Whittington, Lawrence R

Tenure Summary

Lawrence R. Whittington's documented GDC career runs from 2015 into at least 2023. He appears first in correction administration (2015), then as a correctional unit manager (2016), then in four consecutive years as a deputy warden (2017–2020), before moving into facility leadership as Warden of Wilcox State Prison from Dec. 1, 2020, to Jan. 14, 2023. Salary-year records list him under the title "WARDEN 1" for 2021, 2022 and 2023 without a facility identifier; those records extend past the Jan. 14, 2023 end date recorded for the Wilcox warden posting.

Per GPS records, 10 deaths are attributed to his leadership tenure, all of them at Wilcox State Prison. No lawsuit naming him as a defendant appears in the record, and no news coverage naming him is recorded. Nine of the ten deaths carry no public narrative — only a numeric cause code. The one death with a recorded account is that of James Forest Williams, 43, logged as a homicide on Oct. 3, 2022, from blunt and sharp force injuries to the head, torso and extremities.

What happened on their watch

Pre-leadership roles, no facility attributed (2015–2020). The record lists Whittington as correction administration staff in 2015, correctional unit manager in 2016, and deputy warden for four consecutive years, 2017 through 2020. No facility is identified for any of these postings, and no incident, report or event data is attached to them.

Wilcox State Prison — Warden, Dec. 1, 2020 – Jan. 14, 2023. All 10 deaths attributed to Whittington's leadership occurred here, across roughly 25 months. The decedents, in chronological order:

• Larry E. Sharp, 62 — Feb. 10, 2021
• Christopher Chron Parker, 45 — Apr. 24, 2021
• Mark Antonio Calcaterra, 44 — Sept. 6, 2021
• Tony Royce Smith, 56 — Sept. 11, 2021
• Corey Dewberry, 37 — Oct. 22, 2021
• Kelvin Lowe, 58 — May 27, 2022
• Clayton Wesley Carleton, 67 — Aug. 10, 2022
• James Forest Williams, 43 — Oct. 3, 2022
• Kemarrio Laquan Clark, 39 — Dec. 28, 2022
• Robert Mitchell Woodland, 38 — Jan. 7, 2023

Ages range from 37 to 67. The records code causes numerically rather than describing them: five of the ten share cause code 1, two share code 5, and codes 2, 3 and 8 each appear once. Nine of the ten entries have no published narrative attached.

The single incident-level record dated inside Whittington's warden tenure is the death of James Forest Williams, described as a homicide resulting from blunt and sharp force injuries. At the time, Whittington held the Warden role at Wilcox.

No intel reports tied to Wilcox during his tenure appear in the record.

Sources

• Georgia Prisoners' Speak personnel and mortality records (gps.press) — Whittington's position history, 2015–2023, and the 10 Wilcox State Prison deaths logged against his warden tenure
• Georgia Prisoners' Speak incident record — homicide of James Forest Williams, Wilcox State Prison, Oct. 3, 2022
• Salary-year position filings listing Whittington as "WARDEN 1," 2021–2023

No Atlanta Journal-Constitution coverage, court filings, DOJ findings or other outside reporting naming Whittington appears in the records provided.

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.