MACON STATE PRISON

Last updated August 23, 2026.(DS)

Macon State Prison opened in 1994 on roughly 300 acres in Oglethorpe, Macon County. Built in 1993 as a large close-security men's facility, it houses some of the system's highest-risk prisoners across multiple cellblock buildings, including double-bunked general population, isolation and segregation units, and a 10-bed medical infirmary. The prison offers GED, adult basic education, limited vocational and substance-abuse programs, and religious services. It is also, by any measure available to the public, one of the deadliest facilities in the Georgia Department of Corrections.

A Homicide Record Without Parallel

GPS's mortality database records 89 deaths at Macon State Prison since the start of 2020. Thirty-five of those are classified as homicides — the largest single cause category after "unknown/pending," which accounts for 43. The yearly distribution tells its own story: 16 deaths in 2020, a dip to 4 in 2021, then 12 in 2022, 7 in 2023, 20 in 2024, and 24 in 2025. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has documented the individual cases in granular detail, and the names form a ledger of violence that spans six years.

In 2020 alone, the AJC's homicide tracking identified at least eight men killed at Macon: Johnny Eugene Young, 24, died January 27 from sharp force injury to the mouth and tongue; Rafael Blas Becerra, 36, died March 7 from stab wounds to the upper torso in an incident report showing seven other inmates involved and six injured; Carrington Juwon Frye, 23, died March 20 from stab wounds to the neck and chest — his mother later told Georgia lawmakers he bled for more than half an hour before help arrived; David Travis Alexander Dennis, 35, died May 13 from multiple sharp force injuries; Coty Dustin Silvers, 39, died May 23 from asphyxia; Bobby Edward Lee Jr., 38, died July 13 from ligature strangulation; Robbie B. Brower, 58, died October 4 from blunt and sharp force injuries to the head and neck; and Raul Villegas, 37, died December 13 from a stab wound to the torso, with three other inmates reportedly involved.

The pace continued. Carlos Maurice Fisher Jr., 30, died May 10, 2021 from multiple sharp force injuries. Ryan Weston Darville, 37, died December 29, 2021 from stab wounds to the chest. In 2022, Joseph Walter Brown, 36, died July 26 from multiple stab wounds; Dan Brooks Jr., 50, died August 21 from a stab wound to the neck; Kendrick Malik Brown, 25, died October 16 from blunt force head injury — his mother said he was due for release in a month but was placed in a cell with a prisoner known to be dangerous; and James Cornelius McLeroy III, 26, died December 19 from stab wounds to the torso, with an incident report showing two other prisoners involved were gang members.

The DOJ's October 2024 findings letter, as reported by the AJC, singled out one Macon case: on March 22, 2023, Sabino Carlos Ramos, 34, died from multiple stab wounds after four gang members ran past an officer to the kitchen area and fatally stabbed a prisoner, with eleven prisoners ultimately stabbed. Kevin Deshawn Lamar, 44, died August 10, 2023 from sharp force chest trauma; his cellmate was charged with murder. Taurean Hardy, 41, died December 10, 2023 after an altercation with his cellmate, per the DOJ report.

In 2024, the AJC documented Kenneth Keith Malcom, 38, dying February 12 from sharp force trauma to the head, neck, torso, and upper extremities; Reginald Lamonte Ginn, 31, dying March 13 from blunt force head trauma — he was apparently beaten to death by an inmate wielding a fan motor tied to a belt; Devontae Marquez Young, 28, dying May 10 from cardiac arrest and sharp force chest trauma; Mathis Lee Ward, 37, dying June 8 from sharp force chest and neck trauma inflicted with a homemade sharp instrument made of two pieces of sharpened metal; Jarraad Quayshawn Williams, 32, dying July 17 from an inmate-to-inmate assault; Shannon Pickett, 49, dying July 21 from exsanguination and sharp force trauma; and Keith Antwone Green, 44, dying August 30 from an inmate-to-inmate assault.

The bloodshed did not stop at the calendar year. Henry Finley died January 18, 2025 after being stabbed at Macon, confirmed by Macon County Coroner Eddie T. Hosley. Jonathan Mitchell died at a hospital after being beaten by fellow prisoner Jon Edward Pippin, who was accused of using his "foot, knee and fist" to beat Mitchell's head and face. Sanchez Jackson was killed in June 2025; an investigator told his sister there was a rumor he died in a gang attack. Eric Roberts, 33, died February 9, 2026 with no reports of altercation and no signs of foul play; his cause of death remains undetermined and the body was transferred to the GBI crime lab, with the GDC Office of Professional Standards investigation described as ongoing.

The Bobby Edward Lee Jr. Case and the Cost of Indifference

Among the homicide cases, Bobby Edward Lee Jr.'s stands out because it produced both a federal lawsuit and one of the largest liability payouts in the facility's settlement record. Lee, 38, died July 13, 2020 from ligature strangulation. A federal lawsuit alleges he was strangled by his cellmate, a convicted murderer, and blames his death on understaffing and indifference by prison officials. The AJC reported that officials placed Lee in a cell with a prisoner who had previously killed a fellow parolee despite Lee's pleas for protection, and that no officers responded until after he was strangled to death.

The State of Georgia's liability payout tied to Lee's death was $1,375,000, according to the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records. That figure dwarfs the other Macon settlements in the same ledger: $750,000 for Coty Silvers (incident 2020), $98,000 for Javante Harris-Evans (2021), $50,000 for William Stoner (2013), $32,500 for Robin Kimbrel (2022), $20,000 for William Colton Courtney (2015), $6,250 for Bavarious Nelson (2022), $5,000 for Willie Frank Wright (2013), and smaller payouts of $750, $500, and $450 for Hjalmar Rodriquez Jr., Jerome Anthony Williams, and Frank Gillis respectively. The settlement ledger is a public record of what the state has paid to resolve liability claims tied to this single facility, and the two largest payouts — Lee and Silvers — are both linked to documented death records.

Staffing Collapse and the Loss of Facility Control

The violence at Macon State Prison does not occur in a staffing vacuum. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that about two-thirds of correctional officer jobs at Macon State Prison were not filled as of October 2024. The same reporting described Macon as critically understaffed, with the coroner reporting only five to eight officers staffing the entire facility when responding to deaths. That figure aligns with the broader systemic picture GPS has documented: officer vacancies in Georgia's prisons have run between 49.3% and 60% systemwide for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%, and the October 2024 DOJ findings letter explicitly 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."

The AJC's March 2025 reporting tied the staffing crisis directly to the violence: low staffing allows gangs to exert influence, and violence is enhanced by poorly maintained facilities where most locks don't work and prisoners can easily make shanks from wall and ceiling materials. The same reporting noted that staffing vacancies for correctional officers at the majority of Georgia's 34 prisons have reached "emergency levels," making it impossible to keep up with even basic protocols such as routine counts of prisoners.

GPS's own systemic findings treat staffing collapse and gang assumption of facility control as the integrated structural finding that explains the per-facility violence, classification, and mortality narratives. Approximately 31% of the system's ~49,000 incarcerated population are validated members of 315 different security threat groups — more than double the national average. DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments. Former GDC assistant warden Russell Zirkle has testified on the record to 70-80% vacancy rates at major prisons, corroborating both the DOJ's October 2024 findings on staffing collapse and the documented pattern of skeleton crews at facilities like Macon. GPS reporting has carried Zirkle's testimony in "Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis."

The Torture of Christian Krauch

The most extreme single case in GPS's Macon State Prison file is the June 2024 torture of Glen Christian Krauch. GPS's own investigative coverage — published as "Three Weeks Under a Bunk: Torture at Macon State Prison" — documents that Krauch was tortured for three weeks at Macon State Prison: bound, stabbed, burned with cigarettes, and left under a bunk while GDC submitted 168 phantom inmate counts indicating all prisoners were accounted for. He lost his right hand and leg to amputation. The state said nothing. No arrests were made.

The GPS fact-check tag on the primary article carries unresolved issues, and GPS's editorial policy is to give no evidentiary weight to specific claims from items that failed pre-publication fact-check. The broader contours of the case, however, are corroborated by the pattern of violence documented at Macon through the AJC's homicide tracking and the DOJ's findings. The Krauch case is the most severe single allegation in the facility's record, and it sits at the intersection of the two structural failures GPS has documented: staffing so thin that 168 counts could be filed without anyone noticing a man being tortured under a bunk, and a facility culture in which violence of that severity could go unremarked.

Contraband, Corruption, and Staff Arrests

Macon State Prison has also been a locus of contraband and staff-misconduct cases. Four correctional officers at Macon State Prison were arrested in September 2024 on charges of violating their oath as public officers and providing false statements, according to reporting by Ftp.nestcollaborative.com and GDC. The AJC has reported that hundreds of GDC employees have been arrested and fired for smuggling drugs and other contraband into prisons.

The most elaborate contraband case tied to Macon involves Devito Duran Young, an inmate who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and one count of conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance for his role in a drug trafficking operation coordinated from Macon State Prison. 13WMAZ reported that Young coordinated the operation from behind bars using contraband cellphones to import drugs from China. He was sentenced to 327 months in federal prison. Trace Davrin Works received a 262-month sentence for his role in the same scheme. Prosecutors seized $170,000 in cryptocurrency from Xin Wang during the course of the case.

Separately, Rodney Edward Smith, a 39-year-old inmate at Macon State Prison, was extradited to Florida on August 16, 2025 to face charges for an alleged hunting lease fraud scheme. CBS News reported that Smith allegedly used smuggled cell phones and multiple online aliases to post fake hunting lease advertisements for properties he did not own, collecting deposits from hunters across 15 Florida counties between July 1, 2025, and April 30. He faces four felony charges in Gilchrist County.

Conditions, Sanitation, and the Limits of Inspection Scores

The Georgia Department of Public Health has conducted two routine food-safety inspections at Macon State Prison in the past two years. On June 10, 2024, the facility received a score of 91 (Grade A) with one violation cited: food in good condition, safe, and unadulterated. On March 25, 2025, the score dropped to 80 (Grade B) with three violations cited: food in good condition, safe, and unadulterated; proper cold holding temperatures; and proper hot holding temperatures. Both inspections were conducted by the same inspector, Nathaniel Wilkey.

GPS's systemic findings on food-service sanitation across GDC kitchens are blunt: DPH inspection scores systematically fail to capture the reality of tray-sanitizing dishwashers broken for sustained periods, sustained roach and rodent infestation in kitchen and serving areas, and meals served on visibly contaminated trays. 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. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination; the contradiction is the analytical center of the GPS investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

At Macon specifically, GPS has received recurring reports from family members and anonymous sources of unsanitary conditions, severely limited access to working shower facilities, food served on unsanitary trays, non-functioning fans serving as the sole source of airflow, and inmates sleeping on floors. These are aggregate patterns — multiple sources describing the same themes over the past year — and they align with the broader systemic findings GPS has documented across the GDC.

The Isolation Unit and Medical Neglect Allegations

A cluster of family attestations collected by GPS describes a specific and recurring set of concerns about the isolation unit at Macon State Prison. Multiple family members report that the isolation unit is without electricity, lacks air conditioning, and may lack functioning ventilation. Families have requested confirmation that the unit has functioning electricity, ventilation, and adequate cooling, and have asked that incarcerated relatives be moved to medically appropriate housing assignments. One family member reports that an incarcerated person at Macon has not eaten for several days; another reports denial of access to clean drinking water; another requested immediate access to all prescribed medications.

The most serious medical allegation in the family-attestation cluster involves a medication error. Multiple family members allege that an incarcerated person at Macon State Prison received incorrect medication, and that the error caused a serious neurological episode — described in one account as including paralysis and stroke-like symptoms — with ongoing mobility and speech impairments. The same cluster describes the individual as being held in solitary confinement, with grievances not being accepted, access to medical records obstructed, and funds in the person's account allegedly being used to block submission of legal filings. GPS has received these accounts and records them as family allegations; they have not been independently corroborated by court records or news reporting.

GPS records show that over the past 12 months, the facility has generated multiple signals in the categories of medical neglect alleged, inadequate climate, food quality complaint, and overcrowding reported — each bucket drawing from at least three distinct sources. The aggregate signal pattern reinforces the family-attestation cluster: these are not isolated complaints but recurring themes across multiple reporting channels.

Leadership and the Question of Accountability

Macon State Prison has cycled through wardens during the period of its worst violence. The AJC reported that Gregory Sampson, the former warden at Dooly State Prison, became the new warden at Macon State Prison on February 1, 2025. GPS's personnel records show Delvin Peoples as the current warden, with a start date in the warden role of January 16, 2026, and a prior role as Special Assistant to the Warden beginning September 1, 2024. The facility's deputy warden team includes Derrick McDaniel and Nancy Lawson as Deputy Wardens of Security, Curtis Jeffries as Deputy Warden of Care & Treatment, and Deserre Jones as Deputy Warden of Administration.

The question of accountability for the violence at Macon is complicated by a specific and recurring allegation in GPS's anonymous-tip channel. Multiple tips describe a staff member — in some accounts a lieutenant, in others a supervisory staff member — who was accused of deliberately making housing assignments that resulted in inmates being injured or killed, was removed from the segregation unit, and was subsequently placed back in charge of that same unit. One tip describes the staff member as having been reinstated as unit manager over the restrictive housing unit in 2025. GPS has received these accounts and records them as anonymous allegations; they have not been independently corroborated.

The settlement ledger, however, is a matter of public record. The State of Georgia has paid out more than $2.3 million in liability settlements tied to Macon State Prison incidents since 2013, with the two largest payouts — $1.375 million for Bobby Edward Lee Jr. and $750,000 for Coty Silvers — both linked to documented death records. That is the state's own accounting of what it has cost to resolve claims arising from this facility.

Sources

This analysis draws on reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CBS News, 13WMAZ, Solitary Watch, and GDC press releases; federal court filings and the GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records; Georgia Department of Public Health inspection reports; GPS's own mortality database and personnel records; GPS investigative reporting including "Three Weeks Under a Bunk: Torture at Macon State Prison" and "Two Commanders Say Georgia Hides Its Prison Staffing Crisis"; the October 2024 DOJ findings letter; and family and inmate accounts collected by GPS staff.