Flowers, Karen Douglas

Tenure Summary

Karen Douglas Flowers’ GPS personnel file traces a career through Lee State Prison and Pulaski State Prison. Early postings include Chief of Security at Lee State Prison in 2006, Correction Operations in 2015, Correctional Captain from 2016 through 2018 without a listed facility, and Correctional Captain at Lee in 2019. Flowers became Deputy Warden at Lee in 2020–2021, Warden 1 at Lee in 2022, and Warden at Pulaski from January through August 2023 and again from September 2023 through April 15, 2025. GPS records also list overlapping Warden entries at Lee for January through August 2023.

GPS attributes nine deaths to Flowers’ leadership postings: six at Pulaski State Prison and three at Lee State Prison. One federal lawsuit linked to Flowers’ record, Williams v. Oliver, was filed in December 2024 and remains pending.

What happened on their watch

Lee State Prison

No deaths are attributed to Flowers’ 2006 Chief of Security posting or 2019 Correctional Captain posting at Lee in GPS records. During Flowers’ time as Deputy Warden at Lee in 2020–2021, GPS attributes three deaths: Anthony Wilbert Cheek, 49, on March 26, 2020; Phillip E. Patterson, 63, on April 4, 2020; and Pedro Perez-Robles, 38, on May 28, 2021. According to the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project dataset, which obtained GDC’s own coding through an open records request, GDC classified Cheek’s and Patterson’s deaths as natural and Perez-Robles’ as suicide; the GPS notes state no pathologist examined the body for those determinations. No deaths in the attributed record correspond to Flowers’ 2022 Warden posting at Lee.

Pulaski State Prison

During Flowers’ Warden posting at Pulaski, GPS attributes six deaths. In 2023: Cynthia McCain, 65, on September 3, and Sheila Britton, 60, on September 22. In 2024: Ramada Lesha Butts, 52, on April 16; Tracy Michelle Graves, 45, on May 16; and Lesley Bell Owens, 49, on July 23. In 2025: Stephanie Sabrina Gary, 55, on March 5. The provided records list cause category 6 and no narrative cause for the first five Pulaski deaths; for Gary, a Pulaski County coroner’s report lists natural causes from cancer, according to GPS coroner records.

Broader Pulaski events overlapped with these postings. The U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation of Georgia prisons documented constitutional violations at Pulaski State Prison, according to GPS records. On July 15, 2023, during the period Flowers was listed as Warden 1 at Pulaski, inmates destroyed property; GPS records state 11 inmates were directly involved using broomsticks, a crowbar, metal spray, shanks, and locks, and chemical spray was used as nine security staff responded. In May 2024, Deputy Warden Alonzo L. McMillian was arrested at Pulaski and later terminated after arrest warrants alleged sexual contact with a prisoner on February 24–25, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. GPS records also note an $85,000 Georgia Department of Administrative Services settlement tied to a 2024 Pulaski incident. A separate Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation alleged that staff at Pulaski did not notice a prisoner had been stabbed until an outside caller reported it. Earlier AJC medical-neglect reports involving Pulaski prisoners Fischer and Rocheleau predate Flowers’ time there.

Litigation

• Williams v. Oliver, No. 5:24-cv-00471 (M.D. Ga.), filed December 17, 2024; status pending. The case is linked to Flowers’ record in GPS; no disposition is recorded.

Sources

• GPS Intelligence personnel and accountability records, Karen Douglas Flowers, including positions, deaths, intel reports, and events
• Pulaski County Coroner Fred J. Clark III, Coroner’s Death Investigation Reports, Pulaski 2025 records
• UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset, GDC coding obtained via open records
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — “Prison system failures cost Georgia taxpayers millions”; “Two high-ranking Georgia prison employees accused in sex cases”; “Georgia expected to fight feds over state’s prison conditions”
• U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation of Georgia prisons
• Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger
• CourtListener docket, Williams v. Oliver, 5:24-cv-00471 (M.D. Ga.)

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 30, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.