Turner, Dennis J

Tenure Summary

Dennis J. Turner entered the Georgia Department of Corrections in January 2011 as a correctional officer at Calhoun State Prison and was promoted to sergeant there in December 2012. From 2015 through 2022 he held public safety trainer posts — at Augusta State Medical Prison (2015–16), Baldwin State Prison (2016–17) and Pulaski State Prison (2017–20) — before moving to the Special Management Unit in Jackson in April 2022. He rose into facility leadership there as a correctional unit manager in April 2023 and became deputy warden on Oct. 16, 2023, serving until July 31, 2025. Since Aug. 1, 2025, he has been listed as deputy warden at Central State Prison in Macon; salary records show $74,605.40 in 2024 and $81,075.32 in 2025.

Mortality records compiled by Georgia Prisoners' Speak attribute 24 deaths to his leadership tenures: 22 at Central State Prison and 2 at the Special Management Unit. He is named as a defendant in one lawsuit, Gumm v. Jacobs, filed in 2015 and terminated in 2019 with no recorded settlement amount. No article in the records names Turner directly.

What happened on their watch

Special Management Unit — Deputy Warden, Oct. 16, 2023 – July 31, 2025
Two deaths are attributed to this tenure: Ricardo Daughtry, listed as 41, on June 10, 2024, and Emilio Christopher Canales, 40, on Oct. 22, 2024. Daughtry was the lead plaintiff in the SMU litigation, according to an event record. AJC reporting alleges that Daughtry was not checked on for nearly seven hours before his body was found despite a 30-minute check policy, and that prison records showed him attending "table time," recreation and the book cart after he had already been pronounced dead. The same reporting says GDC falsified and backdated prisoner review forms.

This tenure overlaps the April 2024 contempt order by U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell, who found the GDC and its officials "thumbing their noses" at the 2019 SMU settlement; the roughly 100-page order found officials stalled compliance until the injunction neared expiration and made false or misleading statements. AJC reporting published in January 2025 also alleges that GDC obstructed DOJ investigators, that its PREA investigations were found defective by its own consultants in 2022, and that it stopped including preliminary cause of death in monthly mortality reports in March 2024. The DOJ's October report called Georgia's prisons inhumane. Separate AJC coverage describes SMU inmate Arthur Lee Cofield Jr. amassing $31 million via a contraband cellphone; he was sentenced in January 2024 to 135 months.

Central State Prison — Deputy Warden, from Aug. 1, 2025
Twenty-two deaths are attributed to this facility. Named decedents in the sample run from Adel Eackles, 64 (Feb. 10, 2024), to Steve Allen Burk, 38 (July 20, 2026), with ages from 36 to 77. Sixteen of the 22 are coded to a single cause category (category 6), whose meaning the records do not define. Seven sample deaths fall between March 1 and July 20, 2026. Position records list him at the SMU until July 31, 2025, so several Central State entries predate his posted start there while still carrying "deputy warden" as the role at the time.

Allegations recorded against the facility include 13WMAZ reports that a Central State guard was charged with falsely imprisoning four DFCS employees in December 2025, and that three former guards were accused of beating an inmate and covering it up in March 2025; a June 2025 stabbing in which three inmates were charged; a January 2026 fight that hospitalized an inmate; and a family submission alleging that a person with stroke symptoms was denied timely medical attention in 2026. AJC-indexed items dated Jan. 21, 2025 — before his Central State start — state that Marquis L. Johnson was stabbed in the prison barbershop on Dec. 8 and died of cardiac arrest secondary to the stabbing, and that Hollis Alan Bryant was stabbed to death, with three prisoners charged. None of these reports names Turner.

Litigation

• Gumm v. Jacobs, No. 5:15-cv-00041 (M.D. Ga.) — filed Feb. 12, 2015; terminated May 7, 2019. Turner is listed as a defendant; at filing he was a sergeant at Calhoun State Prison. No outcome amount is recorded.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — prison-homicide list (Johnson, Bryant); investigation into GDC's false or misleading statements to federal investigators, lawmakers and a federal judge; editorial on Gov. Kemp's prison-reform funding; coverage of Cofield's sentence.
• 13WMAZ — Central State Prison guard arrest and inmate fight/hospitalization reports.
• U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell — April 2024 contempt order, Special Management Unit settlement.
• U.S. Department of Justice report on Georgia prison conditions (October; cited by AJC).
• CourtListener docket — Gumm v. Jacobs, 5:15-cv-00041 (GAMD).
• Georgia Prisoners' Speak case submission #138 — alleged delayed stroke care at Central State Prison, 2026.
• Georgia Department of Corrections mortality records and state salary records as compiled by Georgia Prisoners' Speak.

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