South Georgia prison becomes deadlier amid corruption, extreme staffing shortage

The beating started after 11 on the night of May 29 and may have lasted until 5:30 the next morning, arrest warrants say.

Wedged between two bunks, Shane Griffith had nowhere to run and no one to turn to for help as 11 other inmates at Valdosta State Prison assaulted him. He was punched, kicked, stomped on, beaten with poles and shoes, whipped with a belt and burned. Eleven against one, possibly for hours.

The beating left Griffith with “blunt force trauma throughout his body” and made him at least the fourth prisoner killed this year at Valdosta State Prison, putting it among the state’s deadliest in a system experiencing its deadliest year ever.

The realities at Valdosta State Prison — including allegations of widespread corruption and a stunning lack of officers — reveal how Georgia’s troubled prison system is now spiraling out of control.

Since the first of the year at Valdosta, the warden has been fired for misconduct and other officers have been fired or arrested on charges of corruption on the job. Moreover, as of April, 80% of the correctional officer positions were vacant at a prison that houses the GDC’s highest percentages of prisoners who are both gang members and have mental health issues, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found.

While violence and gross understaffing plague the entire Georgia prison system, the events this year at Valdosta have taken the crisis to a new level.

The four killings so far this year that the AJC could verify come after the prison experienced just two homicides in all of 2023, two in 2022 and none in 2021, according to death certificate data and GDC records. The 2024 victims, in addition to Griffith, are Rufus Lane, strangled to death in January; Ricky Harris, stabbed at least 30 times in the neck and face with ink pens in February; and Melvin Towns, stabbed to death with a homemade weapon in April.

Only one other Georgia Department of Corrections facility — Macon State Prison — appears to have had four homicides in the first six months of the year, according to the cases the AJC has been able to confirm.

Lane’s sister, Denise Robinson, told the AJC that her brother, who had been locked up for decades, repeatedly spoke to her about how Valdosta State Prison had few officers keeping watch and was particularly dangerous.

“He said it was horrible,” she said. “Something up every day.”

Credit: Magistrate Court of Lowndes Coun

In Griffith’s case, all 11 of the men who allegedly took part in the attack have been charged with murder, making it one of the most disturbing incidents inside the GDC in recent years.

Arrest warrants and other documents describe how Griffith, in prison for a probation violation and just months away from being released, was unmercifully attacked in an open, barracks-style dorm. One of his attackers is alleged to have used a wooden pole and a burning object. Another used both shoes and his fists. At times during the attack, men stood or sat on Griffith’s chest as the beating went on, according to the warrants that cite video surveillance.

It is unclear whether anyone saw the violence on camera in real time. GDC spokeswoman Joan Heath said she couldn’t comment on any details about Griffith’s killing because the case is under investigation, pending final autopsy and toxicology findings.

“Warrants were taken on 11 individuals because all were involved in some manner, but it is not possible to determine which one — or more — individuals were ultimately responsible for the death,” Heath wrote in an email.

Speaking generally, Heath said the GDC has worked hard to manage its most difficult offenders.

Credit: Family Photo

“Individuals who come into our system with violent offenses rarely give up their criminal activities,” she wrote. As a result, GDC staffers “work diligently each and every day in these facilities, ensuring our commitment to safe and secure operations remains at the forefront of our daily duties,” she wrote.

Even in the Georgia prison system, where hundreds of correctional officers and other employees have faced criminal charges for contraband and other offenses, Valdosta stands out for its disorder and corruption.

At least a dozen officers at Valdosta have been fired or arrested since January, including the warden, Ralph Shropshire.

Shropshire was named warden in March 2023, taking over the job after serving as a deputy warden the previous four years. Since his firing in July, the GDC has declined to reveal the reasons behind it. The ex-warden’s personnel file, obtained by the AJC, states only that he was terminated due to “misconduct.”

Heath, in her email, said the GDC is unable to elaborate on Shropshire’s dismissal because “those details remain part of an open investigation.” Efforts by the AJC to contact Shropshire were unsuccessful.

Shropshire’s firing came after the arrests earlier this year of five Valdosta State Prison employees who were accused of helping an inmate move drugs and money as part of a massive contraband scheme. The arrests were made following a large multiprison investigation by the GDC dubbed “Operation Skyhawk” that implicated another Valdosta inmate who authorities allege was coordinating a scheme to use drones to deliver contraband to prisons in Georgia.

Another officer at Valdosta, Lyric Oliver, resigned in March and now faces criminal charges. Oliver, who held the rank of lieutenant, was arrested in June after an investigation by the GDC found she had improper dealings with an inmate, Alfred Jones, described in the arrest warrants as a “validated gang member.”

Oliver is charged with two crimes — violating her oath as an officer and trading with inmates —- after allegedly receiving three payments totaling $1,880 from Jones and sending him videos of herself committing sexual acts.

Oliver could not be reached for comment.

The arrests and firings at Valdosta have diminished and tainted a workforce that already was operating at staffing levels that make it virtually impossible to supervise the inmate population. As of April, GDC data show that only 43 of 222 correctional officer positions were filled at the prison, which houses more than 1,100 men.

Although Valdosta has the highest correctional officer vacancy rate in the system, the majority of the state’s highest-security facilities have similar issues, with at least 60 % of their correctional officer jobs unfilled.

Griffith entered the prison system in December 2022 to serve 23 months for a series of probation violations. His probation stemmed from a case in which he and a girlfriend allowed minors to be present when they had sex.

The 32-year-old resident of Jasper County, an avid hunter and fisherman and fan of the Georgia Bulldogs, was just six months from his release date when he was killed.

Griffith’s mother, Tonya Herndon, said her son died a day after moving to Valdosta from Rutledge State Prison in Columbus, where he was in protective custody. He wanted to be in protective custody instead of general population because of concerns about his safety, she said.

“The system should listen to the inmates if they’re being threatened, and the nonviolent ones on probation violations should not be sent to a maximum-security prison where stuff like this happens,” Herndon said.

Heath declined to answer specific questions from the AJC seeking to know how such an egregious situation — a large-scale attack that went on for hours — could unfold. What was the staffing that night? Has anyone been disciplined or fired? How can the prison operate when 80% of its officer positions aren’t filled?

In response, Heath wrote this: “We have worked tirelessly to address correctional staffing challenges, eradicate weapons and contraband in our facilities, employ new technology and resources to help keep our staff and inmates safe and set offenders on paths to success upon their release.”

Griffith’s death occurred six weeks after Towns was killed under similar circumstances in a similar barracks-type dorm. Six prisoners received disciplinary reports for their roles in that killing, according to the incident report. Two have since been charged with murder.

Towns, 37, was serving a six-month sentence for violating his probation for a drug conviction in Fulton County, and he was killed just 12 days before he was due to be released. When his probation was revoked last November, it was noted on the court order that his time could be served in the Fulton County jail “if permissible.” However, he spent only three weeks in the county’s custody before he was turned over to the GDC.

That Towns wound up in the GDC’s most understaffed and potentially most dangerous prison when he was serving a six-month sentence for a probation violation — and by court order could have served it in a county lockup — still gnaws at members of his extended family in Atlanta.

“There are a lot of questions we have that haven’t been answered,” said Towns’ uncle, Darrell Stone. “And when we do reach out to people, we end up with nothing. We just know that we buried him.”

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