Last updated October 4, 2026.(DS)

Dooly State Prison: Classification Drift, Staffing Collapse, and the Deadliest Dorm in Georgia

Dooly State Prison sits in Unadilla, in Dooly County, a medium-security men's facility that opened in 1994 on a design built for 500 people. It now holds roughly 1,600. It consists of nine main housing units with triple-bunked and double-bunked cells, an open living unit, an isolation and segregation block, and a Fast Track unit. It receives men who cannot be housed in county prisons, including many sex-offense and medically limited populations, and it offers GED and basic education, limited vocational and religious programming. That is the public record of what Dooly is supposed to be. The evidence below describes what it has become: a facility where a man was stabbed to death on his birthday while no officer was in the dorm, where a warden heard a confession and took no action, and where GPS has recorded 50 deaths since January 1, 2020.

A Medium-Security Plant Holding a Close-Security Population

The central structural fact about Dooly is arithmetic. GPS's analysis of GDC's own October 27, 2025 data found that four medium-security prisons — Dooly, Wilcox, Calhoun, and Washington State — were housing close-security populations of 28 to 30 percent, rates up to ten times higher than other medium-security facilities, and operating as de facto close-security prisons without the staffing or infrastructure that designation requires. GPS's reporting on the classification crisis found homicide rates at those four facilities running four to five times higher than at properly classified medium-security prisons, with 33 deaths in 2024 alone, more than half of the dead under age 50. The U.S. Department of Justice found all four facilities in violation of the Eighth Amendment. GDC's response, per GPS's analysis, was to stop reporting causes of death.

The population figures behind that finding are stark. GPS reporting describes Dooly holding 1,593 people against an original design capacity of 500 — 319 percent of design — with inadequate medical, food-service, and staffing infrastructure. GPS's current facility record puts the population at 1,619 against a rated capacity of 1,702, or 95.1 percent of rated capacity; the discrepancy is the point. Rated capacity was itself inflated to accommodate the population, so the facility reads as near-capacity while running at more than three times what it was built to hold. The men inside are triple-bunked and double-bunked in a plant built for 500.

That mismatch has a documented consequence. A private citizen wrote to Commissioner Tyrone Oliver on September 23, 2024, warning that two named Bloods leaders were running an extortion ring in Dorm E1, and stating that a close-security Blood was living alone in room 215 at medium-security Dooly after forcibly removing his roommate, while another Bloods member was sleeping in a room he was not assigned to. The letter named Dekito Champ and Marcus Taylor by GDC ID number and asked the Commissioner to move them. It went to Oliver's government email address. Three days later, Zeary Davis was stabbed to death on his birthday.

"No Officer in the Building": The Death of Zeary Davis

The killing of Zeary Davis, 31, on September 26, 2024, is the most fully documented death at Dooly, and it functions as a case study in what staffing collapse produces. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Davis died that day and that a county coroner told a television station he was stabbed to death. GPS's own investigative reporting describes what the AJC's account did not: that there was no officer in Dorm E1 when Davis was stabbed; that Dooly has no panic buttons, so the only way to summon help from E1 was a contraband cellphone; that when Davis was dying, no officer had the keys to the three gates between the dorm and outside medical help; and that two incarcerated men kept pressure on his wounds while the prisoners' own volunteer fire crew reached him before the shift supervisor did. GPS reporting describes accounts indicating first responders took roughly 30 minutes to arrive.

The man accused of the killing has never been charged. GPS reporting states that Qwinterrious Dodson allegedly stabbed Davis through the heart, and that he has never been charged with the crime. The same reporting describes an earlier incident: on August 3, 2024, Dodson broke a man's jaw in Dorm E1, admitted it to Warden Sampson's face, and was not disciplined. GPS's reporting describes accounts indicating that after that August assault the warden took no serious action — no removal from the dorm, no disciplinary report, no battery charge — and that warnings given to facility staff and to a regional director's office went unanswered.

The staffing picture that made the dorm unguarded was not a secret inside GDC. Tyler Ryals, a GDC Correctional Emergency Response Team commander with nearly ten years of service across five state prisons, swore out a witness statement on August 1, 2024, warning GDC leadership that prisons were collapsing under staffing shortages, climbing violence, and contraband. He wrote that he knew he could face discipline for the warning. He described posts once staffed by several officers being worked alone or not at all, and an officer who might not set foot in a building for five hours at a stretch. He described gangs running housing units, telling officers "we're moving so-and-so into this cell" and getting the cell moves approved. He described officers so scarce that incarcerated people had to save them.

GDC records state Ryals resigned twelve days after his warning, on or about August 13, 2024. He did not write a resignation letter. In August 2024, when HR balked at firing him for raising the alarm, GDC sent Assistant Commissioner for the Facilities Division Ahmed Holt to meet with him. Ryals recorded the meeting and gave GPS the recording. On it, Holt disputed essentially none of what Ryals had put in his sworn statement, did not deny that lone female officers were holding male prisons, and reframed the crisis as national in scope: "It's not just a GDC issue. It is a system-wide issue. It is a nationwide issue." He asked Ryals whether he was "venting." When told there were not enough officers, Holt said: "If you can figure out how to get 3,000 men into the Georgia Department of Corrections, I'm gonna go get them." On the recording, Holt offered no plan to address the staffing crisis.

The scale of that crisis is documented systemwide. GPS has found officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons running between 49.3 and 60 percent for multiple years against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, with the hiring pipeline unable to close the gap — an acceptance rate under 15 percent and 82.7 percent of new hires leaving in their first year — and Georgia ranking last of 50 states for correctional-officer pay. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that "the leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities" and faulted GDC for placing "too much blame on gangs and insufficient emphasis on understaffing." GPS records show staffing-shortage signals at Dooly across multiple sources in May 2026, including reports of a missed inmate count, emergency count procedures, and a single officer responsible for a large section of the facility.

Fifty Deaths, and the Ones GDC Stopped Explaining

GPS's mortality registry records 50 deaths at Dooly State Prison since January 1, 2020 — a floor, not a ceiling, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. The yearly counts run 8 in 2020, 4 in 2021, 5 in 2022, 9 in 2023, 12 in 2024, 9 in 2025, and 3 so far in 2026. By cause, GPS's registry lists 18 as Natural/Medical, 16 as Unknown/Pending, 7 as Homicide, 5 as Overdose, 3 as Suicide, and 1 as Other. The Unknown/Pending category — nearly a third of the total — is itself a finding, consistent with the DOJ's October 2024 conclusion that GDC systematically misclassifies homicides as unknown or undetermined causes of death.

The most recent 25 deaths GPS has recorded at Dooly are:

• Jerry Jerome Smith died August 21, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending.
• Martez Desmond Terry died April 29, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 42.
• Samuel Jacob Blackmon died January 19, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 40.
• Dexter Andres Levy died November 16, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 32.
• Darrow Brown died November 7, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 58.
• Paul Counts died October 30, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 60.
• Willie Mote died October 14, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 70.
• Marshall Davis Crews died September 19, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 69.
• Orlando Perez Glass died August 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 49.
• Timothy Glenn Williams died April 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 56.
• Horatio Philmore died February 2, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 58.
• Joshua Parrott died January 12, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 45.
• Michael Hutchins died December 21, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 75.
• David Smith died November 20, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 53.
• Thomas Adrian Chamblee died November 18, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Suicide. He was 32.
• Ancion Leroy Wallace died September 27, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 25.
• Zeary Davante Davis died September 26, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 31.
• Terry J Davis died July 5, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 52.
• Carlito Omar Soldiew-Acosta died June 22, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 38.
• Horace Rico Mosley died May 15, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 57.
• Ricky Lee Denney died May 7, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 68.
• Dwight Junior Lance died April 13, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Overdose. He was 55.
• Raquon Javeyonte Tucker died March 22, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 26.
• Brian Lee Wainwright died January 4, 2024, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Homicide. He was 59.
• Willie Frank Garrett died December 17, 2023, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Natural/Medical. He was 53.

The full list is maintained at gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/dooly-state-prison/. GPS has independently tracked 1,896 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020.

Several of these deaths carry documented circumstances beyond the registry line. The AJC reported that Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta, 38, died June 22, 2024, from complications of blunt force trauma, and that a coroner alleged he may have been dead for more than 24 hours before his body was found. The AJC reported that Raquon Tucker, 26, died March 22, 2024, after being transported to an Albany hospital, with cause pending toxicology and a DOC investigation; the AJC separately documented his death as a homicide from complications of blunt force head trauma. The AJC reported that Brian Lee Wainwright, 59, died January 4, 2024, in a manner ruled a homicide. The AJC reported that Chad Taylor Roadifer, 45, died October 27, 2023, from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma sustained months earlier. And the AJC reported that Dimitri Merci Jackson, 36, died January 3, 2023, from a stab wound to the chest.

GPS's own reporting describes two deaths at Dooly that the official record classified differently. GPS reporting describes accounts indicating that Horatio Philmore died at Dooly in an open dorm, officially ruled a suicide, with inmate reports indicating strangulation. GPS reporting likewise describes accounts indicating that Joshua Parrott died at Dooly, initially ruled a suicide and then reclassified as a homicide by strangulation. Both men appear in GPS's registry as homicides.

Medical Neglect and the Men Who Died Waiting

Dooly's medical failures are documented in both court records and family accounts. The AJC reported that James Yarbrough suffered from uncontrolled diabetes for months at Dooly and died of ketoacidosis in a case alleging medical malpractice. Georgia's DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger records a $700,000 state liability payout to Yarbrough in 2020, tied to Dooly and linked to a documented death record — by a wide margin the largest settlement tied to this facility in the ledger.

Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that Cody Bailey alleges medical staff at Dooly put his father's treatment "on the back burner," contributing to his death from sepsis. GPB reported that James Michael Bailey, 44, died from sepsis contracted from pneumonia caused by an infected insect bite approximately four months into his sentence at Dooly. GPS's registry lists James Michael Bailey's death on April 8, 2023, as Natural/Medical.

The settlement ledger shows a broader pattern of state payouts tied to Dooly across a decade: $25,000 to Shon L. Miller (2016), $5,000 to Eddie J. King (2017), $1,000 to Anthony T. Hill (2019), $3,100 to Rodney McCrary (2020), $3,500 to Thomas Andrew Whittle (2023), and $1,000 to Amos Westmoreland (2023). These are open-records figures from the state's own risk-management ledger, not plaintiff estimates.

GPS's reporting also describes accounts from inside the facility that point to the same failure mode. A GPS-authored account published through Tell My Story describes eight years at Dooly and a cellmate who sickened over two years with what was obviously cancer while the medical department repeatedly said he would be sent out — treatment that arrived, per the account, only after a lawyer's threat, and too late. GPS has received recurring reports of medical neglect at this facility, including accounts of an incarcerated person who died after not receiving timely medical care for injuries. GPS records show family safety concerns at Dooly across eight sources over four months in 2026, including three signals at critical severity in which family members reported fear for an incarcerated person's life.

Gang Control, Extortion, and the Violence That Follows

The September 2024 letter to Commissioner Oliver described a dorm economy run by two Bloods leaders. GPS's reporting describes the same structure in detail: incarcerated people at Dooly collaborating to extort others, an incarcerated person identified as a ringleader of the Bloods in a housing unit, an enforcer for a gang within the facility, and an incarcerated person who becomes violent when drinking and has been involved in multiple stabbings. GPS's reporting describes accounts indicating that an incarcerated person was attacked for mishandling money connected to a gang's fraudulent scheme, and that extortion at knifepoint led to a murder. GPS has received recurring reports of gang-affiliated incarcerated people at Dooly torturing and beating other incarcerated people.

The pattern GPS documents systemwide gives this local texture its context. GPS has found that approximately 31 percent of the system's roughly 49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average — and that DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. The October 2024 DOJ findings letter concluded that sexual assault in GDC facilities is "rampant" and that GDC does not reasonably protect incarcerated people, including LGBTI individuals, from sexual harm; of 456 sexual-abuse allegations recorded in 2022, only 35 were substantiated. Dooly's profile as a facility receiving sex-offense and medically limited populations makes that systemic finding directly relevant to who is held here.

Violence at Dooly has not been confined to individual assaults. On May 22, 2026, nine incarcerated men were taken to local hospitals after a gang-related altercation contained to two dorms; seven had returned by the following day. The incident triggered a statewide lockdown of all GDC facilities, and visitation was cancelled at Dooly, Washington, Ware, and Hancock state prisons over Memorial Day weekend. Earlier, on April 1, 2026, six incarcerated men were taken to local hospitals, three by Life Flight, after a gang-related altercation. On March 23, 2026, five incarcerated men were injured in a gang-related fight involving multiple offenders contained to one dormitory. On June 7, 2026, an altercation involving three incarcerated men sent one to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. GPS records show 27 sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults at Dooly across five months in 2026, with monthly concentrations of 11 sources in April and 8 in May.

The violence has also reached staff. GDC reported that Deputy Warden Charles Hudson was bitten on the thumb by an incarcerated person while helping to place him in handcuffs on December 8, 2025; Hudson was treated at the facility. GPS records show seven sources reporting named staff misconduct allegations at Dooly across five months, and four sources reporting unnamed staff misconduct allegations across two months in 2026.

Contraband, the Phone Economy, and the Cadet Who Smuggled Meth

Dooly's contraband problem has produced federal convictions. WGXA reported that Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., 29, a former GDC cadet, attempted to smuggle 640 grams of pure methamphetamine into Dooly State Prison to give to an inmate. The investigation began in June 2024 when GDC officers found four packages of meth hidden in his pants during a routine search; a subsequent vehicle search uncovered four more packages and a pistol. Williams pleaded guilty in December to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. He had faced a maximum of life.

Contraband phones have driven a parallel economy. The AJC reported that Magnum Jelani Neely, an inmate at Dooly, was sentenced to 278 months for leading an Augusta-area drug ring from inside the prison, using contraband cellphones to contact drug couriers who delivered meth inside and outside Georgia prisons. And in a case that illustrates how the phones cut both ways, GPS's reporting describes the contraband phone in Dorm E1 as the only means by which anyone could call for help while Zeary Davis bled.

The state's response has been technological. GDC has deployed Managed Access Systems cell-phone-blocking technology at multiple prisons including Hays, Calhoun, Wilcox, and Dooly. GPS's analysis of that deployment found that Georgia spent $50 million deploying phone-blocking technology at 35 prisons, and that homicides quadrupled; at every facility where GPS confirmed activation dates, violence erupted within weeks. GPS's assessment is that the crackdown destabilized the informal power structures that had been keeping people alive — an analytical finding, not a claim about intent.

Fraud has been another contraband-phone product. WALB and Wesh.com reported that Abraham Rivas, incarcerated at Dooly, is accused of impersonating a Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputy to defraud a Florida victim into sending $1,000 in payments to his prison commissary account. A Palm Coast resident reported sending two $500 payments on March 12; the funds were traced to Rivas at Dooly. Detective First Class Douglas obtained an arrest warrant charging Rivas with organized scheme to defraud and grand theft following an investigation and interview at the prison. Rivas admitted to using proceeds from the fraud to purchase marijuana inside the prison, and claimed that other inmates were running similar scams and that correctional staff at Dooly were aware of the activity.

Food, Sanitation, and the Gap Between the Score and the Tray

The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Dooly's kitchen repeatedly and found nothing wrong. DPH scored the facility 100 — Grade A — on June 23, 2023 (two inspections that day), June 18, 2024 (two inspections), March 14, 2025 (two inspections), May 8, 2026, and May 13, 2026. Every one was a routine inspection. Eight perfect scores across four years.

Those scores must be read against what GPS has separately documented. GPS's systemic investigation of GDC food service found that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture sanitation failure: inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. At Dooly specifically, inmate-maintenance workers have reported to GPS that opening kitchen equipment, including tray-prep tables, reveals active and severe roach infestations — thousands of roaches inside the equipment. Family members have reported to GPS a significant rat infestation in the kitchens, large rats in cells and doors, roaches and bed bugs in dormitory housing, no air conditioning, and no hot water; a family member also reported raising concerns about conditions with the warden multiple times and stated that no action was taken.

The broader food context is documented systemwide. GPS has found that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024) and proposed $1.60 per day in FY27 — under 60 cents per meal — against the FDA Thrifty Food Plan estimate of roughly $10 per day for an adult man's nutritionally adequate diet, and that the state spends approximately 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people ($432 million) than on their food. The Marshall Project independently corroborated the pattern on May 16, 2026, reporting rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoting GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern the DOJ documented in October 2024. The contradiction between a perfect DPH score and a roach-infested tray-prep table is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

Infrastructure at the End of Its Life

Dooly's physical plant is part of the story. GPS has documented that most GDC facilities are 30 to 40-plus years old, with deferred maintenance producing systemwide infrastructure failures: broken cell-door locks, inoperative surveillance and fire-alarm systems, mold and water failures, broken kitchen sanitization equipment, and pest infestations. The DOJ's October 2024 findings, the Guidehouse 2024 assessment, and Commissioner Oliver's public "end of life" statements all corroborate the pattern. GPS treats infrastructure collapse as a force multiplier for the violence, classification, gang-control, and mortality crises documented at the facility level — and Dooly, opened in 1994 and running at more than three times its design capacity, is a case in point.

The absence of panic buttons in Dorm E1, documented in GPS's reporting on Zeary Davis's death, is the sharpest local example: a housing unit in a facility holding roughly 1,600 men, with no fixed means of summoning help, where the only working communication device was contraband.

Leadership and the Accountability Gap

Mark Agbaosi has served as warden of Dooly State Prison since February 16, 2025. GPS's reporting notes that Agbaosi was appointed without a bachelor's degree — a fact GPS treats as an artifact of the staffing and hiring-standards collapse rather than a personal failing. His deputies are Nequeva Nicholson (Deputy Warden of Administration, since January 2025), Mable Larose Chaney (Deputy Warden, since 2016), and Lameka A. Kendrick (Deputy Warden of Security, since August 2026). The warden at the time of Zeary Davis's death, referred to in GPS's reporting as Warden Sampson, is not the current incumbent.

The accountability record above the facility level is documented in GPS's reporting. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver told legislative committees that the AJC's reporting on undisclosed homicides and record deaths was "propaganda," and said of the dead: "One is bad. But it's not as bad when you look at the population we're dealing with." Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt, on the recording Ryals provided to GPS, disputed essentially none of the sworn account of collapse and offered no plan to address it. GPS's reporting also notes that Holt appears in a 2022 AJC investigation, cited by GPS, in which he swore to facts about a Special Management Unit that the evidence contradicted — the AJC's reporting showed two entire wings of the unit had no televisions at all.

Against that, there is one documented bright spot. GPS has received reports that Dooly started a mentoring program in 2025, that the FORGE program was a good program, and that it collapsed after a senior staff member — described elsewhere as a chief counselor — was promoted and transferred to another facility, after which the administration stopped supporting it. GPS has received no comparable account of any other programming success at Dooly.

What the Record Shows

Dooly State Prison was built for 500 men and holds roughly 1,600. It houses close-security populations at rates GPS's analysis found running up to ten times those of comparable medium-security facilities, in a plant with no panic buttons in at least one dorm and a documented pattern of housing units left without an officer for hours. Fifty people have died there since January 1, 2020, sixteen of them with no cause GPS can yet name. A commander with nearly a decade of service warned GDC in writing that the system was collapsing, recorded the assistant commissioner's non-denial twelve days before he resigned, and gave the recording to GPS. Three days after a private citizen warned the Commissioner about an extortion ring in Dorm E1, a man was stabbed to death there on his birthday while no officer was in the building. The state has paid out $700,000 over one of those deaths and smaller sums over six others. And the kitchen has scored 100 eight times.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's mortality registry and facility records; the Georgia Department of Public Health's food-safety inspection database; the Georgia DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WGXA, WALB, Wesh.com, and 13WMAZ; the U.S. Department of Justice's October 2024 findings letter and the Guidehouse 2024 assessment as cited in GPS's systemic reporting; a recorded August 2024 meeting between GDC Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt and former GDC CERT commander Tyler Ryals, provided to GPS by Ryals; a September 23, 2024 letter to Commissioner Tyrone Oliver; and inmate, family, and maintenance-worker accounts collected by GPS staff, including GPS's own investigative reporting and Tell My Story narratives.