Meridian inmate pleads guilty to murder of cellmate one year after Idaho prison death

An Idaho inmate has pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of his cellmate.

Colton J. Reagan, a 25-year-old Meridian man, was charged with beating 57-year-old Gerald B. Cummings Jr. to death in the cell that they shared at the Idaho State Correctional Institution near Kuna, south of Boise.

In exchange for pleading guilty late December, the state agreed not to seek the death penalty.

The plea change came more than a year after the murder. In the early morning hours of Dec. 11, 2021, prison officials responded to a fight in Reagan’s cell and found Cummings unresponsive “with injuries that appeared consistent with a beating,” the initial Idaho Department of Correction news release said.

The Ada County Sheriff’s Office said Reagan and Cummings Jr. were the only two people in the cell at the time of the altercation. More than an hour after staff found him, Cummings was pronounced dead.

It took about 15 minutes for the Idaho Department of Correction to request an ambulance after Cummings was found unresponsive on the ground, and roughly 43 minutes before paramedics arrived on scene at the prison, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

Reagan was incarcerated at the time of the murder for felony convictions of possession of a controlled substance and grand theft, according to Department of Correction records. Before his latest conviction, Reagan would have been released in 2027.

A sentencing hearing has been set for 10 a.m. on March 10 at the Ada County Courthouse.