Jones, Lutria Jamil

Tenure Summary

What happened on their watch

The deaths also included suicides by hanging (e.g., Courtney Jackson in March 2022, Rickey Barron in April 2023, Trevanti Givens in July 2023, Anthony Castleberry and Dakota Duffin in June and July 2025), as well as fatal drug overdoses attributed to methamphetamine and synthetic cannabinoids — Brian Dukes and John Ekers in July 2022, Timothy Beam in July 2023, Robert Anderson in March 2022, Lon Willbanks (K2 toxicity) in April 2025, and Barry Rutherford (methamphetamine intoxication) in May 2025. Several deaths carried undetermined or suspicious circumstances: Charles Rice’s asphyxia was ruled undetermined in April 2025, and Ted Karras’s neck compression of uncertain cause was also classified undetermined in December 2024. Natural deaths, often from advanced cancer or chronic disease, accounted for a large share of the toll; examples include end-stage conditions like liver cancer, metastatic colon cancer, and cardiac events documented in coroner notes for dozens of men, many of them elderly.

Facility conditions drew public scrutiny during Jones’s watch. In October 2024, DonTavis Mintz died at Ware and his body went undiscovered for days; his mother, Narissa Wright, told Georgia Public Broadcasting that no welfare checks or counts were conducted, leaving her able to identify his remains only by a single tooth. A riot and punitive lockdown occurred at the prison in July 2025. While Jones held the deputy warden post, the state settled a $20,000 liability payout for an incident involving Jimmy Mack Rice in 2023, according to the Georgia Department of Administrative Services’ risk management ledger.

Litigation

• Brown v. Odum, case number 5:25-cv-00062, filed June 30, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia. The suit names Jones as a defendant and remains pending.
• Jackson v. Odum, case number 5:25-cv-00051, filed June 9, 2025, in the same court. Also pending, with Jones listed among the defendants.

Sources

• Ware County Coroner and GBI Division of Forensic Sciences (DOFS) records — multiple autopsy and manner-of-death determinations for Ware State Prison decedents, obtained via GPS open-records requests.
• GDC official mortality reports — January 2025 data, used to confirm cause-of-death provenance for Demarcus McClarin and Freddie Calloway.
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — reporting on ten inmate homicides at Ware State Prison between July 2020 and August 2024, and on internal records describing the 2020 hostage-taking and disturbance.
• Georgia Public Broadcasting — Narissa Wright’s account of the death of DonTavis Mintz and allegations of missing welfare checks at Ware.
• Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger — State of Georgia liability payout of $20,000 for Jimmy Mack Rice (incident 2023), obtained via open records.
• CourtListener — docket records for Brown v. Odum and Jackson v. Odum.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 2, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.