Ben Crump demands answers after 21-year-old Je’vion Benham found dead in Georgia prison cell for 2 days
By Zachary Bynum
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ATLANTA, Georgia (WUPA) — Civil rights attorney Ben Crump stood alongside attorney Liza Park and a grieving mother Thursday to demand accountability in the death of 21-year-old Je’vion Benham inside a Georgia state prison.
Benham was in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections at Valdosta State Prison when he was found dead in what attorneys described as a solitary confinement cell on Christmas Eve 2025.
According to Crump, Benham had been dead for two days before his body was discovered.
“The Department of Corrections had a fiduciary and constitutional duty to keep this 21-year-old son safe,” Crump said. “Instead, his body was discovered after being left there for over two days.”
“He was faceless when they discovered him” Crump cited the Lowndes County coroner’s findings, stating that decomposition had progressed so severely that Benham’s face was unrecognizable.
“How is it that you’re in the care and custody of the state of Georgia and you cannot keep a proper count to discover that a young man is dead for over two days?” Crump asked.
Attorneys say Benham was expected to be released in the near future.
Attorney Liza Park said their investigation is ongoing, but outlined what she described as critical failures inside the prison system.
According to Park, Benham had requested solitary confinement out of safety concerns. Instead, she says, he was placed in a cell with another inmate who had been incarcerated since the 1990s and was allegedly affiliated with the “Ghost Face Gang,” which she described as a white supremacist prison gang founded in Georgia.
Park said the two inmates were assigned to different “tiers” — classifications designed to separate individuals based on behavior and security risk — and should never have been housed together.
“That alone was a huge mistake,” Park said, adding that combining a young Black inmate with a known white supremacist gang member created a “foreseeable” risk.
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