For some Georgia correctional officers, inmates are their weapons

Violent and bloody attacks have become weekly occurrences inside the prisons run by the Georgia Department of Corrections. But what happened between Wyatt and Anthony wasn’t the usual inmate-on-inmate violence, according to prosecutors in Columbia County.

Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC

Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC

It was, they contend, an act of violence set in motion by the officer in charge.

Records show that at least 80 GDC correctional officers have been arrested or fired since 2017 after being accused of using excessive force against prisoners.

Allowing inmates to carry out violent attacks or even orchestrating them is another way some officers have exacted punishment. Amid the mounting chaos inside the state’s vastly understaffed prison system, the officers are in effect using prisoners as weapons to settle scores, exert authority or keep others in line, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found.

Several high-profile cases have led to criminal charges. One involved two high-ranking officers caught on video as a prisoner working alongside them beat a man they were trying to move. Another, just weeks ago, led to an officer being charged with felony murder after allegedly setting up a confrontation that led to an inmate’s death.

Two attacks in which prisoners allegedly were aided by officers occurred in Building E at Augusta State Medical Prison, a unit for some of the most vulnerable men in the agency’s custody. There, prisoners are locked in single-man cells as they go through treatment for severe mental illness. Yet not even that level of security could protect them.

In Anthony’s case, prosecutors assert that he was stabbed in his cell in Building E on Oct. 12, 2022, when the lone officer on duty, Daniel Farmer, remotely opened the cell door so Wyatt could get in.

Anthony’s attacker inexplicably was allowed to work as an orderly in that building despite a particularly violent history that includes a conviction for raping and murdering an LGBTQ activist and a still unresolved case in which he’s accused of killing his cellmate in the DeKalb County jail and gouging out the man’s eyes.

Anthony’s situation “really illustrates that the system was broken at just about every level,” said former state Sen. Jen Jordan, one of two attorneys suing the Department of Corrections on Anthony’s behalf.

“Everyone knows there’s a staffing problem, there’s a training problem,” she said. “They don’t have the personnel, and the personnel they do have are folks who really are probably not suited to be in these positions in the first place. The kindest gloss you can put on it is they don’t have enough people and they don’t have the right people.”

Anthony, 38, still bears the scars of the attack. He was released from prison in April 2023 after serving five years for violating his probation on a robbery conviction. Anthony was frustrated the entire time he was locked up, feeling that his probation should never have been revoked in the first place. He went home to the small town of Luthersville, where he stopped by the office of former state Rep. Bob Trammell, a local attorney.

After Anthony described his experience behind bars, Trammell contacted Jordan, and the two filed lawsuits describing Anthony as a victim of rogue actors in a violent, out-of-control system.

“It’s one thing to read these stories in the newspaper and think, `Gosh, that’s terrible,’” Trammell said. “But it’s another thing when someone from a community of 800 people walks in your office door and says, `This happened to me.’ That really brings it home in a totally different way.”

A machete and a viral video

During the day shift on May 25, Lloyd Hopkins was the only correctional officer assigned to Building E at Augusta State Medical Prison. He was working alone even though the staffing sheet has slots for a second officer in the unit as well as one in the control room, according to the shift assignment roster the AJC obtained through the Georgia Open Records Act.

At some point, arrest warrants allege, Hopkins allowed three prisoners — Roderick Hayes, Brendon Moore and Andy Ulysse — into the building, where they entered Robert Robish’s cell with a “machete like weapon.” They were there to retrieve a contraband cellphone from Robish. But the plan backfired when Robish, defending himself, stabbed Hayes to death.

Robish’s father, Joseph Robish, said when he heard from another prisoner what happened, he realized a staff member must have been involved. How else could his son be attacked when he was locked in a cell alone?

“They sent the three guys in there, I guess, to kill him — I mean, one of them had a machete,” the elder Robish said.

Credit: GDC & AJC staff photo

Credit: GDC & AJC staff photo

Hopkins, 51, became a correctional officer four years ago after working the previous 12 years as a security guard. He remains in the Columbia County jail, where he is being held without bond on charges of aggravated assault, felony murder and violating his oath of office.

At Wilcox State Prison last year, a clandestine video captured a troubling scene: a tall, stout inmate, apparently an orderly, helping a female correctional officer move another inmate on a cart. The female officer can be seen pulling the man’s clothing as he struggles while another female officer looks on. Then, as the man tries to sit up, the inmate working with the officers punches him in the face, causing him to fly backward.

“I got it on camera,” a man — apparently an inmate with a cellphone — says on the video, and those around him gasp and shout at the force of the punch.

The video was soon posted on the Facebook page of the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia, where it received thousands of views.

The officers in the video were Melissa Lawson, a unit manager, and Tanja O’Neal, a lieutenant, both longtime GDC employees.

Both were quickly fired and eventually charged with battery, riot in a penal institution and violation of their oaths as officers. According to arrest warrants, they “utilized” the 6-2, 260-pound inmate working with them, Erlando “Big E” Horne, to strike the inmate on the cart, Jammie Davis, in the face, head and torso as his bare feet dragged on the ground.

Two other officers also have been criminally charged, and one, Steven Turner, is alleged to have tried to cover up the incident. According to an arrest warrant, Turner, a sergeant, told Davis he would place a plastic bag over his head and suffocate him unless he signed a witness statement saying that nothing happened.

Credit: AJC

Credit: AJC

The Department of Corrections said the cases identified by the AJC do not reflect the vast majority of GDC officers who live up to their oaths of office. Those who don’t follow their oaths risk being fired and arrested, the agency said.

“On the cases you noted, all staff have been terminated, charged and are pending court prosecution,” said Lori Benoit, a GDC spokesperson.

A Georgia prison inmate provided the AJC with a lengthy written statement that described in detail how he, too, was attacked in Lawson’s presence at Wilcox. Such conduct by officers isn’t unusual, he wrote

The inmate, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, wrote that prisoners labeled as snitches or who have been disowned by gangs become de facto weapons for officers. In return for doing the officers’ bidding, they are rewarded with certain work details, more freedom to move around and even contraband, he wrote.

“These rejects are the prison administration’s own personal henchmen,” the inmate alleged.

`Killer orderly’

The GDC classifies the occupants of Augusta State Medical Prison’s Building E as Level IV mental health patients: those judged so severely impaired that they can’t safely be housed in general population. Anthony had been classified as Level IV due to PTSD, a condition, he told the AJC, that stemmed from an incident at Valdosta State Prison in which he was stabbed.

Wyatt was also classified as someone with significant mental health issues, but at a slightly lower level, allowing him to live in a general population dorm and work as an orderly in Building E.

“The killer orderly” is how Jordan and Trammell described Wyatt in one of their lawsuits, citing a multitude of factors, including his criminal history.

Credit: contributed

Credit: contributed

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

Wyatt, 42, is serving life without parole for the 2015 rape and murder of Cathy Han Montoya, a woman he apparently didn’t know, in her east Atlanta home. He killed Montoya and took her car after his own vehicle was disabled in front of her house by a Henry County police officer using its OnStar system. Henry County authorities were trying to locate Wyatt after learning that he had stabbed his estranged wife earlier in the day.

Montoya’s body was found on the floor in her house. A black ligature was around her neck and attached to a doorknob. The cause of her death was strangulation, but she also had stab wounds and blunt force injuries.

After killing Montoya, Wyatt fled to another house nearby, where he holed up in the basement and engaged in a lengthy standoff with SWAT officers until tear gas flushed him out.

Three months later, Wyatt was charged with another gruesome murder: the killing of Jah’Corey Tyson, his cellmate in the DeKalb jail. The weapon, according to court documents, was a sharpened toothbrush, which Wyatt allegedly used to gouge out Tyson’s eyes. One eyeball was discovered in Wyatt’s possession. He ate the other one, he told officers.

“Inmate Wyatt kept saying the voices told him to do it, and he yelled out, `Tell her I don’t want to eat them,’” according to the written account of one of the DeKalb jail officers who was present.

That case is presently on DeKalb’s “dead docket,” meaning it’s temporarily inactive, while Wyatt’s conviction in the Montoya case remains under appeal.

Even after Wyatt was imprisoned for Montoya’s murder, the GDC had reason to know he was a threat. Incident reports show that he physically assaulted three different inmates, including a sleeping bunkmate, at Baldwin State Prison and was twice caught with sharpened metal weapons during shakedowns at Augusta State Medical Prison.

In 2020, a GDC investigation obtained a statement from an inmate about a role Wyatt, by then an orderly, may have played in the death of prisoner Thomas Henry Giles. He died of smoke inhalation after setting his mattress on fire in his cell in Building E. The inmate claimed Wyatt shoved mop heads under Giles’ door so Giles couldn’t get fresh air, while proclaiming, “Please let this son of a b---- die.”

Credit: AJC

Credit: AJC

Yet that statement, included in the case file, didn’t stop Wyatt from working as an orderly.

Clifford Brown, a 29-year GDC employee who serves as the unit manager for the mental health dorms, is the officer responsible for making Wyatt an orderly. In a deposition, he wasn’t asked to directly address his decision, but he testified that he believes past crimes shouldn’t automatically disqualify anyone from holding the job.

“You might have made a mistake, this and that or whatever,” he testified. “That don’t mean we’re not going to let you cut grass or make you an orderly or whatever, because everybody’s in there for some type of (crime).”

Butting heads

Farmer, the correctional officer who opened the cell door for Wyatt, began working in Building E in 2020, shortly after the GDC hired him. He had spent the previous nine years as an auto tech in Augusta, and, as he explained in a deposition, he saw the GDC as a way to get into law enforcement after unsuccessfully seeking to join the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department.

“A friend of mine who was a police officer recommended going out to the medical prison and then from there going over to the sheriff’s department,” he testified.

By Anthony’s account, he and Farmer butted heads. In a separate lawsuit, Anthony claims Farmer came to his cell on an afternoon in July 2021 and beat him with a flashlight, leaving him with a fractured elbow that went untreated until a counselor became aware of the injury several weeks later.

Farmer denied beating Anthony when asked about it in the deposition.

In a lawsuit dealing with the stabbing, Anthony asserts that he confronted Wyatt to ask why the orderly hadn’t delivered his dinner tray. According to the suit, Wyatt said he didn’t deliver the tray because Anthony had “sold” it. In response, the suit says, Anthony threw “bodily fluids” at Wyatt through the slot in the door where the trays are delivered.

Describing what happened next, Anthony told the AJC that he saw Farmer go into the control room. The small window in his door allowed him that view, he said, although he couldn’t see what the officer was doing once inside. Then, he said, his cell door opened and Wyatt attacked.

“I really didn’t know Farmer was going to pop the door,” he said. “That was a shock.”

Credit: Carrie Teegardin

Credit: Carrie Teegardin

Farmer didn’t immediately call a medical emergency, and it took three hours before Anthony was transported to the hospital, according to his lawsuit.

While the civil case is pending, on Wednesday the criminal case against Farmer was resolved when he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, unlawful acts of violence in a penal institution, possession of a knife during commission of a felony and violation of his oath as an officer. Superior Court Judge Sheryl Jolly sentenced him to three years in prison and another 12 on probation.

“Quite frankly, it’s a miracle that this is not a malice murder or felony murder case,” prosecutor Kevin Majeska said in his presentation to the court.

Farmer’s attorney, Tianna Bias, told the court that Farmer didn’t know that Wyatt had a knife when he allowed him into Anthony’s cell. She also said Farmer wasn’t aware of Wyatt’s criminal history.

“Even though the decision that he made was one he can’t go back and undo, who knows what would have happened if there were reinforcements there or he wasn’t one-to-one with someone who was listed as a trustee who had a violent criminal history?” Bias told the AJC after the hearing.

Wyatt has pleaded not guilty to similar charges stemming from the incident and has asked for a trial.

For Anthony, the trauma has been emotional as well as physical. He spent every day feeling indignant over what he believed was an unjust sentence. Then, when he thought he had a measure of security in a locked, single-man cell, he found himself bloodied by an attacker.

Jordan said she and Trammell knew that taking on the Department of Corrections in court would be a challenge, but the point of the case is trying to push the system to improve.

“It really feels like you’re running in quicksand,” she said. “But you have to do it, because what’s the alternative? Just letting the system continue as it is and people continuing to be abused and have absolutely no hope? . . . When you take away someone’s liberty interest, with that comes the responsibility for those folks to be treated humanely and constitutionally. In Georgia, that is just not the reality of our prison system today.”