordered reforms ever imposed on a single American prison — thirteen years of federal oversight and remedial decrees addressing constitutional conditions at Reidsville. The litigation documented physical and corporal punishment carried out without due process, and allegations that correctional officers beat or whipped incarcerated people for failing to follow orders. A federal court ordered the prison re-segregated by race following a 1978 riot that left three people dead.

GPS's reporting describes that oversight as later dismantled: after Congress changed the applicable rules, a federal judge allowed the state to walk away in 1997, ending the remedial decrees. GPS has documented that the same categories of constitutional violation identified in the Guthrie era were found again in the Department of Justice's 2024 investigation of Georgia prisons — a finding that postdates the facility's closure but speaks to the system it belonged to. (One GPS-authored account of the Guthrie history carries an unresolved fact-check flag and is given no evidentiary weight here.)

The Final Two Years: Deaths, Homicides, and a Federal Investigation

GPS's mortality registry records 46 deaths at Georgia State Prison from January 1, 2020 through the facility's closure — 29 in 2020 and 17 in 2021, with no deaths recorded at the facility in any year after it closed. By cause, the registry lists 18 deaths as Natural/Medical, 12 as Suicide, 7 as Homicide, 4 as Overdose, 2 as Accident, one as Medical Neglect, one Unknown/Pending, and one Other. These are floor figures; GDC reports deaths roughly two months late.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented the homicides at the facility, reporting that seven occurred between 2020 and 2021. Among them: Raul Garcia Bailon, 39, died April 21, 2020, from positional asphyxia and suffocation due to assault and blunt trauma to soft tissues. Joctavious Artez Newsome, 25, died November 4, 2020, from a stab wound. Demetrius Stubbins, 38, died December 21, 2020, from a stab wound to the chest. Christopher Dewayne Mathis, 37, died February 26, 2021, from blunt force trauma to the head. Christopher D'Corro Ward, 29, died May 25, 2021, from carbon monoxide poisoning due to smoke inhalation and methamphetamine toxicity, with an incident report showing a fire. Fabian Garcia-Mata, 27, died September 10, 2021, from multiple stab wounds, and Troy Donald Harvey, 34, died September 12, 2021, from a stab wound to the chest.

The AJC also reported that Georgia State Prison closed abruptly in early 2022 amid a federal investigation into the conditions of GDC facilities generally. GPS's registry records the following additional deaths at the facility, with the causes as listed: Angelo Ortiz Roxbury died December 8, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Lamont Avery Morris died November 30, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Accident. Zachary Daniel Strudgeon died November 29, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. Matthew Michael Cooney died November 6, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. Paul Kozachyn died August 24, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Ted Howard Screws died August 8, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Carlos Smith-Jones died July 14, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Overdose. Charles Clifton died July 11, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Malik Pitts died May 21, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. Calvin Lavert Lewis died May 5, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Other. John Kennedy Cope died April 12, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. Collin Jackson Donaldson died April 10, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. Roberto Garza Bazan died February 27, 2021, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Tommy James Bullard died December 11, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Steve Neal Williams died December 1, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Brandon Allen Peters died November 23, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Medical Neglect. Victor Vean Thompson died October 28, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Linward Adams died October 24, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. Terrell Toshra Hamilton died October 20, 2020, at Georgia State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Suicide. The full list is maintained at https://gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/georgia-state-prison/.

Settlements: What the State Paid For

Georgia's Open Records settlement ledger, maintained by the Department of Administrative Services Risk Management division, records liability payouts tied to Georgia State Prison across more than a decade. The largest single payout in the record is $2,998,994 to Khalid Mouton, tied to a 2021 incident. The state paid $1,000,000 to Nicholas Baldwin, tied to a 2014 incident, and $750,000 to Brandon A. Peters, tied to a 2020 incident and linked to a documented death record. Collin Jackson Donaldson's 2021 case produced a $625,000 payout, also linked to a documented death record. Seth Rouzan received $115,000 for a 2018 incident; Jermarae Herbert received $62,500 for a 2019 incident and $5,000 for a 2021 incident; Jamaal Wright received $35,000; Curtis (Canupp J) Spires received $30,000 for a 2010 incident. Smaller payouts include $8,408 to Sue Hobbs, $7,500 each to Norman Simpson and Quonterious Toles, $5,000 to William Navarro Castillo, $2,500 to Aaron Jewann Robinson, $1,000 to Kelton Alston, and $700 to Micki Brown.

Medical Neglect and Violence Against the Vulnerable

The AJC reported that officials failed to intervene and provide proper medical care to Brandon Peters, who suffered for days from severe symptoms before dying in his cell. The same outlet reported that a prisoner at Georgia State Prison in 2020 was found so malnourished that every bone in his spine was bruised, with a jaw fracture and human bite marks across his body; he reported being sexually assaulted by his cellmate and having his food stolen for months. GPS's registry lists Peters's cause of death as Medical Neglect.

The Georgia Virtue reported in February 2026 on allegations by Cassady, a transgender woman held at the facility, that the PREA hotline phone was inaccessible to her because it was inside a locked box, and that a warden allegedly told her courts and GDC do not care about transgender inmates. Cassady alleged she was held in solitary confinement for months without the required 30-day segregation hearings, in conditions including feces-covered walls, black mold, rodents, no lighting, and no heat or cooling, and that at the time she mailed the bombs she had gone six months without a psychiatric evaluation or the psychotherapy sessions she had participated in before segregation placement. Cassady also alleged that GDC determined her 2018 sexual assault claims were "unfounded," released the alleged assailant from segregation back to her cell block, and that a subsequent physical assault resulted in her partner being stabbed nine times. She further claims she was beaten, stabbed, and raped by another inmate at Georgia State Prison in 1996 and had to be transported to the hospital for care. These are allegations reported by The Georgia Virtue; they are unverified.

Separately, the AJC reported that Cofield was moved to the Special Management Unit from Georgia State Prison in 2018 after Fulton County prosecutors charged him with ordering a shooting that left a 36-year-old Atlanta man paralyzed from the waist down.

A System That Kept Producing the Same Findings

GPS's reporting has documented that prison homicides across Georgia increased 95.8 percent between 2021 and 2023 — the years bracketing this facility's closure — and that the DOJ's 2024 investigation found unconstitutional risk of harm and serious infrastructure problems in Georgia prisons. The Southern Center for Human Rights has documented Georgia-wide triple-bunking across the prison system. GPS has independently tracked 1,913 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.

Georgia State Prison's own history is the clearest illustration of the pattern: a facility whose conditions were litigated for thirteen years, whose reforms were dismantled by congressional action, and whose final two years produced 46 deaths and seven homicides before the state closed it — not by demolishing it, but by leaving it standing.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement records obtained through Open Records; GPS's mortality registry and death records; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Georgia Virtue; federal court filings in Guthrie v. Evans; the U.S. Department of Justice's 2024 findings on Georgia prisons; documentation by the Southern Center for Human Rights; and GPS's own investigative reporting and Tell My Story first-person accounts.