Harris, Latasha M

Tenure Summary

What happened on their watch

On Harris’s watch, the death count at the state’s primary medical prison mounted rapidly. GPS records attribute 71 deaths to the facility during her tenure. Coroner and incident reports show that most were natural: cancers, organ failure, respiratory diseases — reflecting an aging, chronically ill population. Richmond County Coroner’s Office summaries confirm a series of natural deaths, including Sidney Dorsey (86, complications of embolic cerebral infarction), Robert Bruce Green (69, E. coli sepsis), and Henry Ross (56, hemorrhagic shock). Still, the period was also marked by violence. In January 2026, Jerry Wayne Merritt was stabbed in the chest and shoulder by another prisoner, allegedly over a small commissary debt; witness accounts described the attacker as a young Crip gang member who killed Merritt, a Gangster Disciple. In May 2026, Jacobi Alandis Chomicki (23) was killed in a D2-unit homicide; an AI-relayed source report named an assailant and indicated multiple people were locked up in connection. Stephen Prochaska died by suicide by hanging in January 2025. Phillip Megginson’s death was ruled an accident from complications of quadriplegia.

Allegations of broader disorder surfaced in GPS intelligence reports during Harris’s tenure. A self-described “GA prison mom” described extensive, unreported conditions. Other reports flagged a stabbing in the eye in D building, a severe beating, and four incarcerated people arriving at the facility with wired-shut jaws. These remain unverified user-submitted tips, but they contributed to a picture of a facility struggling with violence and oversight failures.

Systemically, the GDC was in open conflict with the federal courts. In February 2026, U.S. District Judge Tilman E. Self III held a contempt hearing in Macon, scolding Commissioner Tyrone Oliver for defying an appellate court order that barred the GDC from restricting inmate email contacts — litigation that had run since 2018 and involved ASMP prisoner Ralph Harrison Benning. The AJC reported that Judge Self found the department’s noncompliance “shocking” and “unbelievable,” adding to the perception that state prison leaders operated above the law. While Harris is not named in these contempt proceedings, the episode unfolded during her deputy warden tenure and underscored the command climate in which the 71 deaths occurred.

Sources

• GPS intelligence records (death logs, user-submitted incident reports, facility-level intel)
• Richmond County Coroner’s Office open records summaries (autopsy and cause data)
• GDC mortality reports (identity confirmations for Chomicki, Merritt, and others)
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) — investigations into GDC homicides, DOJ findings, and federal contempt hearings
• U.S. Department of Justice 2024 report on Georgia prison conditions

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Jul 12, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.