Steedley, William J

Tenure Summary

William J. Steedley rose through Georgia Department of Corrections positions from corrections officer in 2015 to lieutenant and unit manager roles, then deputy warden, before becoming Warden at Calhoun State Prison in October 2020. GPS records attribute six deaths to his facility-leader tenure, all at Calhoun State Prison. The deaths span March 2021 to October 2022 and include one documented homicide, one documented suicide, and one death the department classified as natural. One federal lawsuit, Clayton v. Ward, was filed while Steedley was warden and later terminated.

What happened on their watch

Calhoun State Prison — Warden, October 2020–December 2022

GPS records list six deaths during Steedley’s time as Warden at Calhoun State Prison:

• Christopher Iles, 48, died March 10, 2021. According to the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, the GDC’s own coding classified the death as “Natural”; no pathologist examined the body for that determination.
• James Stanley Powell, 63, died April 2, 2022. The extracted GPS record does not provide a cause of death.
• Christopher Edward Oliva, 43, died April 9, 2022. A Calhoun County coroner record lists the manner as suicide and the cause as hanging; a GBI autopsy also certified the cause as “Hanging” and manner as “Suicide.”
• Daquavious Lackey, 21, died May 16, 2022. A Calhoun County death certificate lists the manner as homicide and the cause as stab wound of the neck and multiple blunt force injuries. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a DOJ investigation alleged that staff failed to follow procedures when moving Lackey’s assailant between segregation and general population, leading to Lackey being housed with and killed by his cellmate.
• James Thomas Ennis, 63, died September 30, 2022.
• Timothy Edwin Bryant, 64, died October 11, 2022.

For Ennis, Powell, and Bryant, the extracted records do not state a cause of death.

WALB and AJC reporting on the DOJ investigation placed the Lackey homicide within a broader pattern at Calhoun State Prison: federal investigators found that staff failed to follow classification and housing assignment procedures, contributing to a 2022 homicide there. An AJC investigation separately alleged that Calhoun prisoner Edwin Murillo ordered the murder of a woman after a business relationship collapsed; GPS event logs record that Murillo was later sentenced to life for directing a 2021 torture and murder. The reporting does not allege direct involvement by Steedley in those acts.

Litigation

• Clayton v. Ward, No. 1:21-cv-00025, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Filed January 29, 2021; terminated February 11, 2022. GPS records list it among lawsuits naming Steedley as a defendant. No settlement amount is listed in the record.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation; Lackey homicide and DOJ classification-failure allegation at Calhoun State Prison
• WALB — DOJ findings involving Calhoun State Prison, including classification and housing failures contributing to a 2022 homicide
• Calhoun County Coroner death certificates, obtained via GPS open-records requests — records for Daquavious Lackey and Christopher Edward Oliva
• GBI Medical Examiner / DOFS autopsy report — Christopher Edward Oliva
• UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset — GDC coding for Christopher Iles
• CourtListener docket — Clayton v. Ward, No. 1:21-cv-00025

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 16, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.