O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 42-5-31 (2019)

Oath of office of wardens and superintendents, their deputies, and other correctional officers

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)

Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.

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Before entering upon the duties of their office, wardens and superintendents, their deputies, and other correctional officers or employees shall take and subscribe, before some officer authorized to administer oaths, the following oath: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitutions of the United States of America and the State of Georgia and that I will faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office conscientiously and without malice or partiality, to the best of my ability. So help me God.”

History

Penal Code 1910, § 1197; Code 1933,

§ 77-311; Ga. L. 1968, p. 1155, § 1; Ga. L. 1984, p. 639, § 2.

Annotations

JUDICIAL DECISIONS Liability for acts committed by convicts. - Warden of a public works camp (now county correctional institution) will not be held liable for torts of convicts on mere averment that the warden was negligent “in permitting said convicts to roam the roads of county and state in a truck, without any guard,” whereby injuries resulted from a collision of the truck with the plaintiff’s car, as it was discretionary with the warden to determine how and in what manner convicts employed outside confines of the camp (now county correc-

tional institution) doing work in connection with the operation should be allowed to go at large, and wardens acting in a discretionary capacity will not be liable unless guilty of willfulness, fraud, malice, or corruption, or unless they knowingly act wrongfully, and not according to their honest convictions of duty. Price v. Owen, 67 Ga. App. 58, 19 S.E.2d 529, 1942 Ga. App. LEXIS 336 (1942) (decided under former Code 1933, §§ 77-307, 77-311, and 77-313).

RESEARCH REFERENCES ALR. Liability of prison authorities for injury

to prisoner directly caused by assault by other prisoner, 41 A.L.R.3d 1021.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 5 cases (2 in the last 5 years), 1991–2025 · leading case: Bradley v. State, 665 S.E.2d 428 (Ga. Ct. App. 2008).

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Bradley v. State, 665 S.E.2d 428 (Ga. Ct. App. 2008). · cites it 2× “OCGA § 42-5-31. This evidence was sufficient for the jury to find Bradley guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of violating OCGA § 16-10-1.”

United States v. Chelsey Mayweather, 991 F.3d 1163 (11th Cir. 2021). “See O.C.G.A. § 42-5-31. However, a corrections officer’s powers, such as his arrest power, are limited to the bounds of the prison facilities except when transporting inmates or when 38 USCA11 Case: 17-13547 Date Filed: 03/17/2021 Page: 39 of 41 specifically requested to aid law…”

Pierson v. The State., 824 S.E.2d 657 (Ga. Ct. App. 2019). · cites it 2× “2d 428 (In affirming the defendant's conviction for violating the oath of a public officer, this Court ruled that the State had proven that the oath taken by the defendant, a prison correctional officer, contained the same terms as those the Georgia Legislature "prescribed by…”

State v. Phillips (Ga. 2025). · cites it 2× “at 740–41 (upholding conviction where the oath taken by defendant, a correctional officer, was prescribed by law where the oath almost exactly tracked the language of the oath for correctional officers set forth in OCGA § 42-5-31); Jowers, 225 Ga. App. at 812 (reversing…”

Cleveland v. State, 399 S.E.2d 472 (Ga. 1991). · cites it 2× “OCGA § 42-5-31. 4. Cleveland argues that OCGA § 42-5-37 (a) is unconstitutionally vague.”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.