Last updated November 1, 2026.(DS)

Phillips State Prison: A Close-Security Facility Built for 600, Rated for 918, and Burying Its Dead in Gwinnett County

Phillips State Prison sits on W Rock Quarry Road in Buford, in Gwinnett County, and has been part of Georgia's prison map since 1991. GPS's standing record describes it as a close-security facility for adult male felons — many sources still call it medium — with 10 housing units of mixed two-man and single-man cells, roughly 100 isolation and segregation cells, and a linked transitional center. It has hosted a campus of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and runs education and faith-based programming. Its original design capacity was 600; its current rated capacity is 918; GPS's population snapshot puts 660 people inside, about 72 percent of rated capacity. Aaron Thomas Pineiro has been warden since June 2024, with Remona Annette Holloway as Deputy Warden of Administration and Dorothy Andre and Joshua Craig Fulbright as Deputy Wardens of Security.

What follows is an account of what the public record and GPS's own holdings show about the facility: a federal civil-rights finding, a clean sexual-abuse audit that sits uneasily against what families and incarcerated people describe, a mortality record that runs to 69 deaths since 2020, and a documented pattern of violence that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has tracked case by case.

A Federal Finding, and a PREA Audit That Failed Nothing

In October 2024, a Department of Justice investigation cited Eighth Amendment violations at Phillips State Prison. That finding did not arrive in isolation: GPS has documented that the DOJ's October 2024 conclusions described a system in which leadership "has lost control of its facilities," in which sexual assault was characterized as rampant, and in which gangs effectively ran housing units. The federal findings letter faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing."

Against that backdrop, Phillips's own federal sexual-abuse audit reads as a document from a different institution. The Georgia Department of Corrections published the PREA audit report on its own website. The site visit occurred on 5 February 2018; auditor Robert Lanier of Diversified Correctional Services, LLC, signed a 145-page report dated 5 April 2018. Of 45 standards assessed, 40 met the standard and 5 exceeded it. Zero failed. The audit certified compliance with §115.41 (screening for risk of sexual victimization), §115.42 (using screening information for housing and program assignments), §115.62 (the duty to protect prisoners at substantial risk of imminent sexual abuse), and §115.67 (monitoring for retaliation after a report). Cedric Taylor was warden at the time; Rhonda Billings, Deputy Warden of Care & Treatment, was the Facility PREA Compliance Manager; Grace Atchison was GDC's Statewide PREA Coordinator; Timothy C. Ward was GDC Chief of Staff.

The audit also records GDC policy as stated to the auditor: that incarcerated people who engage in nonconsensual sexual contact will be strongly disciplined and referred for prosecution, and that employees who engage in sexual misconduct will be terminated and referred for prosecution. GPS has documented that this clean-audit pattern is systemic rather than peculiar to Phillips — that GDC's own consultants found not one of 388 PREA investigation files reviewed in May 2022 met the law's standards, and that Georgia has never submitted a PREA certification of full compliance in the law's two-decade history. GPS has received accounts alleging that the screening system certified under §115.42 was, in practice, for sale at this facility, and accounts alleging retaliation against a person who intervened to protect another. Those accounts stand against a document that failed nothing.

Nineteen Months of Stabbings: The AJC's Homicide Record

Between June 2022 and September 2025, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented a run of killings at Phillips that reads less like a list of isolated incidents than like a sequence.

Jamal Cymonne Johnson, 32, died on June 11, 2022, from stab wounds to the head that injured the brain, with delayed effects. Sidney Sanchez Nealey, 22, died on July 18, 2022, from stab wounds to the torso. Jacob Kendall Daniels, 19, died on August 13, 2022, from a stab wound to the neck, shoulder, and arm. Quafabian Melik McBride, 19, died on September 30, 2022, from stab wounds to the chest injuring the heart, during a gang-related fight in the lockdown unit — and, the AJC reported, McBride had been brought to that lockdown unit that day through arrangements made by officers. The DOJ found that McBride's killing triggered a gang war across multiple GDC prisons, with Bloods attacking Crips over several days and 20 prisoners hospitalized.

Alim Rasheed Lovett, 33, died on December 8, 2022, from stab wounds to the back injuring the right lung, with four other prisoners involved according to the incident report. Arthur James Wimbush Jr., 46, died on April 2, 2023, from blunt force trauma with fracture of the thyroid cartilage. David Fambro, 69, died on July 24, 2024, from complications of facial fractures after an interval of 26 days; incident report data shows a homicide. And Alonzo Carter, 78, died on September 20, 2025 — a death the medical examiner's amended report would later certify as a homicide from complications of blunt-force head trauma.

The Wimbush case is the one with the fullest documentary trail. Edward Lominac was indicted on 14 May 2025 in Gwinnett Superior Court (case 25-B-02421-1) on Count 1 felony murder and Count 2 aggravated assault; the indictment charged that he caused Wimbush's death on 2 April 2023 by repeatedly kicking and stomping him. It was a special presentment, and Karen Wilbanks of the GDC Office of Investigations and Compliance was a grand-jury witness. Lominac pleaded guilty to Count 1 on 7 October 2025 before Judge George F. Hutchinson III and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, with Count 2 merged. The Gwinnett County Medical Examiner's report (case 23G-0533) classified the manner as homicide and the cause as blunt-force trauma with fracture of the right side of the thyroid cartilage; an autopsy was performed on 2023-04-03 and certified by Carol A. Terry, M.D. GPS's own reporting describes accounts that, thirty days before Wimbush was due to go home, the facility's chief of security sought a segregation bed to protect him and found every one of them full.

Carter's case carries its own weight. On 2025-05-12, Carter — then 77 — was involved in a fist fight with another incarcerated man at the prison; no weapons were involved, and the other man reportedly said he was defending himself. Carter had blood coming from his ear and face and was taken by Gwinnett County Fire and Emergency Services to Northeast Medical Center Gainesville for a traumatic brain injury. On 2025-05-29 he was transferred to Select Specialty Hospital-Midtown Atlanta, where he remained in a vegetative state, bedridden, tracheostomised and tube-fed until he died. The medical examiner recorded the injury-to-death interval as 4 months 10 days, and recorded both "Scene investigated by Law Enforcement: No" and "Scene investigated by ME/C: No." The report was amended on 2026-08-26; the original certification history has not been obtained.

Sixty-Nine Deaths Since 2020, and What the Coroner's Files Show

GPS's mortality registry records 69 deaths at Phillips State Prison since January 1, 2020 — a floor, not a ceiling, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. By cause: 36 natural or medical, 14 homicide, 8 suicide, 5 overdose, 4 unknown or pending, 1 medical neglect, and 1 accident. The full list is published at gps.press. The 25 most recent:

• Jacob Ray Nicholson died July 13, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 29.
• Richard L Thatcher died May 3, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Unknown/Pending. He was 58.
• Rickie Lynn Rutherford died April 18, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Unknown/Pending. He was 41.
• Cornelius Burge died February 11, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 42.
• Rodger Scales died February 9, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 40.
• Willie Roseborough died January 13, 2026, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 54.
• Justin Curtis Kinsey died November 8, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Accident. He was 37.
• Terry Nichols died October 14, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Suicide. He was 42.
• Alonzo Jr Carter died September 20, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Homicide. He was 78.
• Kendrick Keon Scales died August 27, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Overdose. He was 35.
• Joseph Ulrich died June 1, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 30.
• John Dean Tolbert died May 4, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 69.
• Taron Edmonds died March 31, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 32.
• Christopher Blake Hines died March 24, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Suicide. He was 37.
• Jerry Wayne Spencer died March 10, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 58.
• Harry Ray Taldon died February 22, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 57.
• Tommye Mobley died February 14, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 45.
• Ricky Ray Breedlove died February 7, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 71.
• Thomas Nicely died January 23, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical.
• Shun Pinkston died January 18, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical.
• William Pate died January 14, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical.
• Jody Stokes died January 13, 2025, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Homicide.
• Eddie Ray Scott died December 19, 2024, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Natural/Medical. He was 60.
• Corey Madison Cochran died December 18, 2024, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Homicide. He was 29.
• Leroy Brooks died December 9, 2024, at Phillips State Prison; the registry lists Unknown/Pending. He was 64.

The coroner's files behind those entries are uneven. GPS obtained a Gwinnett County Coroner / GBI Medical Examiner production covering Phillips in-custody deaths, received and OCR'd on 2026-06-26, and it is the source for most of the manner-of-death findings above. But the Gwinnett Medical Examiner declined jurisdiction in case after case — Hollie (23G-0216), Futch (23G-0977), Henry (22G-0999), Mincey (23G-2277), Neale (24G-0423), Willis (24G-1195), Pinkston (25G-0138), Nicely (25G-0186), Edmonds (25G-0700), Tolbert (25G-0947), Roseborough (26G-0094) — producing investigator reports only, and in several of those the production does not exclude that a GBI or other-agency autopsy was performed. Where a full autopsy exists, the findings are specific: Arthur Wimbush's blunt-force trauma; David Fambro's homicide (24G-1319); Timothy Hurley's homicide (24G-1600); Corey Cochran's homicide (24G-2249); Jody Stokes's "Homicide due to Strangulation" (25G-0099); Rodger Scales's probable cardiac dysrhythmia due to concentric left ventricular hypertrophy, with schizoaffective disorder listed as another significant condition (26G-0252).

Some files record things the registry does not. Cornelius Burge was housed in the Mental Health Unit; he was observed lying in his bed at a 3 a.m. bed check, found unresponsive at 5 a.m., and pronounced dead in the medical infirmary. He had a cellmate. The ME narrative reports no other medical conditions. Rodger Scales's record lists a date of death of February 11, 2026, marked "(Found)" — the date he was discovered, not necessarily the date he died. David Gregory Sheffield was found lifeless in his cell on 2024-07-20; GDC Special Agent Karen Wilbanks told the ME investigator that Sheffield possibly choked while eating a sandwich, that he had been assaulted roughly a month before his death, that he had refused his hypertension medication for about two months, and that he had mental-health issues. By the time the investigator arrived, Sheffield had been moved to a prison medical cell and lay on a stretcher in a dirt-soiled tan uniform with a piece of bologna on his lower abdomen. The cause was certified as hypertensive cardiovascular disease, manner natural, after a limited dissection rather than a full autopsy.

The state's own death-investigation paperwork has lagged badly. GPS analysis has identified GBI-DOFS finalization at Phillips taking 11 to 16 months, with one 2025 case still unfinalized roughly sixteen months after the death. Two open records requests to the GBI Division of Forensic Sciences — R000917-072626 and R000918-072626 — were closed on 2026-07-26 with the status "testing incomplete," with refiling advised after approximately 2026-11-24.

Overdose Deaths, Toxicology, and the Contraband Economy

Five of the 69 deaths are coded overdose, and the toxicology tells a consistent story. Andrew Blayne Chandler, 25, died 2021-10-07; GBI DOFS report 2022-1023327 (dated 10/17/2022, toxicologist Brittany S. Gresham) was positive for methamphetamine at 4.2 mg/L, amphetamine at approximately 0.36 mg/L, diphenhydramine at 0.32 mg/L, and haloperidol below the lowest calibrator. A second 2022 case (DOFS 2022-1025952, toxicologist Melanie L Flater) was positive for methamphetamine at 0.65 mg/L. Jerry Dewayne Hunnicutt's 2024 case (DOFS 2024-1004657, toxicologist Troy Dettmering) was positive for methamphetamine at 0.26 mg/L and amphetamine at 44 ug/L. Jonathan Matthew Rucker's death on 2024-01-16 is coded overdose in the registry; the Gwinnett ME report 24G-0110 lists the manner as Accident.

That methamphetamine moves inside Phillips is not a matter of inference alone. GDC's own contraband arrest reports record two staff-class arrests at the facility. On August 7, 2019, after an ongoing investigation by GDC Office of Professional Standards, a warrant was obtained for Correctional Officer Shakira Bethea, who was arrested by the Gwinnett County Police Department. On June 4, 2026, Officer Alyssa Hudson was arrested by the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office after leads developed by the Office of Professional Standards for violation of oath and trading with an offender without consent. GDC publishes arrests as reported, not dispositions; an arrest is not a conviction. GPS's standing profile notes the facility's history of federal corruption prosecutions over officers trafficking contraband and drugs, and the AJC has associated Phillips with Operation Ghost Guard.

Bed Math, Mental Health, and a Facility That Absorbs What Others Cannot Hold

The through-line in the accounts GPS has collected about Phillips is capacity — not rated capacity, but the absence of anywhere to put a person who needs protecting. GPS's reporting describes accounts that the facility's chief of security said every segregation bed was full when a man needed one. GPS has received recurring reports that administrative segregation beds at Phillips were full and that people without disciplinary infractions were held in lockdown beds for months for lack of space. Multiple sources describe the facility as a placement of last resort for people who could not be safely housed elsewhere, and describe a Special Management Unit, a mental health unit, a protective custody unit, and an Intensive Protective Custody unit on site.

The mental-health load is heavy. GPS has received accounts that roughly 40 percent of the population is classified at mental health Levels 3 and 4. Cornelius Burge died in the Mental Health Unit. Dave Stone, 61, died on November 20, 2021, from closed head trauma with delayed effects; his sister told the AJC he was in a mental health ward when he was assaulted, apparently with two pipes wrapped in a cloth, after which his brain was no longer functioning and he was taken off life support.

GPS records show four external complaints filed to the Georgia prison ombudsman in the twelve months through September 2026, three of them concentrated in September. One family's experience is on the public record directly: Renee Johnson wrote on Facebook on September 23, 2026, that her son was killed at Phillips State Prison in 2017 and that "Nobody ever called me back or your wrote me." Harold Lamon Slaughter, describing himself as formerly incarcerated at Phillips, wrote on September 3, 2026, that two days before his 2024 release date another man set his cell on fire beneath Slaughter's cell and that it took officers 30 to 45 minutes to arrive and begin letting people out. Those are the posters' own accounts, not GPS findings.

Infrastructure, Staffing, and the Conditions That Compound

GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, and mortality crises it has documented facility by facility, and Phillips supplies the pattern in miniature. GPS has received accounts that a contract to install low-water-flow toilets and automatic shower shut-off valves failed within days because the fixtures were not designed for heavy prison use, that the shut-off valves have been tied off so showers run continuously, and that the new commodes require three flushes to empty. Multiple sources describe a cellphone-containment system costing several million dollars that does not fully contain phone use and that created hotspots gang members fought over.

The staffing picture is systemwide and severe: GPS has documented officer vacancy rates between 49.3 and 60 percent across Georgia's prisons for multiple years against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, an acceptance rate under 15 percent in the hiring pipeline, 82.7 percent of new hires leaving in their first year, and Georgia ranking last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. GPS staff have acknowledged a current gap in firsthand source intelligence coverage at Phillips specifically — a limit on this page's evidentiary base that readers should weigh alongside what the public record shows.

GPS has additionally documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores fail to capture, and a food budget of roughly $1.69 per person per day in 2024 against an FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of about $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet. The Marshall Project independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities in May 2026.

What the Record Supports, and What It Does Not

Phillips State Prison is a close-security men's facility rated for 918 people and holding roughly 660, with a mortality record of 69 deaths since 2020 that includes 14 homicides, a federal Eighth Amendment finding from October 2024, and a 2018 PREA audit that failed nothing. The gap between those last two documents — a Justice Department finding of unconstitutional conditions and a private audit certifying perfect compliance on sexual-abuse standards — is the analytical center of this page, and GPS has documented that the gap is systemic rather than local.

What the record does not support is any claim that Phillips is uniquely dangerous, or that any single cause explains its death count. The coroner's files are incomplete by design: the Gwinnett Medical Examiner declined jurisdiction in case after case, and the state's forensic reports have run more than a year behind. GPS's registry carries 69 deaths as a floor. GDC has not officially confirmed most of the individual deaths recorded here in its own mortality coding, and where GDC has coded a cause — as with Nathaniel Lawrence Jackson, coded "Natural" — that coding is the Department's classification, not an autopsy finding.

Sources

This analysis draws on the Georgia Department of Corrections' published PREA audit report for Phillips State Prison (auditor Robert Lanier, Diversified Correctional Services, LLC, dated 5 April 2018); GDC contraband arrest reports of August 12, 2019 and July 8, 2026; GDC-released January 2025 mortality data; Gwinnett County Coroner and GBI Medical Examiner case files obtained through a county coroner open records production received and OCR'd June 26, 2026, including cases 20G-2149, 21G-0562, 21G-0613, 21G-1080, 21G-1536, 21G-1743, 21G-1835, 21G-2035, 22G-0988, 22G-0999, 22G-1169, 22G-1307, 22G-1459, 22G-1548, 22G-1571, 23G-0216, 23G-0533, 23G-0977, 23G-1046, 23G-2277, 24G-0110, 24G-0128, 24G-0423, 24G-0519, 24G-0580, 24G-1195, 24G-1293, 24G-1319, 24G-1594, 24G-1600, 24G-1750, 24G-1781, 24G-2245, 24G-2249, 25G-0099, 25G-0106, 25G-0138, 25G-0186, 25G-0325, 25G-0371, 25G-0430, 25G-0552, 25G-0645, 25G-0700, 25G-0947, 25G-1687, 25G-1850, 25G-2007, 25G-2170, 26G-0094, 26G-0252, and 26G-0270; GBI Division of Forensic Sciences toxicology reports 2022-1023327, 2022-1025952, 2024-1004657, 2024-1008003, and 2025-1035924, and open records responses R000917-072626 and R000918-072626; Gwinnett Superior Court case 25-B-02421-1 and the plea and sentencing of Edward Lominac before Judge George F. Hutchinson III; the Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger; the U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Marshall Project; GPS's own mortality registry and intelligence records; a Tell My Story account published by Georgia Prisoners' Speak; and public Facebook comments by Renee Johnson (September 23, 2026) and Harold Lamon Slaughter (September 3, 2026).