Last updated November 8, 2026.(DS)

Dooly State Prison: Overcrowding, Gang Control, and the Deaths at Unadilla

Dooly State Prison sits on Plunkett Road in Unadilla, in Dooly County, a medium-security men's facility that opened in 1994 after construction in 1993. It was built for 500 people. It is now rated for 1,702 and, per GPS's facility records, holds 1,711 — roughly 100.5 percent of rated capacity and more than three times its original design. The plant is 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; the facility offers GED and basic education, limited vocational and religious programming. What the public record shows about Dooly is a facility where a large and medically limited population is held in a plant designed for a third of them, where GPS has recorded 52 deaths since January 1, 2020 — nine of them homicides — and where the documented failures of supervision, medical response, and food service have been the subject of both news reporting and GPS's own investigations.

A Facility Built for 500 Holding 1,711

The scale of the mismatch is the first fact that explains everything downstream. Dooly's certificates of occupancy, issued by the Office of the Georgia Safety Fire Commissioner under Commissioner John F. King, describe the physical plant in detail: the housing units were certified under the 1991 Life Safety Code, with occupant-load limitations of 317 for each of several 38,088-square-foot housing buildings — #004 E Housing, #005 F Housing, #006 G Housing, #007 H Housing, and #008 J Housing — and 216 for #003 D Housing. The administration building (#001) covers 40,326 square feet, and the Programs & Support building (#002) carries an occupant load of 1,500. The certificates date to July 16, 1996, for the housing units, with later additions: a Training Building (#015) certified in 2016 and an Outside Post Office (#016) in 2017.

Those load figures describe a facility whose certified capacity was never 500. But the population Dooly now carries is one that the design-era staffing and medical infrastructure was not built to serve. GPS's reporting has described Dooly as operating with a statewide correctional-officer vacancy rate near 50 percent, with fewer officers now supervising 1,593 incarcerated people than when the facility held 750 — a figure consistent with the facility's documented triple-bunked cells and inadequate medical, food-service, and staffing infrastructure. GPS has documented that officer vacancies across Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3 and 60 percent systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, and that the hiring pipeline cannot close the gap.

Staffing Collapse and the Warnings Before Zeary Davis's Death

The most documented case in Dooly's recent record is the September 26, 2024, killing of Zeary Davante Davis, 31, who died on the floor of his dormitory. GDC's own EAH inmate-death report classifies the death as a homicide by an inmate and records the time of the incident as 21:42; security staff observed Davis on the dormitory floor, EMS arrived at 21:55 and began life-saving measures until 22:12, when there were no more signs of life, and Dooly County Coroner Hudson pronounced him deceased at 22:40. GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver, Asst. Commissioner Ahmed Holt, and Wilson Hall were personally notified of the homicide in the early hours of September 27.

A Dooly County grand jury subsequently indicted Qwinterrious Jerod Dodson (GDC 1001230779) in State v. Dodson, Indictment No. 26DR-0063, filed August 10, 2026, on five counts including malice murder and felony murder; Count 5 charges that on or about September 26, 2024, while legally confined at Dooly State Prison, Dodson stabbed Davis in the torso and about the body. The indictment is a charge, not a conviction.

What GPS's reporting describes around that killing is a supervision failure that had been warned about in writing. Tyler Ryals, a former 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. GPS's reporting describes Ryals warning that posts once staffed by several officers were being worked alone or not at all, and that an officer might not set foot in a building for five hours at a stretch. A private citizen wrote to Commissioner Oliver on September 23, 2024, warning that two named Bloods leaders were running an extortion ring in Dorm E1; the letter named Dekito Champ and Marcus Taylor by GDC ID number and asked the Commissioner to move them. GPS's reporting describes the letter reaching Oliver's government email address. Three days later, Davis was stabbed to death on his birthday.

GPS's reporting further describes that no officer had the keys to the three gates between the dorm and outside medical help while Davis was dying, that the prisoners' own volunteer fire crew reached him before the shift supervisor did, and that two prisoners kept pressure on his wounds. GDC's records state Ryals resigned twelve days after his warning, on or about August 13, 2024; GPS's reporting notes he did not write a resignation letter. In August 2024, GDC sent Ahmed Holt to meet with Ryals when HR balked at firing him for raising the alarm, and Ryals recorded the meeting and gave the recording to GPS. On that recording, per GPS's reporting, Holt offered no plan to address the staffing crisis, asked Ryals if he was "venting," and said: "If you can figure out how to get 3,000 men into the Georgia Department of Corrections, I'm gonna go get them."

The Dead of Dooly

GPS's mortality registry records 52 deaths at Dooly State Prison since January 1, 2020 — a floor, since GDC reports deaths roughly two months late. Nine are classified as homicides, 20 as natural or medical, five as overdose, three as suicide, 14 as unknown or pending, and one as other. The full list is maintained at GPS's facility death page.

Among the most recent: Gary L. Harshaw died October 25, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as unknown/pending. Jerry Jerome Smith died August 21, 2026, at Dooly State Prison, age 61; the cause is unknown/pending. Jerry Mccaster died August 11, 2026, at Dooly State Prison, age 60; unknown/pending. Martez Desmond Terry died April 29, 2026, at Dooly State Prison, age 42; natural/medical — the Medical Examiner certified pulmonary thromboembolism as the cause, with obesity as another significant condition. Samuel Jacob Blackmon died January 19, 2026, at Dooly State Prison, age 40; overdose. Dexter Andres Levy died November 16, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 32; overdose — the GBI Division of Forensic Sciences performed a complete autopsy and ruled the manner natural, with hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause. Darrow Brown died November 7, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 58; homicide.

Paul Counts died October 30, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 60; unknown/pending. Willie Mote died October 14, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 70; unknown/pending. Marshall Davis Crews died September 19, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 69; unknown/pending. Orlando Perez Glass died August 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 49; unknown/pending. Timothy Glenn Williams died April 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 56; overdose. Horatio Philmore died February 2, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 58; homicide. Joshua Parrott died January 12, 2025, at Dooly State Prison, age 45; homicide. Michael Hutchins died December 21, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 75; unknown/pending. David Smith died November 20, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 53; natural/medical — a limited autopsy found severe single-vessel coronary atherosclerotic disease with 75 percent stenosis of the proximal left anterior descending artery. Thomas Adrian Chamblee died November 18, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 32; suicide — the Medical Examiner ruled hanging, with a complete autopsy documenting minor blunt-force injuries of the face and a certified cause of combined toxic effects of the synthetic cannabinoid MDMB-4en-PINACA and methamphetamine, manner accident. Ancion Leroy Wallace died September 27, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 25; natural/medical — the Medical Examiner ruled sepsis due to pneumonia and right lower leg cellulitis from an insect bite. Zeary Davante Davis died September 26, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 31; homicide. Terry J Davis died July 5, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 52; unknown/pending — the GBI DOFS production contains no cause or manner of death, and the medical examiner declined to examine. Carlito Omar Soldiew-Acosta died June 22, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 38; homicide — the AJC's running list attributes the death to "complications due to blunt force trauma," and a coroner told a TV station he may have been dead for more than 24 hours before his body was found. Horace Rico Mosley died May 15, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 57; unknown/pending. Ricky Lee Denney died May 7, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 68; unknown/pending. Dwight Junior Lance died April 13, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 55; overdose — the medical examiner certified the date of death as April 14. Raquon Javeyonte Tucker died March 22, 2024, at Dooly State Prison, age 26; homicide — the AJC's running list attributes the death to "complications of blunt force head trauma," and a separate report notes he died after being transported to an Albany hospital, with cause pending toxicology.

The homicide record extends back further. Brian Lee Wainwright, 59, died January 4, 2024, in a manner ruled a homicide at Dooly. Chad Taylor Roadifer, 45, died October 27, 2023, from delayed complications of blunt force head trauma sustained months earlier. Dimitri Merci Jackson, 36, died January 3, 2023, from a stab wound to the chest. The AJC's homicide-tracking coverage documents each of these cases.

Medical Care, Autopsies Declined, and the Deaths That Went Unclassified

The mortality record at Dooly shows a recurring pattern in which the official machinery of death investigation simply does not engage. For Terry J Davis, no autopsy was performed; the medical examiner declined to examine, and the Forensic Examination Report states the office reviewed the case and determined an examination was not necessary based on the information provided at the time. The submitting agency was the Dooly County Coroner's office, via Deputy Coroner Willie Barnes. The GBI DOFS production contains no investigator narrative or Report of Medical Examiner, so the circumstances of death, who found him, and when are not recorded in it.

Deroski Harris, 36, was found unresponsive in his cell in the lockdown unit on April 25, 2022, and pronounced dead May 17, 2022, at 12:48 PM. A frayed fan cord plug was found sparking on the metal toilet in his cell, and he had been seen earlier acting erratically and suspected of drug use. The GBI Medical Examiner declined to perform an autopsy or external examination, signing out multisystem organ failure with intestinal infarction due to probable stimulant abuse, manner accident. The GBI death investigator noted that the DOC investigation found no electrical hazard in the cell.

The AJC reported in January 2025 that James Yarbrough suffered from uncontrolled diabetes for months at Dooly State Prison and died of ketoacidosis in a case alleging medical malpractice; the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger records a $700,000 state liability payout tied to Dooly State Prison in 2020, linked to a documented death record. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported in October 2024 that Cody Bailey alleges medical staff at Dooly put his father's treatment "on the back burner," contributing to his death from sepsis; James Michael Bailey, 44, died April 8, 2023, from sepsis contracted from pneumonia caused by an infected insect bite approximately four months into his sentence.

The pattern of declined autopsies and unclassified deaths is one GPS has documented systemwide: the DOJ's October 2024 findings letter faulted GDC for systematically misclassifying homicides as unknown or undetermined causes of death. At Dooly, 14 of the 52 deaths in GPS's registry remain in the unknown/pending category.

Gang Control, Violence, and the 2026 Fights

The violence at Dooly is not episodic. GPS records show 41 distinct sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults across seven months from March to November 2026, with severity ranging from low to critical, concentrated heavily in April and May 2026. News reporting documents a series of gang-related fights in that period: five inmates injured in a dormitory fight on March 23, 2026; six injured, three airlifted via Life Flight, on April 1; nine injured in a fight contained to two dorms on May 22, which was followed by a statewide lockdown of all GDC facilities "out of an abundance of caution"; and three injured in an altercation on June 7. Visitation at Dooly, Washington, Ware, and Hancock state prisons was cancelled for the Memorial Day weekend of May 22–25, 2026.

GPS's reporting describes the mechanism behind the violence. A September 23, 2024, letter to the Commissioner stated that a close-security Blood was living alone in room 215 at medium-security Dooly after forcibly removing his roommate, and that another Bloods member was sleeping in a room he was not assigned to. GPS's reporting describes Ryals warning that gangs were running housing units, telling officers "we're moving so-and-so into this cell" and getting the cell moves approved. GPS's reporting also describes that Dooly has no panic buttons, and that the only way to summon help from E1 was a contraband cellphone.

The pattern continued into 2026. Tyler Ryals, the former GDC officer, wrote on Facebook that a nurse was used as a human shield by an inmate being stabbed at Dooly State Prison on May 17, 2026, and that she was not physically harmed. Marcus Johnson, administrator of the Georgia Prison Reform Coalition, wrote in a Facebook group on October 30, 2026, that he had spoken with someone inside Dooly and received information that a gang-related fight had broken out the previous night, that five individuals were reportedly stabbed in F-2 dorm, that nobody was killed, and that non-gang-affiliated individuals were reportedly being held in intake to keep them safe. These are the accounts of the people who posted them, not GPS findings.

GPS records show 13 distinct sources reporting family safety concerns at Dooly across six months in 2026, and 11 sources reporting named staff-misconduct allegations across six months from December 2025 to November 2026. GPS has received accounts of staff-on-inmate use of force at Dooly State Prison.

The Kitchen: DPH Scores of 100 and What Workers Describe

The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Dooly's kitchen eight times since 2023, and every inspection has scored 100 — routine visits by inspectors Chris Warren, Nicole Hays-Morrison, Brenna Maize, and Joshua Jones, on dates including June 23, 2023; June 18, 2024; March 14, 2025; and May 8 and 13, 2026.

Those scores must be read against what GPS has separately documented. GPS has documented a systemic pattern of food-service sanitation failure across GDC kitchens that DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture: tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. At Dooly specifically, inmate-maintenance worker accounts collected by GPS describe thousands of roaches inside kitchen equipment. The pattern is hidden from DPH scores because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load, and because GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings. The contradiction between a perfect score and what workers describe is the analytical center of GPS's investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The systemic finding is corroborated at the system level: The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026, investigation independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities. GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food (2024) and has 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. GPS records show four distinct sources reporting food-quality complaints at Dooly in 2026.

Contraband, Staff Complicity, and the Hiring Pipeline

Dooly's contraband record is among the most staff-implicated in the system. Per GPS's analysis of GDC's own published contraband reports, Dooly ranks first among state prisons for incidents involving a staff-class person: 29 staff-class people in 77 incidents. That is a measure of arrests as GDC reported them, not convictions.

The individual cases are stark. Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., 29, a GDC corrections officer cadet, was found during a routine search in June 2024 with four packages of methamphetamine hidden in his pants, and a subsequent vehicle search uncovered four more packages and a pistol — 640 grams of 100 percent pure methamphetamine that he admitted he intended to bring into the prison to give to an inmate. He pleaded guilty in December to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and was sentenced in August 2026 to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. In a separate case, Magnum Jelani Neely used contraband cellphones to lead a drug ring in the Augusta area from Dooly State Prison and was sentenced to 278 months. Abraham Rivas allegedly impersonated a Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputy to defraud a Florida victim out of two $500 payments intended for bond and an ankle monitor, with the funds traced to his prison commissary account; a warrant charged him with organized scheme to defraud and grand theft. Rivas claimed that other inmates were running similar scams and that correctional staff were aware of the activity.

GDC has deployed cellphone-blocking technology — Managed Access Systems — at multiple prisons including Hays, Calhoun, Wilcox, and Dooly. In May 2025, GDC issued purchase order 640039 for Dooly State Prison drone detection, shipping to 1412 Plunkett Rd, Unadilla, including AirWarden sensor subscriptions and extended warranties.

Leadership and Accountability

Mark Agbaosi has served as Warden of Dooly State Prison since February 16, 2025. The deputy wardens are Nequeva Nicholson (Administration, since January 2025), Mable Larose Chaney (Care and Treatment, since 2016), LEE Major (Security, since January 2025), and Lameka A Kendrick (Security, since August 2026). GPS's reporting notes that Agbaosi was appointed without a bachelor's degree. At the time of Jerry Jerome Smith's death in August 2026, Mark Agbaosi was warden and Lameka Kendrick was Deputy Warden of Security.

GDC's internal audit calendar shows repeated attention to Dooly: audits on April 3, 4, and 5, 2024; a follow-up audit scheduled in July 2024; and a three-day audit block on March 10, 11, and 12, 2026, followed by a Mock ACA on May 5, 2026. What those audits found is not in the public record.

The medical staffing contracts tell their own story. MHM's FY23 staffing table for Dooly totals 3.65 mental health FTEs at 146 hours per week and 3.00 dental FTEs at 120 hours per week, including 0.25 FTE psychologist and 0.40 FTE psychiatrist. Centurion's proposed staffing matrix totals 860 weekly hours (21.50 FTE), including a physician at 192 weekly hours and 176 weekly RN day hours. Whether those hours are filled is a separate question from whether they are contracted.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Corrections records — certificates of occupancy issued by the Office of the Georgia Safety Fire Commissioner, EAH inmate-death reports, internal audit calendars, contraband reports, purchase orders, and the GDC mortality registry — as well as GBI Division of Forensic Sciences autopsy and forensic examination reports produced under open records request; state court filings in State v. Dodson (Superior Court of Dooly County, No. 26DR-0063); the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger; Georgia Department of Public Health inspection records; reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, 13WMAZ, WGXA, WALB, and The Marshall Project; public Facebook posts by Tyler Ryals and Marcus Johnson of the Georgia Prison Reform Coalition; firsthand narratives published in Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story; and GPS's own investigative reporting and mortality tracking. GPS has independently tracked 1,928 deaths in GDC custody since 2020.