SCDOC named in suit over inmate’s death

BENNETTSVILLE — The South Carolina Department of Corrections has been named as defendant in a newly filed lawsuit from the estate of convicted murderer Tony Leonard Gilliard, who died at a Bennettsville prison in 2023.

According to the suit, lax security and chronic understaffing was to blame for the inmate’s death following an assault.

Gilliard, 42, died June 20 from injuries sustained in a fistfight with another inmate on June 9, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Gilliard had been incarcerated since 1999 after a murder conviction.

Gilliard was attacked near his cell in a location “where administrators, employees and correctional staff … either observed the assault and did nothing to stop or prevent it, or was in a location where they should have observed the assault” and stopped it from happening, the lawsuit claims.

The complaint filed March 25 in Marlboro County Common Pleas Court points to the facility’s “long history of overcrowding, understaffing and failing to provide adequate security and supervision over the inmates” as a contributing factor in Gilliard’s death.

“At no point during this assault did Defendant SCDC intervene or make any effort whatsoever to protect Mr. Gilliard,” the lawsuit says.

Gilliard’s estate is suing on two grounds of negligence.