Federal judge chides Georgia prison boss and GDC for acting ‘above the law’

MACON — A federal judge on Tuesday scolded the Georgia Department of Corrections’ persistent failure to comply with court orders and questioned whether the department deems itself “above the law.”

U.S. District Court Judge Tilman E. “Tripp” Self III went so far as to summon GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver to the witness stand to explain his department’s actions. The judge said he wanted the commissioner there to hear “from my mouth … how little credibility the Department of Corrections has.”

While his tone was amicable throughout, the judge said it was “shocking” and “unbelievable” to him that a court order, one that in this case had come from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, would be ignored.

Self, a former Superior Court judge in Macon, said he was exasperated and that if this were a child-support case, Oliver “would be in jail.”

Oliver acknowledged the judge’s concerns and told the judge there was no excuse for the department’s failure to follow the court order. “I hear your frustrations and I feel the same,” he said.

Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Tyrone Oliver agreed there was no excuse for the department’s failure to follow the court order. (Ryon Horne/AJC)

Tuesday’s hearing centered on a court order in a seven-year-old case. In a 2018 lawsuit, Ralph Harrison Benning, an inmate at Augusta State Medical Prison, challenged restrictions and censorship on emails, which inmates are allowed to send with some limitations and fees.

In 2024, Benning was granted a favorable ruling from an appellate court, which concluded the GDC could not limit his email contacts to 12 individuals listed on his in-person visitation log who had been cleared by a background check.

But late last year, in November, Benning filed a motion claiming that the GDC was not following the court order, that prison officials were “willfully and intentionally” refusing to comply. He wrote in the filing that he “continues to be subject to email-contact restriction.”

Benning, 62, a Navy veteran, has been serving a life sentence since 1986, when he pleaded guilty to murder in the strangulation death of an 8-year-old boy in north Atlanta earlier that year. In the decades since, he has grown adept at filing lawsuits against the GDC. His name appears on upward of dozen cases, and in 2002, Benning, Jewish by birth, launched a three-year legal fight over his not being allowed to wear a yarmulke in prison.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Self acknowledged that not all inmate complaints are valid. At one point, he said inmates do not deserve “an easy life” behind bars but said they deserve fair treatment.

But, he said, some of the GDC actions were “just cruel.”

A two-year investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed rampant corruption, massive understaffing and record homicides within the GDC, even as state officials clamped down on releasing information about how people had died inside its prisons.

The GDC also was the subject of a lengthy report by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2024 that described horrific violence, sexual assaults and gang-run prisons enabled by a culture of indifference.

As the 35-minute hearing unfolded, Self referred to a case two years ago in which a federal judge in Middle Georgia found the GDC in contempt for disregarding mandates to improve conditions in a high-security prison wing at the state lockup near Jackson. In that case, a federal judge issued a 100-page order finding that state prison officials willfully disregarded requirements to improve deplorable conditions.

“Heads should hang in shame,” Self said of that widely reported episode. “It’s just like the Department thinks that they can do anything they want to do. … It is not going to happen.”

Federal Judge Tilman E. "Tripp" Self III said he wanted the GDC commissioner to hear “from my mouth … how little credibility the Department of Corrections has.” (Courtesy 2020)

Earlier in court on Tuesday, attorney Elizabeth Crowder, representing the GDC, noted there were some explanations but “little to no excuse” for the department’s failing to comply with Self’s order.

Crowder said that early this year, in the wake of Self’s order calling the hearing seeking an explanation as to why the GDC hadn’t complied, a directive was sent to all prison wardens and superintendents that they were to no longer enforce a portion of the policy limiting email contacts.

In response to the judge’s suggestion that the GDC had deemed itself “above the law,” Crowder assured the judge no one was going to testify to that or believed that.

Self replied that the GDC’s actions “tell a very different story.”

When Oliver, the GDC commissioner, took the stand and was questioned about the matter by Crowder, Oliver said that as he understood it, there were still motions to be filed and that the matter was still pending.

Self, who did most of the talking during the hearing, then asked Oliver why it was “so hard” for his department “to follow orders.”

“If the 11th Circuit tells me to do something,” Self said, “I just don’t get the luxury of not doing it. I don’t understand how you do.”

“You’re right, sir,” Oliver said. “And I can tell you this. From the time when I was informed that there was an order to be enforced, I immediately instructed my team” to turn on the email access.

Oliver said that happened sometime shortly after Christmas.

Self said it had taken too long for that to happen. It had been more than a year since the district court had ruled the 12-person email limit improper.

“I know that you’re running a big bureaucracy,” Self said. “I understand that, but you’re the man in charge.”

Self said the issue and others like it were “at the top of my list” and that he was going to “stay interested.”

Said Self: “I hope the speaker (of the Georgia House of Representatives) and the lieutenant governor and the governor hear about it. Because they need to understand that there is a real problem.”

The judge then opened the discussion to Oliver.

The commissioner said that throughout his tenure he has held his people accountable.