Fulton County Jail logs 2nd death in less than a month as DOJ continues investigating facility
Another person who was incarcerated at Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail has died after being taken to the hospital last week, marking the second death in nearly two weeks out of the facility.
The jail is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is examining the facility’s conditions, mental health services, use of excessive force and protection of those incarcerated from violence.
According to a press release from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, 34-year-old Christopher Smith was found unresponsive in his cell Thursday Aug. 10 by a jail detention officer.
Officials transported him to Grady Memorial Hospital, about 4 miles from the jail, but he died at 5:30 a.m. the following day. Smith had been in jail since Oct. 6, 2019. He was arrested on several felony and misdemeanor charges and no bond, the press release states.
The release did not list specifics on the charges against Smith.
His cause of death is not yet known. The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office will be performing an autopsy to determine how he died.
Forty-year-old Montay Stinson was also found unresponsive in his cell just weeks before on Monday, July 31 around 11:45 p.m. Jail staff began life-saving measures but were unable to revive him. He’d been booked on a 2nd degree burglary charge and $3,000 bond.
It’s believed that now 14 people who were incarcerated at Fulton County Jail have died over the last 10 years. The DOJ investigation stemmed from the September death of 35-year-old Lashawn Thompson, who was allegedly “eaten alive by insects and bed bugs,” his attorneys Michael Harper and Ben Crump said. His family recently settled a lawsuit with the county for $4 million.
The conditions at Fulton County Jail are known among civil rights leaders to be particularly disturbing.
Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP, said it’s unknown why so many people who are incarcerated at Fulton County Jail continue to die at the facility, but stated that the frequency of deaths is not common across the state.
“Fulton County Jail is the worst,” he said.
In his perspective, the jail has the highest number of deaths of any facilities in the state, despite reports of deaths in facilities elsewhere — including at Clayton County Jail, just south of Atlanta.
“My hope is that it’s not intentional or negligent, but when you have this number of deaths continuing to happen, it cries out for change.”
The jail was previously under a consent decree in 2006, meaning that the facility was placed under federal supervision and forced to implement changes addressing severe overcrowding, lack of medical care, violence and understaffing, among other issues.
The consent decree ended in 2015.
Earlier this month, Fulton County commissioners endorsed building a new jail but voted against funding it, directing its county manager to determine how to fund the roughly $1.69 billion project.
It’s a move Griggs is personally against.
“I think the solution is providing funding for the court system to expedite the cases,” he said, referencing how the majority of people who are incarcerated at the jail are awaiting their court dates and can’t afford bail.
“I think the ultimate issue is the speed upon which these cases are resolved.”