December 13, 2023 • 52 mins
By the time opening statements began in the YSL trial, the remaining defendants had already spent more than a year and a half behind bars. Nearly all of them are being held at the Fulton County Jail, a facility that has become notorious for a spate of deaths in recent years and has been immortalized as Rice Street in rap songs for decades. A former employee and a recent inmate reveal shocking secrets about Rice Street’s filthy and dangerous conditions, which may make it the worst jail in America.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, members of jurry, good morning. All right, y'all
(00:03):
sound good? You ready to get started? Okay, all right,
without further delay. It's the week of November twenty seven,
just after Thanksgiving, the opening week of the YSL trial
with a seated jury. We should have been at this
months ago, and if the court had not set aside
the speedy trial rules during the pandemic judicial emergency, we
(00:23):
probably would have been. Opening statements are underway. First, the prosecution,
da Adrian Love, steps up, and the first words the
jury hears from her are from a famous kid's book.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now, this is the law of the jungle, as old
and as true as the stock, and the wolf that
shall keep it may prosper, But the wolf that shall
breads must die, as.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The creeper that girdles the tree trunk.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
The law running forward and back.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But the strength of the pack is the wolf, and
the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Deeper, in the opening statement, she explains the significance.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
The book that I read to you earlier is from
one of my favorite books as a kid.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
A jungle book.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
In case anybody recognized that those are running out your.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Kipling's words and not mine, But they are appropriate for
where we are today. For ten years in County, the
group calling itself Young Slime Life dominated the Cleveland Avenue
community of Fulton.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
County by a sale.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
As the evidence will show, then move individually.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
The members of the wise Sale then moved like okay,
with offended Jeffy Williams as his head.
Speaker 7 (02:10):
On Tuesday, the defense gets their turn and at a
Rico trial, each defense attorney gets an opportunity to make
an opening statement on behalf of their client.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Young Thug's attorney, Brian Steele, the men's Williams troubled upbringing.
Speaker 8 (02:24):
Jeffrey Williams was born into an environment, a community, a
society that was filled with depression, despair, hopelessness, and helplessness.
In this environment, Jeffrey developed deep embedded beliefs our criminal
(02:47):
justice system was not just at least for people that he.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Saw, and even claims Young Thug's name as a surprising.
Speaker 8 (02:54):
Meaning Doug and means to Jeffrey something very personal.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
It was his path.
Speaker 8 (03:02):
He could ever make it as a musical artist and
help the family himself and as many others out of
this endless cycle of hopelessness. He would be truly humble
under God that's what thug needs.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
Those are the biggest players in this case. But things
get especially interesting for us when defense attorneys for some
of the less recognizable defendants take their turns now.
Speaker 9 (03:38):
Fulton County Blue refers to the Fulton County Jail nine
to one rush shoot where people are taking when they're
arrested in profelony charges in Fulton County and Full County
Love reverse to the josus that these individuals wear.
Speaker 7 (03:58):
Defense attorney Max Shards Unshannon's Stillwell, one of four YEL
defendants accused of being in the rented infinity that was
used in the shooting death of Donovan Thomas Junior outside
A and M barbershop. Shard introduces the idea that the
former YEL defendants who took deals the ones who will
now be used as witnesses and the prosecution can't be
(04:19):
trusted ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 10 (04:22):
Full County Blue is going to be very important color
in this case because the state's key witnesses that they're
going to call to testify as my client Shan is
still well.
Speaker 11 (04:36):
When they be.
Speaker 12 (04:37):
Involved in this case, they were all wear.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Fulte County glue.
Speaker 7 (04:42):
Because anyone will do what they have to do to
get out of the Fulton County jail.
Speaker 13 (04:47):
You confined to a cell, sometimes with another man sharing
that small cell with you.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
You have no privacy used to dad room in front.
Speaker 13 (04:58):
Of the front of Then you're in fear danger, You're
separated from your family and your loved ones. But most importantly,
the men wearing blue Full County Blue, they've lost control
of their lives.
Speaker 9 (05:15):
They've lost control of their destiny.
Speaker 13 (05:17):
Their destiny is now in the hands of the judicious system,
in the hands of prosecutors.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Well, what you should keep in mind is when did
these men.
Speaker 11 (05:29):
Say what they have to say?
Speaker 12 (05:31):
Did they say it.
Speaker 7 (05:32):
When they first got the information to share?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What when they claim they got their first.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Got the information to share?
Speaker 9 (05:40):
Or did they share it when they found themselves wearing
the Fulton County Blue when they no longer had control
of their destinies and they needed a favor, and they
decided to insert themselves into.
Speaker 7 (05:57):
A high profile.
Speaker 14 (05:58):
Case of all their profits.
Speaker 7 (06:02):
But Shard wasn't the only attorney to bring up Bryce
Street right out the gate after.
Speaker 15 (06:06):
Young Ladies and Fighting Carrington.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Matthew's Carrington Matthew Senior represents Marquavius Huey, who's facing more
charges than anyone else in the trial, including armed robbery,
gang charges, aggravated assault with the deadly weapon, and carjacking.
Hue is being subjected to additional counts that were added
after his arrest.
Speaker 12 (06:30):
So the state government they are a legend and mister Huey,
along with Tanquarius Mender, did possess a weapon inside the
Fulson County jail on that particular date.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
Sheriff's deputy is allegedly found a shank in the cell
of Huey and another wise cel defendant, Tenquarius Mender. But
Matthews wonders aloud in front of the jury why two
inmates from the same indictment would be put in the
same cell in the first place.
Speaker 12 (06:59):
This isn't the holiday inn. Ladies and gentlemen. You don't
get to choose your own room that you want to
be in all I want to be on the third floor.
I want to be at the penthouse. No, the facility
has made a decision to put two individuals who are
on the same indictment in the same cell, not the
same pod, not the same facility, but the same cell.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
The implication Matthews is making is that Mender and his
client Hugheye could have been set up on that February
day when the weapon was allegedly found.
Speaker 12 (07:34):
When they do this ray, they tell everybody get down
on the ground, keep your heads looking down, don't look
that up. That two individuals on the same indictment in
the same cell and they go to that particular room
during your first.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Using Rice Street's sordid reputation as a defense is an
interesting strategy. It also may be a good one.
Speaker 12 (08:03):
We know that the Fulton County Jail is played with problems,
not small problems, huge problems. What kind of problems, problems
of people dying there, infestated dead person with bugs on
(08:23):
them in your jail that you pay tax dollars for.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
The jail is falling apart.
Speaker 14 (08:32):
The jail is under federal.
Speaker 12 (08:35):
Investigation for inmates not receiving adequate medical care, employees having
legal problems. So they charge mister Healey and mister Mender
with possessing a shame. You will learn that there are
cells that are left open, and that is not a
(08:56):
safe place to be when a sale is left open,
just trying to lay your head down in sleep. They
are scenarios where you want the cell to be lost,
so we're gonna ask some difficult conversation questions.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
When that time comes.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Who needs to wait.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
We've talked about Ray Street before. It's part of the
l case and the story. Two yl defendants are charged
with trying to kill the rapper wife and Lucci in jail,
and of asking Young Thug for permission to take another
shot while they're locked up.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Young Thug isn't being held in the Fulton County jail.
Sheriff Patlabot sent him to Cobb County in an effort
to minimize conflict. And then there's Kenneth's couplint that's Little
Woody to his friends. He's the state star witness. In
that videotaped conversation with police we featured earlier in the series,
he's desperate to avoid going to Rice Street, says he'd
(09:54):
much preferred to duke time in prison than sit in
that jail.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
People around the world started hearing about Rice Street when
Donald Trump's mugshots started circulating this summer, but the jail's
existence predates these headlines by decades, and it's been name
checked in Atlanta rat for some twenty years. It's an
Atlanta marker, a landmark as relevant to trap as Bankhead
or Magic City. Atlanta rap artists have known that Fulton
(10:20):
County jail is actually more dangerous than any street corner
in the city.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Some of the people we've been talking about in this
podcast have bled on Rice Street's cracked concrete floor since
the start of this trial. Some have been murdered targets,
Some are accused of trying to murder others in this jail,
and all around them, bodies are falling. That blood behind
bars matters to music, to Atlanta and to this case.
(10:49):
And today we delve into Rice streets sorted reputation with
people who have spent time inside.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
You want people say up, I.
Speaker 16 (11:01):
Had no idea that in America people would be treated
this way prior to even seeing a judge.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
I'm George Cheedy and I'm Christina Lee. This is king slime,
the prosecution of young thug and ysl.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Atlanta has never had a jail that wasn't some kind
of problem. Rice Street is the sixth jail built for
Fulton County since nineteen hundred, and every single one eventually
had to be rebuilt or replaced because of overcrowding. Degradation
and violence. Atlanta met the crack epidemic of the eighties
and nineties the way you might expect mass incarceration.
Speaker 12 (11:43):
The newest and one of the deadliest drugs sweeping the
country today is crack.
Speaker 17 (11:47):
Drugs now appear to have penetrated every level of society,
but it's as.
Speaker 7 (11:51):
Innocent looking as canned another.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
But it's turning our cities into battle zones.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The city got Atlanta's abusive Red Dog unit of drug cops.
Speaker 18 (12:00):
As they're called Red Dog after the blitzing football defense
of the same name. Red Dog, we're told is supposed
to hit hard and fast and make their presence felt
at what police say are known drug hotspots.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It got expanded courts, but it did not get a
jail that could handle what those cops and courts sent them.
Fulton County opened the jail on Rice Street in nineteen
eighty nine. On paper, it's designed for five inmates. As
far as we can tell, it has never held fewer
people than that. The current target is two thousand, but
(12:34):
at times it's been stuffed with well over three thousand.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
Atlanta's rappers haven't missed the beat on Rice Street. The
jail is mythic and myth making. It's been name checked
by nearly a dozen local artists, from twenty one Savage.
Speaker 12 (12:49):
Rye Street, A Ladda Soups to Peewee long Way, They
pick on Rice Street, No babych Ti.
Speaker 14 (13:00):
In the Breakfast You know that your homemade on of
Rice Stream.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
And Future I was on the way to not once
but twice before and good out of Rice cre Here's
gonna back when he was still known as Young Gonna,
from a time before Young Thug became his label boss
and mentor. Like Street, and one of the first songs
(13:25):
to feature Young Thug after he was arrested, features a
similar punchline like.
Speaker 12 (13:31):
Rice Break without a fun Fun I was playing with
the way before the.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Brown That's run by Killer Mike from an album nominated
for a Grammy in twenty twenty four. And then there's
Gucci Mainmui with the big old Good.
Speaker 11 (13:49):
Nine one on the.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Song Internet Chatter, Gucci is looking back on the man
he was some twenty years ago, a time when his
rap she was growing and he was doing time in
Rice Street, facts that made him something of a full
hero in trap music, where the rallying cry among fans
was what else Free Gucci. In March two thousand and nine,
Gucci emerged from a six month stint with pages and
(14:12):
pages of raps that he had written from behind bars.
The night of his release, he headed to Metronome Studios
in Atlanta, anticipating that the world would finally be able
to hear them, but instead his go to producer, Zaytoven,
told him to ditch those pages and just freestyle. No problem,
Gucci thought. He stepped into the.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
Booth the seventh out.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
So this song First Day Out set a new homecoming
tradition for hip hop going forward. Artists like Chief, Keef, Kodak,
Black Offset, and JT of City Girls have all recorded
their own quote unquote first day out tracks. The whole
point is to capture that moment where life after lock
up begins. Lotto, a Clayton County native who counts Gucci
(15:00):
Mane as one of her favorite rappers, technically has a
first Day Out track of her own. It just happens
to be called Fuck Rice street Man Butt APD Butt
Status Sprays bought Rice Street Buck but a Ya Fulton
County record show. She was arrested a few months after
her twenty nineteen breakout hit Bitch from the South on
(15:21):
a felony charge in Sandy Springs that was quickly dismissed.
See Amy Doll, Shit So Bitch, I'm coming ou Rick,
Chris Shadow, Rice Street, Shoutout It, tg Hey doing break Me.
Not all the artists who reference Rice Street have served
time there. That's not entirely the point of these lyrics, though,
to rap about Rice Street is to shed light on
(15:42):
the sort of environment these artists came up in. These
artists discussed the jail on an if you know, you
know basis, and the implication is it may be better
that you don't. In twenty seventeen, Gucci Mane released his autobiography,
which explained for the first time in detail what he
saw as an inmate. Reading those pages felt like the
first time I understood why he sounded so triumphant in
(16:05):
First Day Out, Because at Ray Street he saw cells
meant to hold two bunks with three air that was hot,
humid and dank from broken washing machines, clog sinks and
overflowing toilets, daily fights, stabbings, even a shooting. He says,
Gucci is discussing what he saw from time served. In
(16:27):
two thousand and five and from two thousand and eight
to two thousand and nine. But those pages, they could
have been written yesterday, and.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That goes to the uniquely dysfunctional conditions at the Fulton
County Jail. Might It's February twenty twenty three and I'm
talking to a man named Dements Flannagan on the phone.
He's an inmate at Ryce Street, calling me from a
jail phone. Flannagan was arrested on drug charges in twenty
twenty two, not long after being released from Sumter County
(16:57):
Prison in South Georgia. Some when I had written about
was in jail and introduced the two of us. Flann
again had a story to tell. He's got a rap sheet,
but this was his first trip to Rice Street.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
No word they yet, they got.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It's hard to make out on the correctly prison phone line,
but he says.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
Here the minute I walked into the jail, it's nasty.
It's not sanitary, it's not clean anywhere. They got bodies
and bodies and intake. Speaking of intake, it could take
a week, two weeks in a way, you're supposed to
be an intake that long. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Intake is the main floor holding ceut where new inmates
are held for processing before being put into cells.
Speaker 15 (17:48):
Now, at some point, did anybody try to sort of
walk you through how to stay safe while you were
at the jail?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Oh? To me, a lot of stamping. Oh like, why
are you taking the why?
Speaker 19 (18:06):
Wait? So the deputy said that they were taking you
to a place where they do a lot of staffing.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Even after the cryptic warning. When Flannigan gets up there
on the fifth floor, he's shucked at what he sees.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
More like shown in the world, broken and secured, I know,
locking down. How night we got mad swords and shaded
all types of.
Speaker 19 (18:43):
Did you say, swords and machetes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
The higher you go at Rice Street, the tighter the security.
Because of their long term stays, it's likely most of
the y s L guys are on floors five through seven.
It's on floor five where Flanagan says on February twelfth,
twenty twenty three, he's in a cell when he gets jumped.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
That was the Dame room. I made a way over
the skills, got into the room, locked myself in the room.
I'm trying to hold a dose into the room, got
it out. Hey, They tried to open it up in
the rooms and they stabbing the homes and they don't
go and they came as much definite.
Speaker 7 (19:29):
They came into the room and stabbed me in my arms.
I had to let the door go. They came in
and just kept stabbing.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Then go all the way.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
This is how it went. Ain't no other way.
Speaker 15 (19:45):
So you saw him coming, they attacked you. You were
in the hall, and then you ran back into the
room and closed the lock. And then they broke the
lock and broke into the road. How many people jumped
on you?
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Hey, twenty people stab me up.
Speaker 19 (19:59):
Stam So you're right now. You were assuming it was
a gang thing.
Speaker 15 (20:05):
But did anybody There was never anybody who said like,
we're coming after you.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
And this is why no no one ever told me
that I don't have I got said I don't have. No,
I don't have people's personal life. Brilliant again, his marting
life at home. I'll have him.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
To be clear, Flannagan is not saying any of the
y Sale defendants were involved in this incident. Flanninggan is
actually calling me from a phone in the medical unit
of Rice Street. When we're talking. He's still recovering from
those thirty five stab wounds he received from twenty inmates.
Speaker 19 (20:47):
How are you, like, what's your mental health like right now?
Are you in fear?
Speaker 18 (20:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:52):
I mean I mean my gang.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
Ever since I've been stabbed, I've had nightmares or sleepless nights,
you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 19 (21:01):
Have you seen other flights or stabbings before you were injured?
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Yes, before I was injured and after?
Speaker 19 (21:12):
Right so how often is this happening?
Speaker 16 (21:17):
Like?
Speaker 19 (21:17):
What do you see?
Speaker 6 (21:19):
You have one that had left often.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
It was almost like I can't get space. It would
go on. They let folks get stabbed and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Flannagan has been locked up before, he's even served hard
time in state custody, but he's never seen anything like
Rice Street.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
Right now, it's crazy like I've been in prison. It's
rougheren here right now than it is in prisoned nat nap.
I just did six years in prison and never got
stabbed or nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Flanning In hopes by talking to me that people will
learn what's happening at the jail. But he's only given
a few minutes to talk to us. Our call is
about to cut off. It's time to say goodbye.
Speaker 19 (22:22):
You are incredibly lucky to have survived this.
Speaker 6 (22:26):
Yeah, I know, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 19 (22:31):
Do you have a sense of like, so what stopped them?
Speaker 6 (22:37):
I'm a great to God.
Speaker 19 (22:40):
Demand I am grateful for you, and like, I'm grateful
that you've survived. Take care, keep it hid up all right,
smaller head.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Last year, a Sheriff's deputy working on Rice Street's medical
ward peered into a dank, darkened cell to find Lashawan
Thompson face down in the toilet, surrounded by filth and failure.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
The family of a man who died in the Fulton
County jail says he was eaten.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Alive in his cell by bedbugs and insects.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Other people came to the cell and has matt Suits
to pull his life covered head from a bowl full
of his own waist.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Thirty five year old Lashawn Thompson was arrested last June
for simple battery, a misdemeanor. The pictures of Thompson's body,
his face and torso covered with bugs are too graphic
to show on TV. Attorney Michael this is the.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Death that Markuavius Hughey's attorney Carton Matthews referred to at
the top of the show.
Speaker 12 (23:55):
We know that the Fulton County Jail is played with probs,
not small problems, huge problems. What kind of problems, problems
of people dying? There investated dead person.
Speaker 6 (24:14):
With bugs on them.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You would think the death of Lashawn Thompson and the
four million dollars settlement the county had to pay his
family might have been a wake up call, and it
was perhaps for us. None of this was a revelation
to people who know the.
Speaker 14 (24:32):
Jail the way that I grew up.
Speaker 16 (24:34):
I had no idea that in America people would be
treated this way prior to even seeing a judge.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This is Lauren Hoppin. She's a nurse. From January until September.
She worked in side Rise Street, employed by a national
medical services provider called naf Care.
Speaker 17 (24:49):
So Lashawan Thompson was the man who died covered in
bedbug bites. Can you explain to me from the inside perspective,
how something like that happens, how this ended up that filthy?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
That's King Slime producer Tommy Andres who interviewed Lauren with me.
Speaker 16 (25:06):
The cells always look like that, I would say, like
the two different goals of the officers versus the medical
I had several nurses tell me because I said that.
Speaker 14 (25:16):
I said, like, bedbugs don't really eat people, Like, what
do you think you know?
Speaker 16 (25:20):
Because this is a little bit prior to when I
was working there, and they said that all we can
do is provide medication for the bedbugs. It's not our problem.
We do not clean the cells, so it's not a
medical issue.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Hopper says, even though she wasn't there when Thompson died,
she saw plenty of evidence of dangerous squalor.
Speaker 16 (25:43):
There were times they would say that the inmates would
flood the toilets, so it's the inmates fault, right, But somehow.
Speaker 14 (25:50):
They would do it.
Speaker 16 (25:51):
And I would try to give meds to guys like
getting out of their bunks with water up to their
like calves like it, you know, like coming.
Speaker 17 (26:01):
To the to the sewage not just water like toilet water.
Speaker 14 (26:06):
Correct.
Speaker 16 (26:07):
And so when you see those pictures like that's not
that doesn't surprise me at all. I just kind of
didn't understand like how a bug do it personally. But
I would have people like the most recent one was
a guy that his whole like lip was completely swollen
and he had like bite marks all on his face.
Speaker 14 (26:29):
And they usually they would everybody would say, yeah, the bugs.
Speaker 16 (26:32):
At night they come out, and so I saw, like,
I mean, it was that now that's a daily More
than more than one person would come up to me
and show me bite marks. So I don't know what's
biting 'em. But on the mental health, I've seen, like
I've opened up a door before with like gnats everywhere,
So they don't a lot of times their trays are
sitting in there for multiple days in a row. I've
(26:53):
seen pieces on the wall with like but and again
these are mental probably like a mental health floor.
Speaker 14 (26:58):
But I'm pretty sure that's his.
Speaker 16 (27:00):
He was located there and there they I think they
let him out once a day maybe. And if they're
in a place where they don't want to come, you know,
they say no. It's not like anyone's like no, like
you need to, they're just like you don't want to next,
and so they you know, they might spend days without
even looking. You know, they might make sure that they're
breathing from afar, but it's not like they're doing any
(27:21):
kind of check on them. And then how it an
officer really know what to look for when it comes
to the medical So.
Speaker 17 (27:27):
How often are the cells cleaned, and how big is
that staff?
Speaker 16 (27:30):
Like is it I've never seen by, Like, I've never
seen staffed. I don't know who cleans it. I've never seen.
I mean maybe the trustees. I see trustees like sometimes sweeping.
Speaker 17 (27:44):
Trustees are volunteers.
Speaker 16 (27:46):
They're the inmates that they say like based on their behavior,
But it's not true because I know a few of
the murders that are trustees. So they're allowed out in
the popular you know, with everyone. But yeah, they do work.
Speaker 17 (27:56):
So there is no cleaning staff at the jail, at
least for the cells. I mean maybe potentially for the
staff areas or something, but.
Speaker 14 (28:07):
I don't think.
Speaker 16 (28:09):
No, holy shit, I don't think I ever saw, because
nurses are like inherently kind of you know, we clean
our area.
Speaker 14 (28:18):
So I guess I just didn't. I mean I definitely wondered,
like how long has this been this way?
Speaker 16 (28:23):
When I would see someone with multiple you know, with
their food like stacked or something. And then with the
overcrowding where a lot of them are sleeping on they
call them boats on the floor. They a lot of
them were on the floor and they had them on
and I think that the numbers are down now, but
they had reached a point where it was like people
were waiting just to have a cot.
Speaker 14 (28:42):
So they're like out in the open.
Speaker 16 (28:43):
So then obviously it's gonna get dirty faster than anybody
could ever probably keep up. But I do not have
to think about that. I don't think I ever saw
like a cleaning person.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The most insane part of all of this is that
these aren't convict These are people who have been arrested
and are merely accused of a crime.
Speaker 16 (29:05):
Not only are they not convicted, they literally haven't even
been able to determine if they geta like, you know,
have a bond.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Hopper says that folks into Rice Street are hit hard
by the dire conditions the second they come in the door.
Speaker 14 (29:17):
My thing was an intake. So then I'm sitting there.
Speaker 16 (29:20):
Each person comes in telling their story to me, and
I have like the glass so I can look out,
and then we just have everybody else in these about
five or six cages pretty much, and there were fifteen
twenty guys in one little like closet space. They couldn't
get them out of the intake area because there wasn't
(29:41):
any room upstairs. But there was no bite Tromp you know,
there was no sense of urgency. So it would be
like there were guys there first for a week, what.
Speaker 19 (29:51):
Do they mean?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Like kay, correct in the intake section.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
Correct and you aren't.
Speaker 16 (29:56):
And there's things like your mental health meds that until
you see a mental health provider, which we don't offer
unless you're suicidal, they don't come. You don't get them
when you're down an intake, So you go how many
days without your meds? And then you act out and
then and then the officers punish them by they won't
open the doors at all. I mean, I would see
like men that I knew based on like looking at
(30:19):
them that they have you know, COPD, certain things like that,
and they'd get all kind of worked up and start
trying red and I'd be like, can you let them
just sit out there? And like so many of them
start having panic attacks and we just and I'd be like,
just they just need to breathe, like they're not trying
to do anything, you know, they would a lot of
times the officers would just you kind of just get
jaded and you just assume that the person's just trying
(30:40):
to act out because they want privileges. And it's like
you're in a box for seven days, like I would
have lost my mind. It was me and one other
nurse would do our best to at least let them
try to come out for five minutes to breathe. And
to think that that was like pulling, you know, something
that was difficult to provide. Was just like, this is
inhumane and these people, you know, it would be trespathy
(31:02):
or something.
Speaker 14 (31:04):
It's just like traumatic.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Occasionally staff would have to separate someone down an intake
for all sorts of reasons. Popper says one in.
Speaker 16 (31:12):
Particular, allegedly he tried to kick the officer, so they
put him in the cell by himself, down an intake again,
So this is someone that's just got there charged.
Speaker 14 (31:25):
But no, you know, I hadn't seen a judge.
Speaker 16 (31:28):
And then I don't know how much time went by,
but something happened where I guess they were walking by
and saw like his hair sticking out from the bottom
of the cell, so you knew he was on the
ground and ran over there. He's not responding, He's like,
can't you know, you don't see any movement of the hair.
So it's just like so they were like all medical,
all officers, and we all go over there.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
It was like twenty people.
Speaker 16 (31:50):
It was like the whole jail, and we're all just
standing there because we can't get the door open. So
then they get maintenance, and this guy's down and you're
just expecting the worst.
Speaker 14 (31:58):
You're like, you're gonna find it cold body like. So
maintenance comes. He can't get it.
Speaker 16 (32:05):
So one of the biggest officers kind of like you're
like kind of stocky, he grabs the crowbar and just
starts like doing like old school, like just trying to
So basically we finally get the door open. I'm going
to go about fifteen at least fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
The man was lying on the floor unresponsive.
Speaker 14 (32:22):
And then we pull him out.
Speaker 16 (32:23):
He's got somehow he's like he tied his belt around
his neck, but he's still breathing. So we don't know
if like maybe he just wasn't able to complete it
or if he like who.
Speaker 7 (32:35):
Knows what it was.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
The man survived barely.
Speaker 14 (32:39):
They blamed it on the inmate and said that he
jammed the door.
Speaker 16 (32:42):
But the fact that that is like that's when I understand,
like the sheriff says, let's get a new jail. But
it's also like, can't you make sure door's open and
close properly? That like it's not sure the thing's falling apart,
but it's an old building. But the fact but that
is just so oh crazy that like we couldn't even
attend to someone who could have, like to think that
(33:07):
if his family found out that he had passed when
he didn't have to.
Speaker 19 (33:11):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
But as Attorney Matthews alluded to at the top of
the show, the biggest problem in the jail might not
be the doors that won't open, but doors that won't
stay closed. This is because most of them are broken.
Happer says she learned this the hard way during one
of her first shifts, when the tone inside Rice Street
suddenly shifted dramatically.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
All of a sudden, the guys that were hanging out
food trays go up in the air and everybody's like
yelling something was going on. I don't know what caused it,
but then they had so they were all just like
fighting officer runs and like I didn't realize that all.
Speaker 14 (33:50):
The doors were It was like after fact, like.
Speaker 16 (33:51):
They were like, oh yeah, you didn't know that they
can open all those doors. And then that day specifically
they ended up having several stabbings.
Speaker 14 (33:58):
At that moment.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
When you say they can open the doors, like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 14 (34:05):
They just use force and they literally just push them.
Speaker 16 (34:09):
It's not difficult at all, but I but until I
saw it, I didn't realize it.
Speaker 14 (34:12):
Was like, oh, I can do it too.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
There are buildings in war zones with better infrastructure. Hopper
remembers how a summer storm knocked out the jail's electricity
and then all hell.
Speaker 14 (34:24):
Broke loose the miners.
Speaker 16 (34:26):
They'll put them in the empty cells with all these
like older men, but those all they can they can
open those doors as well. So I ended up that
in there when all the lights went out and it
was so dark, I couldn't I didn't know where to go,
but I had my cart out, so I was like
trying to lock up what I could and I couldn't see,
and finally I saw the officers just flash light, so
(34:48):
I flagged her down.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Heavy rains pounded the leaky old building.
Speaker 16 (34:52):
But when we went to like make sure they were
all in their cells at the time, it was flooding
so bad.
Speaker 14 (34:58):
It was like buckets of water coming out, and you're just.
Speaker 16 (35:00):
Looking at these kids that are like eighteen years old,
just like looking at you, like you know, in the
pitch black. So I thought when I left, they wouldn't
let us l like it was all nothing works, so
you can't get out of the building or in the building.
And then they were like, well you can't leave because
we can't properly get people the night shift to come in,
you know, like they were so what they were doing
was so some of the inmates I don't even know how,
(35:20):
but whatever area they were in or it was like
really dark, they were following the officers through the tunnels
to get to like another area. Finally get out, probably
like ten o'clock at night. And I was convinced that
that whole place like would just be s everybody would
be like, I don't know, like slaughtered.
Speaker 14 (35:38):
That's a scary.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I'm sort of picturing this like this jail has this
reputation as a hellhole. It's physically falling apart, like it's
raining outside and so it's raining inside. I get and
then all the lights go out in a jail where
the doors can be opened by can make it correct.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Or could it be or could be stuck and then
they're stuck in.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
There you're describing a horror movie, like this is a
setup for a horror movie.
Speaker 16 (36:05):
And I was like, is this a bad call to
help people stay here? Because I was like, this is
how it goes down a horror film. And then I'm
stuck in the jail, you know, when the whole place
goes up and blames.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yce Street was built in nineteen eighty nine. It's not
ancient by any means, but it is truly crumbling. Inmates
have been breaking the building into pieces to forge shanks.
Figures are released by the sheriff through the first ten
months of twenty twenty three, telly two hundred and ninety
three stabbings, three hundred and thirty seven fights, nine hundred
(36:56):
and twenty two assaults, and more than one thousand and
one hundred and eighty six confiscated shanks. According to the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, nearly every day someone is getting stabbed there.
Nearly every day there's a demense. Flanagan get this, An
(37:17):
inmate managed to dig a hole shawshank redemption style through
the walls of the jail, not to free himself, but
to get to another inmate in the next cell block
to stab him. The jail is also suffered from staffing
problems of all kinds. Maintenance workers say they don't always
(37:40):
feel safe enough there to work, which exacerbates the issues
with infrastructure. But there are other types of staffing problems
that are even more concerning. Two days after Flannagan's attack,
a sheriff's deputy allegedly opened a door to allow an inmate,
Frank Hubbert, to enter a communal area from a different zone.
Hubbard approached two men arguing and participated in a group
(38:03):
beating and stabbing of twenty six year old quesshn Green.
Speaker 20 (38:08):
A group of inmates piled on one vulnerable prisoner, with
the detention officer watching it all take place.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
This is on an arrest warrant not for Hubbard, but
for detention officer Gloria Franklin, charging her with violating a
rowth of office and other charges. Rather than stop the attack,
Franklin led it unfold. The warrant states a.
Speaker 20 (38:31):
Jail monitors report of misconduct by a Fulton officer seemed
so bizarre we tried to uncover every detail about the
alleged actions of Gloria Franklin that, if true, not only
violates policy but is also a violation of the law.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Describing video evidence, the warrant says she then escorted Hubbert
back to his zone, retrieved cleaning supplies, and cleaned up
the blood on the floor. She didn't document the attack,
and Green didn't receive medical attention until other deputies to
him a day later. According to the warrant daffidavit, others,
both deputies and unsworn staff, have been fired for misconduct
(39:09):
to particularly smuggling drugs. The jail is averaging about one
deputy a month being arrested and charged with crimes themselves
on charges ranging from sexual contact with prisoners to facilitating
acts of violence by inmates. And finally, because of staffing shortages,
there aren't enough deputies to respond immediately to an act
(39:30):
of violence, and the people being held there know it,
hence the glut of stabbings. For all the public focus
on the horrifying death of Lashawn Thompson, the everyday life
of a prisoner at Fulton County Jail is to experience
fear of violence. But perhaps the most shocking thing is
(39:52):
the lack of basic civility, which Lauren Hopper says she
was slowly being conditioned to ignore.
Speaker 16 (40:00):
A lot of nurses yell do a lot of yelling,
kind of like the officers do, just to kind of
own the presence of being there. And I felt like
that's not my style, and I didn't think I could
ever really be that person, and so that that worried
me a lot. I didn't really have problems except for
the masterby. I really didn't have problems with the inmates.
Is they if you, just like any human, if you
(40:21):
treat them right, they pretty much respond.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
You know, that's a sentence. Like except for the masturbation.
I didn't well.
Speaker 14 (40:30):
Because I feel like it's it's pretty bad and I
can't fit. I can't put my finger on where that
comes from.
Speaker 16 (40:36):
I mean, they'll be like it'll be like ten of
them and they all have blankets on, and then they
take the blanket off, and then the officer turns their
head and like it's like this wait what Yeah, So
they're like you've seen picture or you know how like
the jail, like they have the upstairs and then they
head it down and then they all line up to
get their meds. So I'm standing there and then the
officer as supposed to be like keeping control right here,
(41:00):
but then they're like talking to someone else, or they're
turned around like this, and every time they do, they
pull the blanket back and are jacking off, and like
there's like up to fifteen of them at a time.
One officer that kind of laughed about it. He was allowing,
they were coming up to like the window where like
my card is, and they were like narrating. And then
(41:20):
that's when I got mad, which is surreal that I'm
acting like this is like normal, But it was kind
of like they would have a story about how I
wanted it, you know, like things like that to where
I could hear it.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
And then I was like, this is like I'm sorry,
I don't mean to re traumatize your here.
Speaker 16 (41:33):
No.
Speaker 17 (41:33):
No, what's interesting is it doesn't sound traumatizing to you.
Just sounds very traumatizing to anyone Like well, because I.
Speaker 16 (41:40):
Think I'm a little bit like bias, like I like that,
like I want to be on the inmate side, and
I felt like that they didn't really treat me.
Speaker 14 (41:47):
But it's is this what an abusive abused.
Speaker 17 (41:50):
Person like, Well, it's a sign of them being institutionalized,
which is just surprising that you could be institutionalized to
that level in a jail and not in a prison,
Like that's that's what I think, That's what I find
most upsetting about that anecdote. It's like, this behavior is
not something I would imagine any of these people would
(42:10):
do on the street.
Speaker 16 (42:11):
Absolutely not, and as why I would just kind of
not forgive them, but like think there's probably like something
behind that.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
The pandemic reshaped jails and prisons across the country and
across Georgia. Death rates have exploded in both nationwide, but
the scale of the dysfunction of Rice Street can be
hard to understand without hearing it directly from someone who
has seen it, and can be believed. Inmates and defense
attorneys have been talking about these problems for years. Of course,
(42:42):
the Fulton County Sheriff's Office employed four hundred and three
officers as of May, with one hundred and thirty two
posted at the jail. A spokesperson for the jail said
the office is forty officers short of full staffing, which
may explain this. Other jails and prisons have been dropping
naf care after high cost lawsuits and inmate deaths, but
(43:02):
in Fulton County's case, it was Nafcare that pulled out
of its twenty seven million dollar contract to serve Ice
Street in May, seven months before it was due to expire.
Nafcare cited assaults on its staff and the stabbing of
a patient as grounds for its departure. The Navcare CEO,
Bradford McLane issued a statement calling Rice Street quote the
(43:26):
most dangerous jail or prison facility where Nafcare is contracted
to provide services in any location in the country. And
then the county talked Nafcare into coming back. One of
the conditions for Nafkir's return was enhanced security for its staff.
Nafcare hires off duty sheriff's deputies to shadow their nurses,
(43:48):
the same ones who work at the jail.
Speaker 16 (43:50):
It was because we had a couple incidences and we
had a medical assistant get attacked by an enmey. So
then they hired our officers to work over time for
eighty dollars an hour to not be able to do
any kind of intervention, just sit there to be our security.
Speaker 14 (44:10):
So like say another like a fight was breaking out.
Speaker 16 (44:12):
They're like, oh, but I'm with Nathcare today, I'm not
an officer, So it would be kind of like the
best money you'll ever make is a you know, just
to sit there and they'd be like standing there, like
falling asleep.
Speaker 14 (44:25):
They'd be snoring, and I'd have to wake them up.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
So this is the same folks who would be working
a different shift to the current county.
Speaker 16 (44:31):
Correct, and a lot of them would go I don't
even know that they would take a break, maybe a
couple hours maybe, So.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
You saw guys that were just sort of falling out.
Speaker 14 (44:39):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I reached out to the Sheriff's office to ask about
Nafcare's contract. The office confirmed that Nathcare hires off duty
sheriff's deputies for jail security, without further comment. Federal investigators
recently began a probe of the Fulton County Jail. Their
timing was interesting. The pace of deaths there increased for
(45:03):
about two months. The jail averaged a death a week.
Those were the two months that the Sheriff's office had
to dramatically shift its staffing, increasing the hours of overtime
it demanded of its deputies while pulling people out of
off duty time elsewhere to prepare for the rival of
its highest profile visitor, Donald Trump.
Speaker 21 (45:24):
History being made where we have a former president coming
to Metro Atlanta, turning himself into the jail, facing a
number of charges for allegedly trying to overturn an election.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Here in our state, prosecutors are arguing that YSL isn't
just a street gang, but a jail gang. They're linking
accusations of crimes committed at Rice Street to their activities
as a gang, establishing dominance and control wherever they are.
Several defendants faced charges from jail activity, as we mentioned
a couple of times now. The indictment accuses Christian Eppinger
(45:58):
of trying to kill wife and Lucci in jail, but
he's also accused of fighting jail guards and other acts
of misbehavior, including an inappropriate relationship with a jail guard.
Tanquarius Mender is accused of leading a riot where Jelias
Little rod Ryan is accused of having drugs in jail.
Shannon Stillwell is accused of masturbating in front of a
female guard. But Rice Street is such a mess in
(46:22):
every way. How they determined what's gang violence or gang
activity and what's not seems like a tricky proposition. In
some cases, legal misconduct may simply be a matter of survival.
On July twenty seven, Deronte Bibi, one of the wise
held defendants, was stabbed in the head by another prisoner
(46:43):
while he was in his bunk. According to a jail report,
guards found him with a gash on his forehead and
below his eye on his cheek. Video shows how he
was attacked with a knife by a man in jail
on murder charges. Bibe refused to make a statement to investigators.
Three months later, on the eve of the trial, Bbe
took a plea on the rico charge to serve five
(47:05):
years in state prison and to get out of Rice
Street immediately. As of this recording, in early December, ten
people have died in the jail's custody. In twenty twenty three,
fifteen people died there in twenty twenty two. Tracking recent
jail destination wide has been a challenge. A program to
track in custody deaths at the United States Department of
(47:26):
Justice through the Death and Custody Reporting Act ended just
as the pandemic began. Assaults and other acts of violence
are even harder to tabulate, meaning there are no statistical
breakdowns of the most dangerous jails in America. But let's
put things into perspective. With a little comparison. Plans to
close the notorious Rikers Island jail complex in New York
(47:48):
were recently finalized after complaints over violent and inhumane conditions there.
Twenty eight people died at Rikers in the past two years,
compared to twenty five over that same time. Biot at
Rice Street. But get this. Rikers is a complex of
ten jails and holds as many as fifteen thousand inmates.
(48:09):
Rice Street holds thirty three hundred three less deaths, one
fifth the size. Certainly there are more stats than just
inmate deaths to tell you, but it's hard to argue
against Rice Street topping that list. It's Monday, December eleventh,
twenty twenty three, early morning, still dark outside. Attorney Max
(48:34):
Shark gets a phone call his client Chanon's stillwell, has
been stabbed in jail. In the courtroom, a few hours later,
Judge Euro Glanville addresses the jury. Okay, listen, lays Young,
There's something I need to take up with you, so
don't get too comfortable, right.
Speaker 8 (48:53):
It's on Laisian Young.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
We'd have a medical issue.
Speaker 8 (48:56):
Come up with one of our participants, so I'm going
to have to reset for today.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Okay, and these things happen. He doesn't want to bias
the jury by telling them exactly what happened, but they
likely notice the empty chair next to Attorney Max Shark.
I call Shard on the phone when I find out
he's about to head to Grady Hospital to meet Stillwell.
He's still gathering details, but it sounds bad. We learned
(49:22):
later still Well sustained multiple stab wounds and underwent a
two hour surgery. When we talked, Shard isn't sure what
this will mean for the trial.
Speaker 11 (49:30):
It's very unfortunate and very concerning. It has many people
who care very much about him and where.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
It is border and that they Stillwell has been in
the Fulton County jail since March of twenty twenty two,
and this isn't the first time he's been assaulted. Four
months after being locked up, he was stabbed as well.
We asked one block question, not specific about Chattle, what
(49:58):
the fuck are we going to do about the jail?
Speaker 6 (50:03):
Obviously that's the complex problem that I do.
Speaker 19 (50:07):
Not have the pluton for.
Speaker 11 (50:10):
It's just dead just said.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I mean, he's not the only guy, like, he's not
the only The idea that you might have multiple clients
in her jail is just mind blowing.
Speaker 11 (50:21):
Ring the families. The mothers will call me constantly, not
even worried about the legal issues involved in cases. I
try to get more calls about safety concerns than anything else.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Sharda isn't calling for a mistrial, he isn't expecting one.
Stillwell wants his day in court. That day in court
has been long coming. I've been looking at problems in
this jail for as long as I've been looking at
this case. Longer Shart and I have talked about it.
The men's Flannagan was one is client. Every lawyer I've
(51:03):
talked to about the jail has a story to tell
about one client or Anothery're getting hurt at Rice Street.
I've been waiting for a day like this in the
YSL trial, worrying that one of the defendants is going
to get killed before the trial is over. But I guess,
as Judge Gladville would say, these things happen.
Speaker 7 (51:31):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Gets written and produced by George Cheaty, Christina Lee, and
Tommy Andres.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre and
Taylor Chakoyne.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy andres Our.
Speaker 7 (51:47):
Theme music is by Dunn Deal fact.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Checking by Caylin Lynch. Special thanks to know Amy.
Speaker 7 (51:54):
Griffin and to the Elena News outlets eleven Alive, WSBTV,
Elena News
Speaker 1 (51:59):
First and For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
All right, members of jurry, good morning. All right, y'all
(00:03):
sound good? You ready to get started? Okay, all right,
without further delay. It's the week of November twenty seven,
just after Thanksgiving, the opening week of the YSL trial
with a seated jury. We should have been at this
months ago, and if the court had not set aside
the speedy trial rules during the pandemic judicial emergency, we
(00:23):
probably would have been. Opening statements are underway. First, the prosecution,
da Adrian Love, steps up, and the first words the
jury hears from her are from a famous kid's book.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now, this is the law of the jungle, as old
and as true as the stock, and the wolf that
shall keep it may prosper, But the wolf that shall
breads must die, as.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The creeper that girdles the tree trunk.
Speaker 4 (01:01):
The law running forward and back.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
But the strength of the pack is the wolf, and
the strength of the wolf is the pack.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Deeper, in the opening statement, she explains the significance.
Speaker 5 (01:21):
The book that I read to you earlier is from
one of my favorite books as a kid.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
A jungle book.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
In case anybody recognized that those are running out your.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
Kipling's words and not mine, But they are appropriate for
where we are today. For ten years in County, the
group calling itself Young Slime Life dominated the Cleveland Avenue
community of Fulton.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
County by a sale.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
As the evidence will show, then move individually.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
The members of the wise Sale then moved like okay,
with offended Jeffy Williams as his head.
Speaker 7 (02:10):
On Tuesday, the defense gets their turn and at a
Rico trial, each defense attorney gets an opportunity to make
an opening statement on behalf of their client.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Young Thug's attorney, Brian Steele, the men's Williams troubled upbringing.
Speaker 8 (02:24):
Jeffrey Williams was born into an environment, a community, a
society that was filled with depression, despair, hopelessness, and helplessness.
In this environment, Jeffrey developed deep embedded beliefs our criminal
(02:47):
justice system was not just at least for people that he.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Saw, and even claims Young Thug's name as a surprising.
Speaker 8 (02:54):
Meaning Doug and means to Jeffrey something very personal.
Speaker 6 (03:00):
It was his path.
Speaker 8 (03:02):
He could ever make it as a musical artist and
help the family himself and as many others out of
this endless cycle of hopelessness. He would be truly humble
under God that's what thug needs.
Speaker 7 (03:27):
Those are the biggest players in this case. But things
get especially interesting for us when defense attorneys for some
of the less recognizable defendants take their turns now.
Speaker 9 (03:38):
Fulton County Blue refers to the Fulton County Jail nine
to one rush shoot where people are taking when they're
arrested in profelony charges in Fulton County and Full County
Love reverse to the josus that these individuals wear.
Speaker 7 (03:58):
Defense attorney Max Shards Unshannon's Stillwell, one of four YEL
defendants accused of being in the rented infinity that was
used in the shooting death of Donovan Thomas Junior outside
A and M barbershop. Shard introduces the idea that the
former YEL defendants who took deals the ones who will
now be used as witnesses and the prosecution can't be
(04:19):
trusted ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 10 (04:22):
Full County Blue is going to be very important color
in this case because the state's key witnesses that they're
going to call to testify as my client Shan is
still well.
Speaker 11 (04:36):
When they be.
Speaker 12 (04:37):
Involved in this case, they were all wear.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
Fulte County glue.
Speaker 7 (04:42):
Because anyone will do what they have to do to
get out of the Fulton County jail.
Speaker 13 (04:47):
You confined to a cell, sometimes with another man sharing
that small cell with you.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
You have no privacy used to dad room in front.
Speaker 13 (04:58):
Of the front of Then you're in fear danger, You're
separated from your family and your loved ones. But most importantly,
the men wearing blue Full County Blue, they've lost control
of their lives.
Speaker 9 (05:15):
They've lost control of their destiny.
Speaker 13 (05:17):
Their destiny is now in the hands of the judicious system,
in the hands of prosecutors.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Well, what you should keep in mind is when did
these men.
Speaker 11 (05:29):
Say what they have to say?
Speaker 12 (05:31):
Did they say it.
Speaker 7 (05:32):
When they first got the information to share?
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What when they claim they got their first.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Got the information to share?
Speaker 9 (05:40):
Or did they share it when they found themselves wearing
the Fulton County Blue when they no longer had control
of their destinies and they needed a favor, and they
decided to insert themselves into.
Speaker 7 (05:57):
A high profile.
Speaker 14 (05:58):
Case of all their profits.
Speaker 7 (06:02):
But Shard wasn't the only attorney to bring up Bryce
Street right out the gate after.
Speaker 15 (06:06):
Young Ladies and Fighting Carrington.
Speaker 7 (06:09):
Matthew's Carrington Matthew Senior represents Marquavius Huey, who's facing more
charges than anyone else in the trial, including armed robbery,
gang charges, aggravated assault with the deadly weapon, and carjacking.
Hue is being subjected to additional counts that were added
after his arrest.
Speaker 12 (06:30):
So the state government they are a legend and mister Huey,
along with Tanquarius Mender, did possess a weapon inside the
Fulson County jail on that particular date.
Speaker 7 (06:44):
Sheriff's deputy is allegedly found a shank in the cell
of Huey and another wise cel defendant, Tenquarius Mender. But
Matthews wonders aloud in front of the jury why two
inmates from the same indictment would be put in the
same cell in the first place.
Speaker 12 (06:59):
This isn't the holiday inn. Ladies and gentlemen. You don't
get to choose your own room that you want to
be in all I want to be on the third floor.
I want to be at the penthouse. No, the facility
has made a decision to put two individuals who are
on the same indictment in the same cell, not the
same pod, not the same facility, but the same cell.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
The implication Matthews is making is that Mender and his
client Hugheye could have been set up on that February
day when the weapon was allegedly found.
Speaker 12 (07:34):
When they do this ray, they tell everybody get down
on the ground, keep your heads looking down, don't look
that up. That two individuals on the same indictment in
the same cell and they go to that particular room
during your first.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Using Rice Street's sordid reputation as a defense is an
interesting strategy. It also may be a good one.
Speaker 12 (08:03):
We know that the Fulton County Jail is played with problems,
not small problems, huge problems. What kind of problems, problems
of people dying there, infestated dead person with bugs on
(08:23):
them in your jail that you pay tax dollars for.
Speaker 7 (08:29):
The jail is falling apart.
Speaker 14 (08:32):
The jail is under federal.
Speaker 12 (08:35):
Investigation for inmates not receiving adequate medical care, employees having
legal problems. So they charge mister Healey and mister Mender
with possessing a shame. You will learn that there are
cells that are left open, and that is not a
(08:56):
safe place to be when a sale is left open,
just trying to lay your head down in sleep. They
are scenarios where you want the cell to be lost,
so we're gonna ask some difficult conversation questions.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
When that time comes.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Who needs to wait.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
We've talked about Ray Street before. It's part of the
l case and the story. Two yl defendants are charged
with trying to kill the rapper wife and Lucci in jail,
and of asking Young Thug for permission to take another
shot while they're locked up.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Young Thug isn't being held in the Fulton County jail.
Sheriff Patlabot sent him to Cobb County in an effort
to minimize conflict. And then there's Kenneth's couplint that's Little
Woody to his friends. He's the state star witness. In
that videotaped conversation with police we featured earlier in the series,
he's desperate to avoid going to Rice Street, says he'd
(09:54):
much preferred to duke time in prison than sit in
that jail.
Speaker 7 (09:59):
People around the world started hearing about Rice Street when
Donald Trump's mugshots started circulating this summer, but the jail's
existence predates these headlines by decades, and it's been name
checked in Atlanta rat for some twenty years. It's an
Atlanta marker, a landmark as relevant to trap as Bankhead
or Magic City. Atlanta rap artists have known that Fulton
(10:20):
County jail is actually more dangerous than any street corner
in the city.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Some of the people we've been talking about in this
podcast have bled on Rice Street's cracked concrete floor since
the start of this trial. Some have been murdered targets,
Some are accused of trying to murder others in this jail,
and all around them, bodies are falling. That blood behind
bars matters to music, to Atlanta and to this case.
(10:49):
And today we delve into Rice streets sorted reputation with
people who have spent time inside.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
You want people say up, I.
Speaker 16 (11:01):
Had no idea that in America people would be treated
this way prior to even seeing a judge.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
I'm George Cheedy and I'm Christina Lee. This is king slime,
the prosecution of young thug and ysl.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Atlanta has never had a jail that wasn't some kind
of problem. Rice Street is the sixth jail built for
Fulton County since nineteen hundred, and every single one eventually
had to be rebuilt or replaced because of overcrowding. Degradation
and violence. Atlanta met the crack epidemic of the eighties
and nineties the way you might expect mass incarceration.
Speaker 12 (11:43):
The newest and one of the deadliest drugs sweeping the
country today is crack.
Speaker 17 (11:47):
Drugs now appear to have penetrated every level of society,
but it's as.
Speaker 7 (11:51):
Innocent looking as canned another.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
But it's turning our cities into battle zones.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
The city got Atlanta's abusive Red Dog unit of drug cops.
Speaker 18 (12:00):
As they're called Red Dog after the blitzing football defense
of the same name. Red Dog, we're told is supposed
to hit hard and fast and make their presence felt
at what police say are known drug hotspots.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
It got expanded courts, but it did not get a
jail that could handle what those cops and courts sent them.
Fulton County opened the jail on Rice Street in nineteen
eighty nine. On paper, it's designed for five inmates. As
far as we can tell, it has never held fewer
people than that. The current target is two thousand, but
(12:34):
at times it's been stuffed with well over three thousand.
Speaker 7 (12:39):
Atlanta's rappers haven't missed the beat on Rice Street. The
jail is mythic and myth making. It's been name checked
by nearly a dozen local artists, from twenty one Savage.
Speaker 12 (12:49):
Rye Street, A Ladda Soups to Peewee long Way, They
pick on Rice Street, No babych Ti.
Speaker 14 (13:00):
In the Breakfast You know that your homemade on of
Rice Stream.
Speaker 7 (13:03):
And Future I was on the way to not once
but twice before and good out of Rice cre Here's
gonna back when he was still known as Young Gonna,
from a time before Young Thug became his label boss
and mentor. Like Street, and one of the first songs
(13:25):
to feature Young Thug after he was arrested, features a
similar punchline like.
Speaker 12 (13:31):
Rice Break without a fun Fun I was playing with
the way before the.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Brown That's run by Killer Mike from an album nominated
for a Grammy in twenty twenty four. And then there's
Gucci Mainmui with the big old Good.
Speaker 11 (13:49):
Nine one on the.
Speaker 7 (13:50):
Song Internet Chatter, Gucci is looking back on the man
he was some twenty years ago, a time when his
rap she was growing and he was doing time in
Rice Street, facts that made him something of a full
hero in trap music, where the rallying cry among fans
was what else Free Gucci. In March two thousand and nine,
Gucci emerged from a six month stint with pages and
(14:12):
pages of raps that he had written from behind bars.
The night of his release, he headed to Metronome Studios
in Atlanta, anticipating that the world would finally be able
to hear them, but instead his go to producer, Zaytoven,
told him to ditch those pages and just freestyle. No problem,
Gucci thought. He stepped into the.
Speaker 9 (14:32):
Booth the seventh out.
Speaker 7 (14:38):
So this song First Day Out set a new homecoming
tradition for hip hop going forward. Artists like Chief, Keef, Kodak,
Black Offset, and JT of City Girls have all recorded
their own quote unquote first day out tracks. The whole
point is to capture that moment where life after lock
up begins. Lotto, a Clayton County native who counts Gucci
(15:00):
Mane as one of her favorite rappers, technically has a
first Day Out track of her own. It just happens
to be called Fuck Rice street Man Butt APD Butt
Status Sprays bought Rice Street Buck but a Ya Fulton
County record show. She was arrested a few months after
her twenty nineteen breakout hit Bitch from the South on
(15:21):
a felony charge in Sandy Springs that was quickly dismissed.
See Amy Doll, Shit So Bitch, I'm coming ou Rick,
Chris Shadow, Rice Street, Shoutout It, tg Hey doing break Me.
Not all the artists who reference Rice Street have served
time there. That's not entirely the point of these lyrics, though,
to rap about Rice Street is to shed light on
(15:42):
the sort of environment these artists came up in. These
artists discussed the jail on an if you know, you
know basis, and the implication is it may be better
that you don't. In twenty seventeen, Gucci Mane released his autobiography,
which explained for the first time in detail what he
saw as an inmate. Reading those pages felt like the
first time I understood why he sounded so triumphant in
(16:05):
First Day Out, Because at Ray Street he saw cells
meant to hold two bunks with three air that was hot,
humid and dank from broken washing machines, clog sinks and
overflowing toilets, daily fights, stabbings, even a shooting. He says,
Gucci is discussing what he saw from time served. In
(16:27):
two thousand and five and from two thousand and eight
to two thousand and nine. But those pages, they could
have been written yesterday, and.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
That goes to the uniquely dysfunctional conditions at the Fulton
County Jail. Might It's February twenty twenty three and I'm
talking to a man named Dements Flannagan on the phone.
He's an inmate at Ryce Street, calling me from a
jail phone. Flannagan was arrested on drug charges in twenty
twenty two, not long after being released from Sumter County
(16:57):
Prison in South Georgia. Some when I had written about
was in jail and introduced the two of us. Flann
again had a story to tell. He's got a rap sheet,
but this was his first trip to Rice Street.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
No word they yet, they got.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It's hard to make out on the correctly prison phone line,
but he says.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
Here the minute I walked into the jail, it's nasty.
It's not sanitary, it's not clean anywhere. They got bodies
and bodies and intake. Speaking of intake, it could take
a week, two weeks in a way, you're supposed to
be an intake that long. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Intake is the main floor holding ceut where new inmates
are held for processing before being put into cells.
Speaker 15 (17:48):
Now, at some point, did anybody try to sort of
walk you through how to stay safe while you were
at the jail?
Speaker 6 (17:56):
Oh? To me, a lot of stamping. Oh like, why
are you taking the why?
Speaker 19 (18:06):
Wait? So the deputy said that they were taking you
to a place where they do a lot of staffing.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Even after the cryptic warning. When Flannigan gets up there
on the fifth floor, he's shucked at what he sees.
Speaker 6 (18:22):
More like shown in the world, broken and secured, I know,
locking down. How night we got mad swords and shaded
all types of.
Speaker 19 (18:43):
Did you say, swords and machetes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
The higher you go at Rice Street, the tighter the security.
Because of their long term stays, it's likely most of
the y s L guys are on floors five through seven.
It's on floor five where Flanagan says on February twelfth,
twenty twenty three, he's in a cell when he gets jumped.
Speaker 6 (19:09):
That was the Dame room. I made a way over
the skills, got into the room, locked myself in the room.
I'm trying to hold a dose into the room, got
it out. Hey, They tried to open it up in
the rooms and they stabbing the homes and they don't
go and they came as much definite.
Speaker 7 (19:29):
They came into the room and stabbed me in my arms.
I had to let the door go. They came in
and just kept stabbing.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
Then go all the way.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
This is how it went. Ain't no other way.
Speaker 15 (19:45):
So you saw him coming, they attacked you. You were
in the hall, and then you ran back into the
room and closed the lock. And then they broke the
lock and broke into the road. How many people jumped
on you?
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Hey, twenty people stab me up.
Speaker 19 (19:59):
Stam So you're right now. You were assuming it was
a gang thing.
Speaker 15 (20:05):
But did anybody There was never anybody who said like,
we're coming after you.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
And this is why no no one ever told me
that I don't have I got said I don't have. No,
I don't have people's personal life. Brilliant again, his marting
life at home. I'll have him.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
To be clear, Flannagan is not saying any of the
y Sale defendants were involved in this incident. Flanninggan is
actually calling me from a phone in the medical unit
of Rice Street. When we're talking. He's still recovering from
those thirty five stab wounds he received from twenty inmates.
Speaker 19 (20:47):
How are you, like, what's your mental health like right now?
Are you in fear?
Speaker 18 (20:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (20:52):
I mean I mean my gang.
Speaker 7 (20:55):
Ever since I've been stabbed, I've had nightmares or sleepless nights,
you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 19 (21:01):
Have you seen other flights or stabbings before you were injured?
Speaker 7 (21:10):
Yes, before I was injured and after?
Speaker 19 (21:12):
Right so how often is this happening?
Speaker 16 (21:17):
Like?
Speaker 19 (21:17):
What do you see?
Speaker 6 (21:19):
You have one that had left often.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
It was almost like I can't get space. It would
go on. They let folks get stabbed and whatnot.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Flannagan has been locked up before, he's even served hard
time in state custody, but he's never seen anything like
Rice Street.
Speaker 7 (21:53):
Right now, it's crazy like I've been in prison. It's
rougheren here right now than it is in prisoned nat nap.
I just did six years in prison and never got
stabbed or nothing.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Flanning In hopes by talking to me that people will
learn what's happening at the jail. But he's only given
a few minutes to talk to us. Our call is
about to cut off. It's time to say goodbye.
Speaker 19 (22:22):
You are incredibly lucky to have survived this.
Speaker 6 (22:26):
Yeah, I know, yeah, I'm.
Speaker 19 (22:31):
Do you have a sense of like, so what stopped them?
Speaker 6 (22:37):
I'm a great to God.
Speaker 19 (22:40):
Demand I am grateful for you, and like, I'm grateful
that you've survived. Take care, keep it hid up all right,
smaller head.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Last year, a Sheriff's deputy working on Rice Street's medical
ward peered into a dank, darkened cell to find Lashawan
Thompson face down in the toilet, surrounded by filth and failure.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
The family of a man who died in the Fulton
County jail says he was eaten.
Speaker 7 (23:26):
Alive in his cell by bedbugs and insects.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Other people came to the cell and has matt Suits
to pull his life covered head from a bowl full
of his own waist.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
Thirty five year old Lashawn Thompson was arrested last June
for simple battery, a misdemeanor. The pictures of Thompson's body,
his face and torso covered with bugs are too graphic
to show on TV. Attorney Michael this is the.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Death that Markuavius Hughey's attorney Carton Matthews referred to at
the top of the show.
Speaker 12 (23:55):
We know that the Fulton County Jail is played with probs,
not small problems, huge problems. What kind of problems, problems
of people dying? There investated dead person.
Speaker 6 (24:14):
With bugs on them.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
You would think the death of Lashawn Thompson and the
four million dollars settlement the county had to pay his
family might have been a wake up call, and it
was perhaps for us. None of this was a revelation
to people who know the.
Speaker 14 (24:32):
Jail the way that I grew up.
Speaker 16 (24:34):
I had no idea that in America people would be
treated this way prior to even seeing a judge.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
This is Lauren Hoppin. She's a nurse. From January until September.
She worked in side Rise Street, employed by a national
medical services provider called naf Care.
Speaker 17 (24:49):
So Lashawan Thompson was the man who died covered in
bedbug bites. Can you explain to me from the inside perspective,
how something like that happens, how this ended up that filthy?
Speaker 1 (25:02):
That's King Slime producer Tommy Andres who interviewed Lauren with me.
Speaker 16 (25:06):
The cells always look like that, I would say, like
the two different goals of the officers versus the medical
I had several nurses tell me because I said that.
Speaker 14 (25:16):
I said, like, bedbugs don't really eat people, Like, what
do you think you know?
Speaker 16 (25:20):
Because this is a little bit prior to when I
was working there, and they said that all we can
do is provide medication for the bedbugs. It's not our problem.
We do not clean the cells, so it's not a
medical issue.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Hopper says, even though she wasn't there when Thompson died,
she saw plenty of evidence of dangerous squalor.
Speaker 16 (25:43):
There were times they would say that the inmates would
flood the toilets, so it's the inmates fault, right, But somehow.
Speaker 14 (25:50):
They would do it.
Speaker 16 (25:51):
And I would try to give meds to guys like
getting out of their bunks with water up to their
like calves like it, you know, like coming.
Speaker 17 (26:01):
To the to the sewage not just water like toilet water.
Speaker 14 (26:06):
Correct.
Speaker 16 (26:07):
And so when you see those pictures like that's not
that doesn't surprise me at all. I just kind of
didn't understand like how a bug do it personally. But
I would have people like the most recent one was
a guy that his whole like lip was completely swollen
and he had like bite marks all on his face.
Speaker 14 (26:29):
And they usually they would everybody would say, yeah, the bugs.
Speaker 16 (26:32):
At night they come out, and so I saw, like,
I mean, it was that now that's a daily More
than more than one person would come up to me
and show me bite marks. So I don't know what's
biting 'em. But on the mental health, I've seen, like
I've opened up a door before with like gnats everywhere,
So they don't a lot of times their trays are
sitting in there for multiple days in a row. I've
(26:53):
seen pieces on the wall with like but and again
these are mental probably like a mental health floor.
Speaker 14 (26:58):
But I'm pretty sure that's his.
Speaker 16 (27:00):
He was located there and there they I think they
let him out once a day maybe. And if they're
in a place where they don't want to come, you know,
they say no. It's not like anyone's like no, like
you need to, they're just like you don't want to next,
and so they you know, they might spend days without
even looking. You know, they might make sure that they're
breathing from afar, but it's not like they're doing any
(27:21):
kind of check on them. And then how it an
officer really know what to look for when it comes
to the medical So.
Speaker 17 (27:27):
How often are the cells cleaned, and how big is
that staff?
Speaker 16 (27:30):
Like is it I've never seen by, Like, I've never
seen staffed. I don't know who cleans it. I've never seen.
I mean maybe the trustees. I see trustees like sometimes sweeping.
Speaker 17 (27:44):
Trustees are volunteers.
Speaker 16 (27:46):
They're the inmates that they say like based on their behavior,
But it's not true because I know a few of
the murders that are trustees. So they're allowed out in
the popular you know, with everyone. But yeah, they do work.
Speaker 17 (27:56):
So there is no cleaning staff at the jail, at
least for the cells. I mean maybe potentially for the
staff areas or something, but.
Speaker 14 (28:07):
I don't think.
Speaker 16 (28:09):
No, holy shit, I don't think I ever saw, because
nurses are like inherently kind of you know, we clean
our area.
Speaker 14 (28:18):
So I guess I just didn't. I mean I definitely wondered,
like how long has this been this way?
Speaker 16 (28:23):
When I would see someone with multiple you know, with
their food like stacked or something. And then with the
overcrowding where a lot of them are sleeping on they
call them boats on the floor. They a lot of
them were on the floor and they had them on
and I think that the numbers are down now, but
they had reached a point where it was like people
were waiting just to have a cot.
Speaker 14 (28:42):
So they're like out in the open.
Speaker 16 (28:43):
So then obviously it's gonna get dirty faster than anybody
could ever probably keep up. But I do not have
to think about that. I don't think I ever saw
like a cleaning person.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The most insane part of all of this is that
these aren't convict These are people who have been arrested
and are merely accused of a crime.
Speaker 16 (29:05):
Not only are they not convicted, they literally haven't even
been able to determine if they geta like, you know,
have a bond.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Hopper says that folks into Rice Street are hit hard
by the dire conditions the second they come in the door.
Speaker 14 (29:17):
My thing was an intake. So then I'm sitting there.
Speaker 16 (29:20):
Each person comes in telling their story to me, and
I have like the glass so I can look out,
and then we just have everybody else in these about
five or six cages pretty much, and there were fifteen
twenty guys in one little like closet space. They couldn't
get them out of the intake area because there wasn't
(29:41):
any room upstairs. But there was no bite Tromp you know,
there was no sense of urgency. So it would be
like there were guys there first for a week, what.
Speaker 19 (29:51):
Do they mean?
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Like kay, correct in the intake section.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
Correct and you aren't.
Speaker 16 (29:56):
And there's things like your mental health meds that until
you see a mental health provider, which we don't offer
unless you're suicidal, they don't come. You don't get them
when you're down an intake, So you go how many
days without your meds? And then you act out and
then and then the officers punish them by they won't
open the doors at all. I mean, I would see
like men that I knew based on like looking at
(30:19):
them that they have you know, COPD, certain things like that,
and they'd get all kind of worked up and start
trying red and I'd be like, can you let them
just sit out there? And like so many of them
start having panic attacks and we just and I'd be like,
just they just need to breathe, like they're not trying
to do anything, you know, they would a lot of
times the officers would just you kind of just get
jaded and you just assume that the person's just trying
(30:40):
to act out because they want privileges. And it's like
you're in a box for seven days, like I would
have lost my mind. It was me and one other
nurse would do our best to at least let them
try to come out for five minutes to breathe. And
to think that that was like pulling, you know, something
that was difficult to provide. Was just like, this is
inhumane and these people, you know, it would be trespathy
(31:02):
or something.
Speaker 14 (31:04):
It's just like traumatic.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Occasionally staff would have to separate someone down an intake
for all sorts of reasons. Popper says one in.
Speaker 16 (31:12):
Particular, allegedly he tried to kick the officer, so they
put him in the cell by himself, down an intake again,
So this is someone that's just got there charged.
Speaker 14 (31:25):
But no, you know, I hadn't seen a judge.
Speaker 16 (31:28):
And then I don't know how much time went by,
but something happened where I guess they were walking by
and saw like his hair sticking out from the bottom
of the cell, so you knew he was on the
ground and ran over there. He's not responding, He's like,
can't you know, you don't see any movement of the hair.
So it's just like so they were like all medical,
all officers, and we all go over there.
Speaker 14 (31:49):
It was like twenty people.
Speaker 16 (31:50):
It was like the whole jail, and we're all just
standing there because we can't get the door open. So
then they get maintenance, and this guy's down and you're
just expecting the worst.
Speaker 14 (31:58):
You're like, you're gonna find it cold body like. So
maintenance comes. He can't get it.
Speaker 16 (32:05):
So one of the biggest officers kind of like you're
like kind of stocky, he grabs the crowbar and just
starts like doing like old school, like just trying to
So basically we finally get the door open. I'm going
to go about fifteen at least fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
The man was lying on the floor unresponsive.
Speaker 14 (32:22):
And then we pull him out.
Speaker 16 (32:23):
He's got somehow he's like he tied his belt around
his neck, but he's still breathing. So we don't know
if like maybe he just wasn't able to complete it
or if he like who.
Speaker 7 (32:35):
Knows what it was.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
The man survived barely.
Speaker 14 (32:39):
They blamed it on the inmate and said that he
jammed the door.
Speaker 16 (32:42):
But the fact that that is like that's when I understand,
like the sheriff says, let's get a new jail. But
it's also like, can't you make sure door's open and
close properly? That like it's not sure the thing's falling apart,
but it's an old building. But the fact but that
is just so oh crazy that like we couldn't even
attend to someone who could have, like to think that
(33:07):
if his family found out that he had passed when
he didn't have to.
Speaker 19 (33:11):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
But as Attorney Matthews alluded to at the top of
the show, the biggest problem in the jail might not
be the doors that won't open, but doors that won't
stay closed. This is because most of them are broken.
Happer says she learned this the hard way during one
of her first shifts, when the tone inside Rice Street
suddenly shifted dramatically.
Speaker 16 (33:33):
All of a sudden, the guys that were hanging out
food trays go up in the air and everybody's like
yelling something was going on. I don't know what caused it,
but then they had so they were all just like
fighting officer runs and like I didn't realize that all.
Speaker 14 (33:50):
The doors were It was like after fact, like.
Speaker 16 (33:51):
They were like, oh yeah, you didn't know that they
can open all those doors. And then that day specifically
they ended up having several stabbings.
Speaker 14 (33:58):
At that moment.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
When you say they can open the doors, like, what
do you mean?
Speaker 14 (34:05):
They just use force and they literally just push them.
Speaker 16 (34:09):
It's not difficult at all, but I but until I
saw it, I didn't realize it.
Speaker 14 (34:12):
Was like, oh, I can do it too.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
There are buildings in war zones with better infrastructure. Hopper
remembers how a summer storm knocked out the jail's electricity
and then all hell.
Speaker 14 (34:24):
Broke loose the miners.
Speaker 16 (34:26):
They'll put them in the empty cells with all these
like older men, but those all they can they can
open those doors as well. So I ended up that
in there when all the lights went out and it
was so dark, I couldn't I didn't know where to go,
but I had my cart out, so I was like
trying to lock up what I could and I couldn't see,
and finally I saw the officers just flash light, so
(34:48):
I flagged her down.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Heavy rains pounded the leaky old building.
Speaker 16 (34:52):
But when we went to like make sure they were
all in their cells at the time, it was flooding
so bad.
Speaker 14 (34:58):
It was like buckets of water coming out, and you're just.
Speaker 16 (35:00):
Looking at these kids that are like eighteen years old,
just like looking at you, like you know, in the
pitch black. So I thought when I left, they wouldn't
let us l like it was all nothing works, so
you can't get out of the building or in the building.
And then they were like, well you can't leave because
we can't properly get people the night shift to come in,
you know, like they were so what they were doing
was so some of the inmates I don't even know how,
(35:20):
but whatever area they were in or it was like
really dark, they were following the officers through the tunnels
to get to like another area. Finally get out, probably
like ten o'clock at night. And I was convinced that
that whole place like would just be s everybody would
be like, I don't know, like slaughtered.
Speaker 14 (35:38):
That's a scary.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
I'm sort of picturing this like this jail has this
reputation as a hellhole. It's physically falling apart, like it's
raining outside and so it's raining inside. I get and
then all the lights go out in a jail where
the doors can be opened by can make it correct.
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Or could it be or could be stuck and then
they're stuck in.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
There you're describing a horror movie, like this is a
setup for a horror movie.
Speaker 16 (36:05):
And I was like, is this a bad call to
help people stay here? Because I was like, this is
how it goes down a horror film. And then I'm
stuck in the jail, you know, when the whole place
goes up and blames.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yce Street was built in nineteen eighty nine. It's not
ancient by any means, but it is truly crumbling. Inmates
have been breaking the building into pieces to forge shanks.
Figures are released by the sheriff through the first ten
months of twenty twenty three, telly two hundred and ninety
three stabbings, three hundred and thirty seven fights, nine hundred
(36:56):
and twenty two assaults, and more than one thousand and
one hundred and eighty six confiscated shanks. According to the
Atlanta Journal Constitution, nearly every day someone is getting stabbed there.
Nearly every day there's a demense. Flanagan get this, An
(37:17):
inmate managed to dig a hole shawshank redemption style through
the walls of the jail, not to free himself, but
to get to another inmate in the next cell block
to stab him. The jail is also suffered from staffing
problems of all kinds. Maintenance workers say they don't always
(37:40):
feel safe enough there to work, which exacerbates the issues
with infrastructure. But there are other types of staffing problems
that are even more concerning. Two days after Flannagan's attack,
a sheriff's deputy allegedly opened a door to allow an inmate,
Frank Hubbert, to enter a communal area from a different zone.
Hubbard approached two men arguing and participated in a group
(38:03):
beating and stabbing of twenty six year old quesshn Green.
Speaker 20 (38:08):
A group of inmates piled on one vulnerable prisoner, with
the detention officer watching it all take place.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
This is on an arrest warrant not for Hubbard, but
for detention officer Gloria Franklin, charging her with violating a
rowth of office and other charges. Rather than stop the attack,
Franklin led it unfold. The warrant states a.
Speaker 20 (38:31):
Jail monitors report of misconduct by a Fulton officer seemed
so bizarre we tried to uncover every detail about the
alleged actions of Gloria Franklin that, if true, not only
violates policy but is also a violation of the law.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Describing video evidence, the warrant says she then escorted Hubbert
back to his zone, retrieved cleaning supplies, and cleaned up
the blood on the floor. She didn't document the attack,
and Green didn't receive medical attention until other deputies to
him a day later. According to the warrant daffidavit, others,
both deputies and unsworn staff, have been fired for misconduct
(39:09):
to particularly smuggling drugs. The jail is averaging about one
deputy a month being arrested and charged with crimes themselves
on charges ranging from sexual contact with prisoners to facilitating
acts of violence by inmates. And finally, because of staffing shortages,
there aren't enough deputies to respond immediately to an act
(39:30):
of violence, and the people being held there know it,
hence the glut of stabbings. For all the public focus
on the horrifying death of Lashawn Thompson, the everyday life
of a prisoner at Fulton County Jail is to experience
fear of violence. But perhaps the most shocking thing is
(39:52):
the lack of basic civility, which Lauren Hopper says she
was slowly being conditioned to ignore.
Speaker 16 (40:00):
A lot of nurses yell do a lot of yelling,
kind of like the officers do, just to kind of
own the presence of being there. And I felt like
that's not my style, and I didn't think I could
ever really be that person, and so that that worried
me a lot. I didn't really have problems except for
the masterby. I really didn't have problems with the inmates.
Is they if you, just like any human, if you
(40:21):
treat them right, they pretty much respond.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
You know, that's a sentence. Like except for the masturbation.
I didn't well.
Speaker 14 (40:30):
Because I feel like it's it's pretty bad and I
can't fit. I can't put my finger on where that
comes from.
Speaker 16 (40:36):
I mean, they'll be like it'll be like ten of
them and they all have blankets on, and then they
take the blanket off, and then the officer turns their
head and like it's like this wait what Yeah, So
they're like you've seen picture or you know how like
the jail, like they have the upstairs and then they
head it down and then they all line up to
get their meds. So I'm standing there and then the
officer as supposed to be like keeping control right here,
(41:00):
but then they're like talking to someone else, or they're
turned around like this, and every time they do, they
pull the blanket back and are jacking off, and like
there's like up to fifteen of them at a time.
One officer that kind of laughed about it. He was allowing,
they were coming up to like the window where like
my card is, and they were like narrating. And then
(41:20):
that's when I got mad, which is surreal that I'm
acting like this is like normal, But it was kind
of like they would have a story about how I
wanted it, you know, like things like that to where
I could hear it.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
And then I was like, this is like I'm sorry,
I don't mean to re traumatize your here.
Speaker 16 (41:33):
No.
Speaker 17 (41:33):
No, what's interesting is it doesn't sound traumatizing to you.
Just sounds very traumatizing to anyone Like well, because I.
Speaker 16 (41:40):
Think I'm a little bit like bias, like I like that,
like I want to be on the inmate side, and
I felt like that they didn't really treat me.
Speaker 14 (41:47):
But it's is this what an abusive abused.
Speaker 17 (41:50):
Person like, Well, it's a sign of them being institutionalized,
which is just surprising that you could be institutionalized to
that level in a jail and not in a prison,
Like that's that's what I think, That's what I find
most upsetting about that anecdote. It's like, this behavior is
not something I would imagine any of these people would
(42:10):
do on the street.
Speaker 16 (42:11):
Absolutely not, and as why I would just kind of
not forgive them, but like think there's probably like something
behind that.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
The pandemic reshaped jails and prisons across the country and
across Georgia. Death rates have exploded in both nationwide, but
the scale of the dysfunction of Rice Street can be
hard to understand without hearing it directly from someone who
has seen it, and can be believed. Inmates and defense
attorneys have been talking about these problems for years. Of course,
(42:42):
the Fulton County Sheriff's Office employed four hundred and three
officers as of May, with one hundred and thirty two
posted at the jail. A spokesperson for the jail said
the office is forty officers short of full staffing, which
may explain this. Other jails and prisons have been dropping
naf care after high cost lawsuits and inmate deaths, but
(43:02):
in Fulton County's case, it was Nafcare that pulled out
of its twenty seven million dollar contract to serve Ice
Street in May, seven months before it was due to expire.
Nafcare cited assaults on its staff and the stabbing of
a patient as grounds for its departure. The Navcare CEO,
Bradford McLane issued a statement calling Rice Street quote the
(43:26):
most dangerous jail or prison facility where Nafcare is contracted
to provide services in any location in the country. And
then the county talked Nafcare into coming back. One of
the conditions for Nafkir's return was enhanced security for its staff.
Nafcare hires off duty sheriff's deputies to shadow their nurses,
(43:48):
the same ones who work at the jail.
Speaker 16 (43:50):
It was because we had a couple incidences and we
had a medical assistant get attacked by an enmey. So
then they hired our officers to work over time for
eighty dollars an hour to not be able to do
any kind of intervention, just sit there to be our security.
Speaker 14 (44:10):
So like say another like a fight was breaking out.
Speaker 16 (44:12):
They're like, oh, but I'm with Nathcare today, I'm not
an officer, So it would be kind of like the
best money you'll ever make is a you know, just
to sit there and they'd be like standing there, like
falling asleep.
Speaker 14 (44:25):
They'd be snoring, and I'd have to wake them up.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
So this is the same folks who would be working
a different shift to the current county.
Speaker 16 (44:31):
Correct, and a lot of them would go I don't
even know that they would take a break, maybe a
couple hours maybe, So.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
You saw guys that were just sort of falling out.
Speaker 14 (44:39):
Correct.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I reached out to the Sheriff's office to ask about
Nafcare's contract. The office confirmed that Nathcare hires off duty
sheriff's deputies for jail security, without further comment. Federal investigators
recently began a probe of the Fulton County Jail. Their
timing was interesting. The pace of deaths there increased for
(45:03):
about two months. The jail averaged a death a week.
Those were the two months that the Sheriff's office had
to dramatically shift its staffing, increasing the hours of overtime
it demanded of its deputies while pulling people out of
off duty time elsewhere to prepare for the rival of
its highest profile visitor, Donald Trump.
Speaker 21 (45:24):
History being made where we have a former president coming
to Metro Atlanta, turning himself into the jail, facing a
number of charges for allegedly trying to overturn an election.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Here in our state, prosecutors are arguing that YSL isn't
just a street gang, but a jail gang. They're linking
accusations of crimes committed at Rice Street to their activities
as a gang, establishing dominance and control wherever they are.
Several defendants faced charges from jail activity, as we mentioned
a couple of times now. The indictment accuses Christian Eppinger
(45:58):
of trying to kill wife and Lucci in jail, but
he's also accused of fighting jail guards and other acts
of misbehavior, including an inappropriate relationship with a jail guard.
Tanquarius Mender is accused of leading a riot where Jelias
Little rod Ryan is accused of having drugs in jail.
Shannon Stillwell is accused of masturbating in front of a
female guard. But Rice Street is such a mess in
(46:22):
every way. How they determined what's gang violence or gang
activity and what's not seems like a tricky proposition. In
some cases, legal misconduct may simply be a matter of survival.
On July twenty seven, Deronte Bibi, one of the wise
held defendants, was stabbed in the head by another prisoner
(46:43):
while he was in his bunk. According to a jail report,
guards found him with a gash on his forehead and
below his eye on his cheek. Video shows how he
was attacked with a knife by a man in jail
on murder charges. Bibe refused to make a statement to investigators.
Three months later, on the eve of the trial, Bbe
took a plea on the rico charge to serve five
(47:05):
years in state prison and to get out of Rice
Street immediately. As of this recording, in early December, ten
people have died in the jail's custody. In twenty twenty three,
fifteen people died there in twenty twenty two. Tracking recent
jail destination wide has been a challenge. A program to
track in custody deaths at the United States Department of
(47:26):
Justice through the Death and Custody Reporting Act ended just
as the pandemic began. Assaults and other acts of violence
are even harder to tabulate, meaning there are no statistical
breakdowns of the most dangerous jails in America. But let's
put things into perspective. With a little comparison. Plans to
close the notorious Rikers Island jail complex in New York
(47:48):
were recently finalized after complaints over violent and inhumane conditions there.
Twenty eight people died at Rikers in the past two years,
compared to twenty five over that same time. Biot at
Rice Street. But get this. Rikers is a complex of
ten jails and holds as many as fifteen thousand inmates.
(48:09):
Rice Street holds thirty three hundred three less deaths, one
fifth the size. Certainly there are more stats than just
inmate deaths to tell you, but it's hard to argue
against Rice Street topping that list. It's Monday, December eleventh,
twenty twenty three, early morning, still dark outside. Attorney Max
(48:34):
Shark gets a phone call his client Chanon's stillwell, has
been stabbed in jail. In the courtroom, a few hours later,
Judge Euro Glanville addresses the jury. Okay, listen, lays Young,
There's something I need to take up with you, so
don't get too comfortable, right.
Speaker 8 (48:53):
It's on Laisian Young.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
We'd have a medical issue.
Speaker 8 (48:56):
Come up with one of our participants, so I'm going
to have to reset for today.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Okay, and these things happen. He doesn't want to bias
the jury by telling them exactly what happened, but they
likely notice the empty chair next to Attorney Max Shark.
I call Shard on the phone when I find out
he's about to head to Grady Hospital to meet Stillwell.
He's still gathering details, but it sounds bad. We learned
(49:22):
later still Well sustained multiple stab wounds and underwent a
two hour surgery. When we talked, Shard isn't sure what
this will mean for the trial.
Speaker 11 (49:30):
It's very unfortunate and very concerning. It has many people
who care very much about him and where.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
It is border and that they Stillwell has been in
the Fulton County jail since March of twenty twenty two,
and this isn't the first time he's been assaulted. Four
months after being locked up, he was stabbed as well.
We asked one block question, not specific about Chattle, what
(49:58):
the fuck are we going to do about the jail?
Speaker 6 (50:03):
Obviously that's the complex problem that I do.
Speaker 19 (50:07):
Not have the pluton for.
Speaker 11 (50:10):
It's just dead just said.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
I mean, he's not the only guy, like, he's not
the only The idea that you might have multiple clients
in her jail is just mind blowing.
Speaker 11 (50:21):
Ring the families. The mothers will call me constantly, not
even worried about the legal issues involved in cases. I
try to get more calls about safety concerns than anything else.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
Sharda isn't calling for a mistrial, he isn't expecting one.
Stillwell wants his day in court. That day in court
has been long coming. I've been looking at problems in
this jail for as long as I've been looking at
this case. Longer Shart and I have talked about it.
The men's Flannagan was one is client. Every lawyer I've
(51:03):
talked to about the jail has a story to tell
about one client or Anothery're getting hurt at Rice Street.
I've been waiting for a day like this in the
YSL trial, worrying that one of the defendants is going
to get killed before the trial is over. But I guess,
as Judge Gladville would say, these things happen.
Speaker 7 (51:31):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Gets written and produced by George Cheaty, Christina Lee, and
Tommy Andres.
Speaker 7 (51:40):
Mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre and
Taylor Chakoyne.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy andres Our.
Speaker 7 (51:47):
Theme music is by Dunn Deal fact.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Checking by Caylin Lynch. Special thanks to know Amy.
Speaker 7 (51:54):
Griffin and to the Elena News outlets eleven Alive, WSBTV,
Elena News
Speaker 1 (51:59):
First and For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
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