In an image captured from a social media post, Shane Tassi is with two other young men, all wearing white shirts and bright orange pants marked as Georgia Department of Corrections uniforms. Tassi’s in the middle, brazenly displaying a homemade shank and making a gang gesture that ties him to the Bloods in Milledgeville.
When local law enforcement spotted the photo and sent it to District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III, he was outraged. Just days earlier, Barksdale had prosecuted 17-year-old Tassi in a trial where he was found guilty of murdering a high school student in Baldwin County.