GEORGIA STATE PRISON

Last updated August 29, 2026.(DS)

Georgia State Prison: A Maximum-Security Legacy Closed Under Federal Scrutiny

Georgia State Prison stood in unincorporated Tattnall County, outside Reidsville, and was for decades 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 organiser 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.

The facility's final years were marked by a concentration of violent death and liability payouts that drew sustained attention from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other outlets. GPS's mortality database records 46 deaths at Georgia State Prison since 2020 — 29 in 2020 and 17 in 2021, with none recorded after the closure. Of those, 18 were classified as natural or medical, 12 as suicide, 7 as homicide, 4 as overdose, 2 as accident, and 1 as medical neglect. The seven homicides documented by the AJC form the most specific public record of what happened inside the facility in its last two years of operation.

The Final Years: Seven Homicides in Twenty Months

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

The AJC reported that Georgia State Prison, where these seven homicides occurred between 2020 and 2021, was closed in early 2022. The closure came amid a federal investigation into the conditions of GDC facilities generally, according to GDC records cited in news coverage. The facility's abrupt closure in early 2022 was reported by multiple outlets as occurring amid that federal investigation.

Liability Payouts: A Decade of Settlements

The Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger, obtained through Open Records requests, documents sixteen liability payouts tied to incidents at Georgia State Prison between 2010 and 2021, totaling more than $5.6 million. The largest single payout was $2,998,994 to Khalid Mouton for an incident on January 4, 2021. Nicholas Baldwin received $1,000,000 for an incident on November 7, 2014. Brandon A. Peters received $750,000 for an incident on November 22, 2020 — a payout linked to a documented death record. Collin Jackson Donaldson received $625,000 for an incident on April 10, 2021, also linked to a documented death record. Seth Rouzan received $115,000 for an incident on April 19, 2018. Jermarae Herbert received two payouts: $62,500 for an incident on March 12, 2019, and $5,000 for an incident on December 1, 2021. Jamaal Wright received $35,000 for an incident on January 29, 2021. Curtis (Canupp J) Spires received $30,000 for an incident on July 1, 2010. Sue Hobbs received $8,408 for an incident on August 7, 2018. Quonterious Toles received $7,500 for an incident on June 25, 2018. Norman Simpson received $7,500 for an incident on February 16, 2021. William Navarro Castillo received $5,000 for an incident on April 17, 2016. Aaron Jewann Robinson received $2,500 for an incident on April 25, 2019. Kelton Alston received $1,000 for an incident on September 1, 2018. Micki Brown received $700 for an incident on May 23, 2019.

The settlement ledger does not specify the nature of each underlying incident, but the scale and frequency of payouts — particularly the $2.99 million and $1 million settlements — indicate that the state resolved substantial liability claims arising from conditions or events at the facility across more than a decade. The two payouts linked to documented death records (Peters and Donaldson) connect the financial record directly to the mortality record.

The Cassady Case: Solitary Confinement, Sexual Assault, and a Bomb Plot

The Georgia Virtue reported in February 2026 on the case of an incarcerated individual named Cassady, whose allegations against Georgia State Prison span more than two decades. Cassady claims he was beaten, stabbed, and brutally raped by another inmate at Georgia State Prison in 1996 and had to be transported to the hospital for care due to his injuries. He alleges that GDC determined his 2018 sexual assault claims were "unfounded," released the alleged assailant from segregation back to Cassady's cell block, and that a subsequent physical assault resulted in Cassady's partner being stabbed nine times.

The Georgia Virtue reported that Cassady was held in solitary confinement for months without required 30-day segregation hearings, in conditions including feces-covered walls, black mold, rodents, no lighting, and no heat or cooling. GDC records cited in the coverage confirm that Cassady was placed in solitary confinement in July 2019 and remained there for months, with no segregation hearings ever held in accordance with GDC policy requiring them every 30 days. At the time Cassady mailed the bombs — the incident that brought his case to public attention — he had gone six months without a psychiatric evaluation or psychotherapy sessions he had been participating in prior to segregation placement. Cassady also alleges that the PREA hotline phone was inaccessible to him because it was inside a locked box, and that Warden James Deal allegedly told Cassady that courts and GDC do not care about transgender inmates.

The AJC separately reported on a prisoner at Georgia State Prison in 2020 who 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, while staff failed to notice. The AJC also 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 Brandon Peters whose estate received a $750,000 settlement from the state.

The Longer Arc: Guthrie v. Evans and the Erasure of Federal Oversight

GPS's own reporting has documented a longer institutional history that frames the facility's final years. In 1972, inmates at Georgia State Prison filed a federal lawsuit — Guthrie v. Evans — that produced what GPS describes as the most comprehensive court-ordered reforms ever imposed on a single American prison. Thirteen years of federal oversight followed, including a federal court order to re-segregate the facility by race following a 1978 riot that resulted in three deaths. GPS reporting documents that congressional action enabled Georgia to dismantle those court-ordered reforms, and that the Department of Justice's 2024 investigation of Georgia prisons found the same constitutional violations identified fifty years earlier.

The DOJ's 2024 investigation, as documented in GPS reporting, revealed unconstitutional risk of harm and serious infrastructure problems in Georgia prisons. GPS has also documented that prison homicides in Georgia increased by 95.8% between 2021 and 2023 — a systemic trend that Georgia State Prison's seven homicides in 2020–2021 preceded and exemplified. The Southern Center for Human Rights has documented Georgia-wide triple-bunking across the prison system, according to GPS reporting.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Georgia Virtue; Georgia Department of Corrections records cited in news coverage; the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through Open Records requests; GPS's own mortality database and investigative reporting; and federal court records and DOJ findings documented in GPS reporting.