Georgia Guard Gets 15 Years for Using One Prisoner to Assault Another
Former Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) guard Daniel Farmer, 33, was sentenced to 15 years in state prison on July 10, 2024, after pleading guilty to allowing one prisoner to attack another at Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP). However, Columbia County Superior Court Judge Sheryl B. Jolley ordered Farmer to serve only the first three years in state prison, allowing him to spend the remainder of his term on probation.
The incident unfolded on October 12, 2022, when prisoner Terry Lamar Anthony, then 37, saw a fellow prisoner standing outside his cell holding a shank. Suddenly, the lock popped open on the cell door; Donte Lamar Wyatt, then 40 and an orderly on the mental health unit, raced inside, stabbing Anthony seven times. Farmer admitted to remotely opening the lock and then failing to get help for the injured prisoner. For that, he was convicted of aggravated assault, unlawful acts of violence in a penal institution, possession of knife during commission of a felony and violation of oath by a public officer. See: State v. Farmer, Ga. Super. (Columbia Cty.), Case No. 2022-CR1321.
Anthony survived the attack and was released on April 30, 2023, after completing a 15-year sentence for a robbery in Meriwether County—his second; he had earlier completed a 10-year stint for another robbery there in 2008. Importantly, before Wyatt’s attack, Anthony had also accused Farmer and fellow guards of an earlier assault.
That happened on July 17, 2021, after Farmer allegedly withheld two meals in a row from the prisoner. When a third was skipped, Anthony threw water to get the guard’s attention as he passed by with a Deputy Warden, according to the complaint the prisoner later filed. Neither official stopped, but Farmer allegedly returned to Anthony’s cell with fellow guard Remer Cobb, and they subjected the prisoner to a beat-down with tactical shields and metal flashlights; his injuries also went untreated for another two weeks until August 3, 2021, he said.
With the aid of attorneys from the Summerville Law Firm LLC in Atlanta and Trammell Sams LLC in Luthersville, Anthony filed suit in federal court for the Southern District of Georgia on July 14, 2023, alleging violations of his civil rights with the beating and withholding treatment. Defendants moved to dismiss Anthony’s claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, arguing that the Eleventh Amendment shielded them from liability. However, the Court noted, Anthony sued them in their individual capacities, not their official capacities, so that motion was denied as moot on May 14, 2024. That also doomed his state-law claims, though, so those were denied, as were claims for punitive damages, which are expressly barred under state law, O.C.G.A. §§ 50-21-25(a), 50-21-30. See: Anthony v. Farmer, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86996 (S.D. Ga.).
Meanwhile, attorneys with the same firms helped Anthony filed suit in the Court over Wyatt’s assault on May 31, 2024. For that, he blamed DOC, Farmer and another guard, Clifford Brown, who oversaw the ASMP mental health unit and was responsible for making Wyatt an orderly. Sadly, Anthony died on July 8, 2024, at age 38; no cause of death was reported. No Plaintiff had been substituted in his case by the end of August 2024, but PLN will update developments as they are available. See: Anthony v. Ga. Dep’t of Corr., USDC (S.D. Ga.), Case No. 1:24-cv-00080.
Wyatt remains incarcerated by DOC, serving life without the possibility of parole for the 2015 rape and murder of Atlanta LGBTQ activist Catherine Montoya, 37—shortly after stabbing his estranged wife, Heather Wyatt, at a Waffle House. By the time he was convicted of those crimes, he had also killed his Dekalb County Jail cellmate, Jah’Corey D. Tyson, 23, gouging out his eyeballs.
Farmer is not the only ASMP guard accused of using one prisoner to attack another; as PLN reported, DOC fired and arrested Lloyd Hopkins in May 2024 for opening Robert Robish’s cell door for him to be assaulted by a trio of fellow prisoners, one of whom died when Robish defended himself. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.33.]
Additional sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Augusta Press
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