Officials let Tennessee man accused in fatal prison stabbing walk out. He's still missing

A group of prisoners stabbed Charles Gordon seven times on Nov. 20, 2022.

After they thrust a contraband knife 8 inches into his chest, blood filled Gordon’s chest cavity, causing his lung to collapse. He was taken to a hospital 12 miles away, and he was dead within the hour.

Authorities chose to prosecute three men suspected of killing Gordon. Two of them pleaded guilty.

The third man is missing.

Even though prison officials appear to have believed from the start that Jason Turner participated in the fatal attack against Gordon in Whiteville Correctional Facility, they let him walk out of prison a free man less than three months after Gordon was killed. In fact, the first time the Tennessee Department of Correction told the local district attorney about Turner or the crime, it had already released him.

Now Turner is wanted, and U.S. Marshals do not know where he is.

Prosecutors say TDOC could have taken steps to ensure Turner was taken to a local jail after his sentence expired to be booked, charged with the crime and held under bail.

Understaffing and overcrowding in this West Tennessee prison

In Whiteville, Tennessee, more people live in a prison cell than not.

As of the 2020 census, 2,606 people lived in the town, which is about 50 miles from Memphis and 25 miles from the Mississippi state line. There are more than 3,500 people serving time in two privately operated prisons.

Whiteville Correctional Facility and Hardeman County Correctional Facility are separated by a milelong stretch of two-lane road. The prisons struggle with understaffing, like many correctional facilities in Tennessee, as well as violence and contraband.

Whiteville Correctional Facility was filled to 101% of its capacity as of May 2023, an audit showed.

A lawsuit brought by Gordon's widow accuses CoreCivic — a Brentwood-based private prison company that operates dozens of prisons and immigration detention facilities in the U.S. — of "serially underinvest[ing] in prison staff, security, and inmate healthcare at its prisons, leading to predictable and horrific results."

CoreCivic, for its part, noted that correctional facilities across the country are facing staffing challenges. It stated in an email the company works to "meet or exceed" daily staffing patterns, but it failed to state if it succeeds at doing that. A 2023 audit of Tennessee prisons, both privately and publicly operated, found an "ongoing and deeply rooted challenge of attrition within their ranks."

The lawsuit states that understaffing "allows contraband weapons — including knives — to go undetected due to resource constraints that preclude meaningful and regular searches for weapons to be completed."

CoreCivic told The Tennessean that it takes "very seriously our responsibility to provide a safe environment for those in our care and our staff."

"We work hard at all our facilities to eliminate contraband, with special efforts to prevent, find and remove any type of weapon," the company stated in an email. "This is an ongoing challenge for any public or private correctional facility, and we collaborate closely with our partners at TDOC to try to eliminate as much contraband as possible."

Gordon killed two years into sentence

Gordon had been in prison since November 2020, serving a 4 1/2-year sentence. Before he went to prison, he lived in Lewisburg, and his usual occupation was doing road work, his death certificate states.

In September 2022, Gordon and three other incarcerated men were involved in an attack in Whiteville Correctional Facility in which two other men were stabbed, according to the lawsuit brought by his widow. TDOC identified Gordon as an aggressor but he "maintained that he was being robbed and had to defend himself," the lawsuit states.

In October 2022, another incarcerated man at Whiteville Correctional Facility was fatally stabbed, a Memphis TV station reported. The next day, 23-year-old Brendon Prettyman was fatally stabbed at nearby Hardeman County Correctional Facility, an autopsy attached to the lawsuit shows.

Gordon was 32 when he was killed.

How crimes in prison are investigated and prosecuted

When serious crimes like homicide happen in a prison, those accused go through the normal court process.

In Hardeman County prisons, the process starts with TDOC agents investigating the crime, said District Attorney General Mark Davidson, who handles cases in Hardeman, Fayette, Lauderdale, McNairy and Tipton counties.

At some point, the investigating agency gives its information to prosecutors, who decide if and how to move forward with the case. In most prison cases, prosecutors wait to seek an indictment from a grand jury, which saves prosecutors time by bypassing general sessions court proceedings, Davidson said. It can take months to over a year after the crime for a grand jury to return an indictment, though.

The other option is for prosecutors and investigators to decide to take out an arrest warrant before getting an indictment if the suspect is expected to be released before the next grand jury meets, Davidson said.

At Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, someone at TDOC calls the district attorney's office shortly after a crime occurs to decide what to do, Nashville Deputy District Attorney General Roger Moore said. In Hardeman County, the DA's office isn't usually notified of a crime until TDOC provides it the investigative file, which typically takes months.

How a murder suspect walked out of prison

Turner's disciplinary file shows officials noted on the day of the attack against Gordon that he participated in the assault with a weapon, Davidson, the district attorney, said. Agents with TDOC investigated the crime as a homicide.

At some point after the attack, Turner was transferred to West Tennessee State Penitentiary, a prison in Lauderdale County about 60 miles away, a TDOC spokesperson said. Turner's 10-year sentence expired on Feb. 15, 2023, and he was released from there.

TDOC stated in an email it had no legal justification to hold Turner past his release date because there was no legal detainer placed on him. However, Davidson said TDOC could have taken out an arrest warrant for Turner, given that officials knew or should have known his sentence was ending soon, rather than waiting for prosecutors to take the case a grand jury and return an indictment.

If that happened, after Turner's sentence ended, he would have been transferred to a jail in Hardeman County and have had his bail set by a judge, Davidson said.

Instead, Davidson said TDOC did not tell his office about the crime until it handed over its investigative file sometime around June 2023. After the county's next grand jury returned an indictment for first-degree murder in September 2023, Davidson's office thought Turner was still in prison, he said.

"If we had known about it, and we had also known that Turner would flatten his sentence in February, we probably would have asked TDOC to run this case to general sessions court so that we could have gotten a bond on him," Davidson said. "Had we known. By the time we got the case file, he'd been out (four) months."

While he said he isn't inclined to be critical of TDOC because he is not privy to their policies or thought processes, Davidson said, "It's a concern that somebody that we've charged with a violent crime has been released and is not in custody."

Deputy U.S. Marshal Seth Bruce confirmed there is an active murder warrant for Turner and said the agency does not know where he is now. Bruce did not answer The Tennessean's question regarding whether Marshals had attempted to arrest him at any point, claiming it concerned a "sensitive investigative endeavor."

In the lawsuit over Gordon's death, attorney Daniel Horwitz listed an address for Turner in Arlington, Texas.

Three other men were indicted on murder charges in Gordon's death. Marlo Davis and Nicholas Warren pleaded guilty to aggravated assault resulting in death and received six-year and five-year sentences respectively. Prosecutors declined to prosecute the other man, who is still incarcerated with a release date of 2040.

Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @EvanMealins.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Months after TN prison killing, suspect released and still missing