Donald Trump indicted: Former president to be booked in notorious, bedbug-ridden Georgia jail
Barnini Chakraborty
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When former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election case turn themselves in, they will be booked at the notorious Fulton County Jail, a consistently overcrowded, bedbug- and fire ant-ridden detention center that is being investigated by the Justice Department over alleged civil rights violations.
Trump and several of his allies, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, were indicted late Monday and charged with multiple crimes related to their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has given the defendants until noon on Aug. 25 to surrender. When they do, they will be arrested and processed at the Fulton County Jail.
The detention center has a horrendous reputation in the state, and Trump supporters have already sounded the alarm online, claiming his life will be at risk if he’s taken to the Atlanta facility.
“The Biden DOJ is currently investigating the Fulton County Jail for safety violations,” Charles R. Downs wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Despite this, the Democrats are going to force Donald Trump to be arrested at this dangerous facility. The deranged globalists are intentionally putting a president’s life in danger.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said he “wouldn’t wish the conditions in the Fulton County jail on my worst enemy.”
“If you think that making jokes about jail in Atlanta is all well and good because Donald Trump is the butt of them, you may wish to stop and inform yourself of the inhumane ways people have died there,” he posted on X.
In July, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced an investigation into the jail in response to the death of Lashawn Thompson, a prisoner suffering from mental health issues who was eaten alive by bedbugs. His body was found in a filthy cell covered in insects.
Thompson, who was 35 years old and homeless, had been arrested and charged with simple battery after allegedly spitting on a police officer. His only possessions at the time of his arrest were a spoon, a green cup, and a blue backpack with a dinosaur design.
After the news broke of Thompson’s death, Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said he asked for and accepted the resignations of the chief jailer and two assistant chief jailers.
“It’s clear to me that’s time, past time, to clean house,” Labat said at the time.
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Last month, the Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation into the conditions at the jail. Investigators will look at living conditions, access to medical and mental healthcare, use of excessive force by staff, and conditions that may give rise to violence between people held in Fulton County jails, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said during a news conference.
“Our investigation into these matters is guided by one core principle: People held in jails and prisons do not surrender their constitutional and civil rights at the jailhouse door,” she said.
The jail was built in 1985 to house around 1,300 inmates, but it has more than doubled that number in recent years.
“It’s essentially been overcrowded since it was built,” Fallon McClure, deputy director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of Georgia, told the BBC. “This has just been a perpetual cycle over and over for years.”
A report by the Southern Center for Human Rights claimed the jail provided “unhygienic living conditions” that have led to outbreaks of COVID-19, lice, and scabies. It also claimed inmates were “dangerously malnourished.”
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Last week, Christopher Smith, a 34-year-old man being held at the jail since 2019 because he couldn’t afford bond, was found unresponsive in a medical unit cell. He was resuscitated but then died at the hospital, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said.
He is the sixth person to die at the Atlanta jail this year.