Georgia’s own death investigators recorded what happened to four men at Washington State Prison. A man locked alone in a shower stall to cool down. A cell unchecked for fourteen hours. A tray at 10:19 nobody rose for. In each case the response to a medical crisis was a placement, not treatment.
On July 25 we sent the same eight questions on Georgia’s prison crisis to both nominees for governor. One campaign answered all eight in writing. The other has not responded. We publish the answers we received, without endorsement, and the same offer stands.
Torrey Wayne Forrester died at 41 in a Georgia prison of cirrhosis caused by chronic hepatitis C — a disease curable since 2014. The Justice Department found Georgia treating roughly ten percent of the people it knew were infected. Georgia’s own profile shows it has not tested more than half the people in its custody.
Georgia’s constitution contains a clause no other state has: a ban on abusing any person “in being arrested, while under arrest, or in prison.” Written by Reconstruction delegates in 1868, cited only ten times since, it may be the most powerful untested legal tool against the prison crisis.
Reginald Jacobs Jr., 24, died of dehydration in a solitary cell at Calhoun State Prison after a lawsuit says staff shut off his water and left him for nine days. The state recorded it as a natural death — then quietly settled.
James Byrd, 30, died in an Effingham County Prison isolation cell in January 2022 — three weeks after a toothache, days after staff acknowledged his infection to his family. The state’s records listed no cause. Records obtained by GPS reveal a $10 million negligence claim still unresolved four years later.
GDC’s own statistics report 301 people died while serving state sentences in 2025. But the official mortality name list contains only 295 names. When GPS asked who the six missing people were, GDC responded with bureaucratic doublespeak — and a bill.