Mims, Charles Michael

Tenure Summary

Charles Michael Mims rose through the Georgia Department of Corrections from correctional officer and sergeant posts in the late 2000s and early 2010s to facility leadership: unit manager at Valdosta State Prison in 2019, deputy warden at Valdosta in 2020, deputy warden at Central State Prison in 2021, deputy warden at Wilcox State Prison in 2022, and then warden at Wilcox from 2023 through mid-2025. GPS records also list him as Warden 1 at Smith State Prison from January 1 to July 15, 2025, and as Warden at Smith from July 16, 2025 onward.

Across those facility leadership postings, GPS records attribute 46 deaths to facilities where Mims held leadership roles: 28 at Wilcox State Prison, 8 at Valdosta State Prison, 6 at Central State Prison, and 4 at Smith State Prison. Two cases appear in GPS’s lawsuits-as-defendant index for Mims: one pending federal case and one terminated federal filing, described below.

What happened on their watch

Valdosta State Prison — Deputy Warden, 2020

GPS attributes eight deaths to Valdosta during Mims’s deputy warden year. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation, those included Prince Blige, 54, stabbed in the torso; Orvonta Casmir Tillman, 36, with multiple sharp-force penetrating trauma to the thorax; and Bobby Lane Carpenter, 31, stabbed in the chest. A UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project dataset, drawn from GDC’s own coding and obtained through open records, classified four other Valdosta deaths that year as suicides — Johnny Claude Mitchell, Brandon Omar Weaver, Shannon Small, and Michael Lee Vaughn — and one, Gary Thomas Keown, as natural.

Central State Prison — Deputy Warden, 2021

Six deaths are attributed to Central State Prison during Mims’s 2021 deputy warden tenure. The AJC investigation records Joshua Carl Lester, 34, as having died from a stab wound to the chest. GDC’s own coding in the UCLA dataset classified Adam Clint West and Michael Allen Stegall as suicides, while Matthew James Colozzi, Joseph Dewayne Hamby, and Demetrius Richardson were coded as undetermined.

Wilcox State Prison — Deputy Warden 2022, Warden 2023–2025

The largest cluster — 28 deaths — is attributed to Wilcox, where Mims served as deputy warden in 2022 and warden from 2023 until July 15, 2025. Among the individual deaths documented for Wilcox, Wilcox County Coroner Janice B. Brown’s records list multiple homicides: Dominique Cornelius Cole, 37, blunt force injuries and strangulation; Daylyne Collins, 30, multiple sharp-force trauma; Rodney Whatley, 54, blunt force head trauma; Mariol Juante Rawls, 41, sharp-force neck trauma; Arthur Jerome Williams, 55, blunt force head and neck injuries; and James Forest Williams, 43, blunt and sharp force injuries. The AJC investigation sourced causes for several of these.

Coroner records also document accidental drug deaths, including James Edward Hogan and Kevin Joseph Degraft from synthetic cannabinoid toxicity, Alexander S. Grimes from methamphetamine and other substances, Robert Mitchell Woodland from methamphetamine and diltiazem, and Jasper Leggett from acute methamphetamine intoxication. Suicides and disputed classifications appear as well: Darrius Jerrod Zanders, 33, was found hanged, and the coroner record notes structural concerns — GDC personnel handled the death-scene investigation, and the GBI autopsy was completed in May 2025 but not certified until April 2026. Ian Rashod Henry, 29, represents a documented source conflict: the county coroner certified suicide by hanging, while GPS retains a homicide classification based on a prisoner report of a wound, preserving the conflict as possible evidence of mis-certification.

Smith State Prison — Warden, 2025 onward

Four deaths are attributed to Smith State Prison during Mims’s warden tenure. The Tattnall County Deputy Coroner’s office documented John Jacobs, 77, as a natural death from cardiorespiratory arrest due to sepsis and multiorgan failure. Dwayne Eric Albritton, 65, and Dreeonnie Lee Hart, 25, are recorded without detailed cause information in the GPS extract. Nicholas Shafer, 24, is the subject of a GPS user report stating he had been beaten, with his hands and feet tied and an object stuffed in his mouth, and that he had recently transferred from Baldwin State Prison to Smith; that account is an allegation, not a coroner finding. Also on Mims’s Smith watch, an April 1, 2026 altercation at Smith State Prison triggered a system-wide GDC lockdown; two inmates were airlifted, and officials described the incident as believed gang-related.

Litigation

• Collins v. Jones, No. 5:25-cv-00451, GAMD, filed October 15, 2025 — pending; no outcome amount recorded.
• Daker v. Oliver Filing Restriction Per 59 Order, No. 1:25-cv-03191, GAND, filed June 6, 2025 — terminated March 30, 2026; no outcome amount recorded.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation (causes for named decedents at Valdosta, Central, and Wilcox)
• Wilcox County Coroner Janice B. Brown — summary case reports for Wilcox State Prison deaths
• Tattnall County Deputy Coroner Daniel Bennett — coroner record for John Jacobs
• GBI Medical Examiner autopsy records via GPS open-records files — Darrius Zanders
• UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset — GDC-coded causes for Valdosta and Central deaths
• CourtListener dockets — Collins v. Jones and Daker v. Oliver

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 23, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.