![]() ![]() ![]() Zino entered the prison system after pleading guilty in December 2000 to the murders of his wife, Barbara, 47, and his daughter, Carrie, 14. “Just because there’s not enough staff doesn’t make it OK.” ![]() “Anybody should be horrified by it, whether it’s Georgia or any other state,” he said. Still, that can’t justify an incident like the one with Zino, he said. Hugh Hurwitz, a prison management consultant who is a former acting director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, said prison systems across the nation are struggling to hire enough staff. In 2022, there were 2,648 fewer correctional officers and other sworn staff working in GDC facilities than in 2018, representing a 40% drop, GDC reports show. While Smith has become a particularly problematic institution, all GDC facilities have suffered as a result of dwindling personnel in the last five years. Weekes is also alleged to have orchestrated the 2021 murders of a truck driver who made frequent deliveries to the prison and a former correctional officer who was fired for bringing drugs into the prison. Weekes is charged with directing the actions of Christopher Sumlin, an associate on the outside who is accused of breaking into Kicklighter’s house and shooting him. The killing has been described as a hit intended for a neighbor who worked as a guard at the prison. Explore Prison warden fired, accused of taking payments in smuggling schemeĮvidence of the ring was discovered through the GBI ’s investigation of the January 2021 murder of 88-year-old Bobby Carlton Kicklighter, a beloved community member who was killed in his Glennville home. The facility has long had a reputation for violence, and it has become even more controversial in the last two years as the contraband scandal has unfolded.Īdams, the former warden, was charged in February with receiving cash payments for his role in the “Saint Laurent Squad,” a contraband smuggling ring that GBI says operated inside the prison under the direction of 26-year-old inmate Nathan Weekes. “I placed him in two body bags because of the decomp and fluid leakage.”ĭysfunction is nothing new at Smith State Prison, a close security facility than can house more than 1,500 men. Zino had been deceased but it had to be more than a couple of days,” Anderson wrote. Zino was in the bottom bunk with what appeared to be stuffing from a mattress “all over his body,” the coroner wrote. Immediately, he said, he noticed a foul odor. Anderson, wrote that he was summoned to the Glennville prison on the afternoon of April 5 and was led to Zino’s cell. In a report dated April 7, the Tattnall County coroner, Bradley B. Explore More coverage of Georgia's troubled prison systemĮven so, she wrote, the notion that Zino may have wanted to die doesn’t lessen the fact that his deterioration was ignored and that the situation requires “accountability where appropriate.” Zino, who was serving a sentence of life without parole for the 1999 murders of his wife and teenage daughter in their East Cobb home, had requested that Pickren conceal the death as long as possible, she said. The warrants indicate Zino died on April 1 and the body was discovered on April 5. She said the GDC believes that the death was a “mercy killing.” Arrest warrants have been issued charging Zino’s cellmate, 52-year-old Tommy Pickren, with murder and concealing a death, Heath said. In an email to the AJC, GDC spokesperson Joan Heath acknowledged that “breakdowns in policy and procedure” appeared to have occurred in Zino’s death and that an investigation is underway to determine who was responsible. Zino’s death also represents yet another black eye for Smith State Prison, where a GBI investigation has uncovered an elaborate contraband scheme that allegedly involved the former warden, Brian Dennis Adams, and led to the murders of at least three people on the outside. Credit: Georgia Department of Corrections ![]()
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