Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

Lee State Prison: A Transfer Hub Under Pressure

Lee State Prison sits on the outskirts of Leesburg in Lee County, a medium-security men's facility that opened in 1979 and has been absorbing the same pressures — overcrowding, gang violence, staffing collapse, and repeated lockdowns — that GPS has documented across Georgia's prison system. Its rated capacity is 762. Its current population is 869, roughly 114 percent of rated capacity and more than double the 384 people the plant was originally designed to hold. GPS has recorded seven deaths at the facility since January 2020. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe gang-related fights and lockdown cycles at the facility through 2026. This page examines what the public record shows about Lee — its physical plant, the people held there, the deaths GPS has tracked, and the systemic conditions that shape daily life inside it.

A 1979 Plant Built for 384, Now Holding 869

Lee State Prison opened in 1979 as a medium-security men's prison. It has 11 general-population housing units with two-man cells, plus specialized housing for isolation, medical, and mobility-impaired prisoners. It also functions as a transfer hub and intake point for certain movements within the system — a role that keeps population moving through the facility and complicates any stable count of who is held there at a given time.

The prison provides outside work details and basic programming, and it has been affected by the same staffing shortages, gang pressures, and lockdown conditions seen statewide.

The numbers tell the structural story. Against a rated capacity of 762, Lee currently holds 869 people — about 114 percent. Against the original design capacity of 384, the facility is operating at roughly 226 percent of what its architects planned for. That gap between original design and current use is not unique to Lee; GPS has documented that Georgia's prison system as a whole reports operating at 99.9 percent of claimed capacity (50,238 of 50,279) while actual overcrowding far exceeds original design specifications when measured against the facilities' original blueprints. Lee is a case study in how that arithmetic works at the facility level.

The warden is Letitia Burks, who has held the post since July 2026. Deputy wardens are Matasha L. Cook, Willether Brown, and Martin A. Jones.

Seven Deaths Since 2020, Most Causes Still Pending

GPS's mortality registry records seven deaths at Lee State Prison since January 1, 2020. The registry is a floor, not a ceiling — GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the count lags actual events.

The most recent was Yancey Sullivan, 56, who died July 10, 2026, at Lee State Prison. GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. Before him, Quinton Pearson, 45, died September 8, 2025, also with cause Unknown/Pending.

Two deaths came in early 2024. Daniel Emmett Ivey died February 15, 2024, at age 26; Christopher Aaron Godfrey died January 16, 2024, at age 40. Both are listed as Unknown/Pending.

Pedro Perez-Robles, 38, died May 28, 2021, at Lee State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. Phillip E. Patterson, 63, died April 4, 2020, and Anthony Wilbert Cheek, 49, died March 26, 2020; both are listed as Natural/Medical.

Four of the seven deaths carry a cause category of Unknown/Pending — a figure that reflects the limits of what GDC discloses, not an absence of information about how these men died. GPS has independently tracked 1,896 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020.

Gang Violence and Lockdown Cycles in 2026

Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe gang-related fights at Lee State Prison during 2026, followed by a lockdown that was later lifted. Multiple witnesses reported that staff appeared more cautious in the aftermath of weekend fighting, and that the facility was on heightened alert for further violence. GPS records show three reports of alleged assault by another incarcerated person at Lee over a two-month stretch in mid-to-late 2026, at moderate and low severity.

An anonymous tip reported a rumor that a lockdown at Lee was prompted by a drone sighting, though the source of the tip doubted that explanation. GPS has received accounts of a fight outside the store at the facility, described as minor.

These accounts arrive against a documented systemwide backdrop. On April 1, 2026, coordinated gang violence erupted across Georgia's prison system, with at least 12 prisons locked down, life flights dispatched to two facilities, and stabbings reported at five, according to GPS reporting. GPS has documented that Georgia has identified 315 gangs and roughly 15,200 gang-affiliated prisoners — about 31 percent of its population — while maintaining no separation strategy, no exit program, and no management plan. Texas, Arizona, and California developed gang-management approaches decades ago. Georgia, GPS's reporting concludes, chose to do nothing, and the death toll reflects it.

The most severe single episode in the recent record occurred not at Lee but at Washington State Prison, where four people were killed in a gang-related disturbance on January 11, 2026. Three died at the scene — Teddy Dewayne Jackson, 27; Ahmod Dewayne Hatcher, 23; and Jimmy Lee Trammell, 42, who had 72 hours remaining on his sentence. A fourth, Silas Westbrook, 42, was injured in the riot and died January 17 after being released from the hospital. Dajhmere Hall, 30, was found dead at Washington two days before the riot, on January 9. Washington State Prison was placed on continuous lockdown after the riot and never reopened. Twelve people were later charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, and gang participation in connection with the disturbance, announced around April 28, 2026.

Staffing, Food Service, and the Gap Between Scores and Conditions

Georgia's correctional officer vacancy rate has run between 49.3 and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent. At Valdosta State Prison the rate reached 80 percent by April 2024. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: the acceptance rate is under 15 percent, and 82.7 percent of new hires leave within their first year. Georgia ranks last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ 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." Tyler Ryals, a former GDC sergeant forced out in 2024 after whistleblowing, told GPS he had personally been the only security person on the entire Telfair compound of roughly 1,250 maximum-security inmates.

Against that backdrop, Lee's food-service record is notably clean. The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected the facility's food operations seven times since July 2023, and six of those inspections returned a perfect score of 100, Grade A — in January 2024, July 2024, January 2025, July 2025, January 2026, and July 2026. The one exception was July 14, 2023, when the facility scored 90, Grade A, with two violations cited: proper cold holding temperatures, and physical facilities installed, maintained, and clean.

That record sits in tension with what GPS has documented systemwide. GPS has found a pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination. The contradiction is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The economics underneath are stark. GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024) and has proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. The state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. The Marshall Project corroborated the pattern on May 16, 2026, independently reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented in October 2024.

Infrastructure and the Classification Drift Problem

Most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with documented patterns of deferred maintenance that have produced systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. A 2012 audit at Hays State Prison found roughly 42 percent of cell-door locks non-functional; the Guidehouse 2024 assessment confirmed the pattern. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate it. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level.

Lee's own profile places it squarely within that aging stock. Opened in 1979, the facility is now in its fifth decade of service, operating at more than double its original design capacity while functioning as a transfer hub and intake point for system movements.

GPS has separately documented a pattern of classification drift across Georgia's medium-security prisons — facilities designated medium-security that house significant numbers of close-security inmates without the staffing and infrastructure that designation implies. GPS published a report titled "The Classification Crisis: How Four Medium Security Prisons Are Killing People" documenting the pattern. Lee is a medium-security facility operating at 114 percent of rated capacity; whether it is among the four facilities that report examines is not established by the public record available here.

Sources

This analysis draws on food-safety inspection records from the Georgia Department of Public Health; GPS's mortality registry and facility records; GPS's systemic findings on infrastructure, staffing, food service, gang violence, and classification drift; inmate and anonymous accounts collected by GPS staff; and GPS's own investigative reporting, including "Dunked, Stacked, and Served," "Blood on Blood: Georgia Statewide Prison Lockdown," and "315 Gangs, Zero Strategy." The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food is cited for its independent corroboration of the food-service pattern. The U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter on Georgia prisons is cited for its conclusions on staffing and gang control.