By Carrie Teegardin
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — A Baldwin County jury found three former correctional officers guilty Wednesday in a trial that exposed a scheme to smuggle drugs and cellphones into a privately operated state prison.
Natashia Seals, Tierra Harrison and Shanell Brown, who all worked at Riverbend Correctional Facility in Milledgeville, were found guilty of trading with inmates, making a false statement and violation of oath by a public officer. The jury issued a split verdict and found the three women not guilty of three other charges: trafficking meth, possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute and crossing the guard lines with drugs.
While the jury found the women guilty of racketering charges, the judge vacated that disposition because it required guilty verdicts on the more serious charges.
Superior Court Judge Brenda Trammell sentenced each former officer to 10 years in prison to be followed by five years on probation.
Tammy Coffey, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, said the contraband problem came to light when an officer noticed an inmate acting suspiciously. When he was searched, officers found cellphones, marijuana and tobacco. “So, of course, the big question is — who brought it in? How did it get there?” Coffey said.
An investigation uncovered a scheme in which correctional officers allegedly helped each other get contraband through the screening system at the prison entrance and leave the contraband in the trash can of a restroom used by officers. Then, investigators found, an inmate would pick up the items to sell on the inside. The investigation concluded the scheme went on for at least eight months until it was discovered in November 2018 .
Riverbend is a private prison operated for the Georgia Department of Corrections by the Geo Group.
An attorney representing two of the defendants said the jury’s split verdict would be challenged.
“The verdict is very, very, very confusing. It doesn’t make sense,” said Hoganne A. Harrison-Walton, who represented Harrison and Brown. “We are going to be filing an appeal.”
Harrison-Walton said she understands that the judge wanted to send a message about the contraband problem in Georgia’s prisons, but she said the length of the sentences was uncalled for.
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Coffey said the drugs and phones create a host of dangers within the prison system. “We can’t allow officers who are expected to uphold the law to violate the law that they have taken an oath to protect. … They have broken the trust of the state of Georgia, the people who have hired them and the inmates that they are in there to protect.”
Georgia’s prisons are awash in contraband. Cellphones are routinely used to coordinate violence within the prisons, run financial crimes or drugs rings or even call hits on the outside. Widespread drug sales within the prison system undermine rehabilitation and can lead to violence or extortion of families when prisoners can’t pay their drug debts.
T. Wright Barksdale III, the district attorney for the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, said contraband cases involving officers are important but can be hard to prosecute since they often rely on testimony from prison inmates, whose credibility may be questioned by juries. “The message here is, at least in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit, we take these things very seriously,” he said.
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