One of four former Augusta State Medical Prison inmates facing murder charges for homicides of fellow inmates decided at the last minute Tuesday that he didn’t want to plead guilty.
Daniel Ferguson’s case will be returned to the Columbia County Superior Court trial docket of Judge J. Wade Padgett, the judge said Tuesday, Dec. 20, after Ferguson said he didn’t want to plead guilty.
Ferguson explained he thought he would have been better represented if the public defender officer had hired an expert on post traumatic stress disordered to testify on his behalf.
On May 2, 2020, Eddie Gosier, 39, was found dead in a cell at the prison that sits on the border of Richmond and Columbia counties.
ASMP staff had decided to move Ferguson into a cell with Gosier that day. Assistant District Attorney Amber Brantley said Tuesday there was a ligature mark around Gosier’s neck.
Brantley also told the judge Tuesday that as Ferguson was taken to the cell, he told the guard that he didn’t want to be in the same cell with Gosier, calling him a pedophile. He said if anything happened to Gosier it would be on the guard’s head, Brantley said.
Gosier was serving a sentence for child molestation.
Ferguson has been in custody since he was 16 years old in 2008 when he killed a 94-year-old neighbor in Walton County. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder. On Dec. 26, 2013, he also killed Hayes State Prison inmate Damion McClain. He plead guilty in that case to involuntary manslaughter.
Ferguson is one of four former ASMP inmates facing murder charges. Less than a year after Gosier was killed, Terry Lee Bennett, 43, was stabbed to death on Jan. 19, 2021. Deontae Holsey is charged with murder in that case.
On July 2, 2021, 45-year-old Ali Tanner was stabbed to death at ASMP. Demarvin Bennett is under indictment on murder charges in his death.
The latest homicide at the medical prison was the Feb. 5 death of William Bodge. He was found in his cell with severe head injuries on Jan. 20. Gevin Prince is under indictment on murder charges in his death.
On Sept. 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice announce it was initiating an investigation into the conditions inside Georgia’s prisons, specifically to investigate of the state has taken reasonable effort to protect prisoners from other inmates. The investigation will focus on the possibility of systemic problems inside the DOC.
As of Dec. 1, there were a total of 48,025 people incarcerated in Georgia prison facilities. The population at ASMP is 1,156, according to the most recent report by the Department of Corrections.
