Last updated October 11, 2026.(DS)

Dooly State Prison: A Medium-Security Facility Running as Something Else

Dooly State Prison sits on the outskirts of Unadilla in Dooly County, a medium-security men's facility that opened in 1994 and was built to hold 500 people. It now holds roughly 1,711 — about 100.5% of its current rated capacity of 1,702, and more than three times its original design. The physical plant is nine main housing units of triple- and double-bunked cells, an open living unit, an isolation and segregation block, and a Fast Track unit. It runs GED and basic education, limited vocational and religious programming. It receives men who cannot be housed in county prisons, including large sex-offense and medically limited populations.

What follows is an account of what GPS has documented at that address: fifty deaths since January 2020, nine of them homicides; a run of gang-related mass stabbings that twice put the entire state prison system on lockdown; a staffing collapse in which a dormitory with no officer in it became the site of a killing; a food-service record in which perfect inspection scores coexist with witness accounts of roach-infested equipment; and a leadership record that includes a warden appointed without a bachelor's degree.

Fifty Deaths, Nine of Them Homicides

GPS's mortality registry records 50 deaths at Dooly State Prison since January 1, 2020. The registry breaks them down as 20 natural or medical, 12 unknown or pending, nine homicides, five overdoses, three suicides, and one classified as other. Every count is a floor: GDC reports deaths roughly two months late, so the true number is higher.

The most recent entries in that registry 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 Homicide. 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 Homicide. 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's facility death registry.

Several of these deaths were separately reported. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution documented that Zeary Davis, 31, died September 26, 2024, and that a county coroner told a television station he was stabbed to death. The AJC also reported that Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta, 38, died June 22, 2024, of complications from blunt force trauma, and that a coroner said he may have been dead more than 24 hours before his body was found. Raquon Tucker, 26, died March 22, 2024, after being transported to an Albany hospital, with cause pending toxicology; the AJC separately documented a homicide ruling of blunt force head trauma. Brian Lee Wainwright, 59, died January 4, 2024, in a manner ruled a homicide. 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.

Two deaths at Dooly have drawn particular scrutiny over how they were classified. GPS's own reporting describes the case of Horatio Philmore, who died at Dooly in an open dorm and was officially ruled a suicide, while inmate accounts describe strangulation. GPS reporting likewise describes Joshua Parrott, who died at Dooly, initially ruled a suicide and later reclassified as a homicide by strangulation. GPS's registry now lists both as homicides.

Medical deaths at the facility have also produced litigation. 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 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 also documented that James Michael Bailey, 44, died from sepsis contracted from pneumonia caused by an infected insect bite roughly four months into his sentence at Dooly.

Settlements: What the State Has Paid Out

Georgia's Open Records settlement ledger, maintained by the Department of Administrative Services Risk Management division, records state liability payouts tied to Dooly State Prison. The largest by far is $700,000 to James R. Yarbrough, tied to a 2020 incident and linked to a documented death record. The others are smaller but span a decade: $25,000 to Shon L. Miller (2016), $5,000 to Eddie J. King (2017), $3,500 to Thomas Andrew Whittle (2023), $3,100 to Rodney McCrary (2020), $1,000 to Amos Westmoreland (2023), and $1,000 to Anthony T. Hill (2019).

Gang Control, Mass Stabbings, and a Statewide Lockdown

The most visible thread in Dooly's recent record is gang violence producing mass casualties in a facility classified as medium security.

On March 23, 2026, a gang-related fight involving multiple people, contained to one dormitory, injured five incarcerated men, all with non-life-threatening injuries, all transported to an outside medical facility. GDC said it was investigating. Just over a week later, early on the morning of April 1, 2026, six men were taken to local hospitals — three by Life Flight — from another gang-related altercation. On May 22, 2026, a gang-related fight at Dooly injured nine men, all taken to a local hospital, seven returned by the following day. GDC placed every facility in the state on lockdown "out of an abundance of caution," and Dooly, Washington, Ware, and Hancock state prisons cancelled visitation over Memorial Day weekend. On June 7, 2026, an altercation involving three men sent one to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

GPS's own reporting has described the broader pattern behind these events: a statewide Blood-on-Blood factional war between ROLACC and G-Shine sets, coordinated violence across multiple facilities, life flights dispatched to two, stabbings at five, and 50-person tactical squads deployed. GPS has documented that the April 1, 2026 wave locked down at least 12 prisons.

The deadliest single incident in GPS's Dooly record is the September 26, 2024 killing of Zeary Davis. GPS reporting describes what happened around it in detail. A private citizen wrote to Commissioner Tyrone Oliver on September 23, 2024 — three days before Davis was killed — 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. It 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 reporting states the letter reached the Commissioner's government email address.

Davis was stabbed to death on his birthday. GPS reporting describes that there was no officer in Dorm E1 when he was stabbed; that Dooly has no panic buttons, and 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; that two incarcerated men kept pressure on his wounds; and that the prisoners' own volunteer fire crew reached him before the shift supervisor did. GPS reporting also describes that Qwinterrious Dodson allegedly stabbed Davis through the heart, and that Dodson has never been charged in the killing.

Separately, GPS reporting documents that Dodson broke a man's jaw in Dorm E1 on August 3, 2024, and that he admitted it to Warden Sampson's face and was not disciplined. GPS's reporting describes accounts in which warnings to facility staff and to a regional director's office went unaddressed.

Staffing Collapse and the Whistleblower Who Documented It

The staffing picture at Dooly is the connective tissue between the violence and the deaths, and GPS has documented it through an unusually well-sourced witness.

Tyler Ryals served as a GDC Correctional Emergency Response Team commander with nearly ten years of service across five state prisons. On August 1, 2024, he swore out a witness statement warning GDC leadership that prisons were collapsing due to staffing shortages, climbing violence, and contraband. He wrote that he knew he could face discipline for making the warning. GDC records state he resigned twelve days later, on or about August 13, 2024; he did not write a resignation letter.

Ryals warned 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. He described gangs running housing units — telling officers "we're moving so-and-so into this cell" and getting the cell moves approved — and officers so scarce that incarcerated people had to save them.

In August 2024, when GDC human resources balked at firing Ryals for raising the alarm, the agency sent Assistant Commissioner for the Facilities Division Ahmed Holt to meet with him. Ryals recorded the meeting and gave the recording to GPS. On it, GPS reporting states, Holt disputed essentially none of what Ryals had put in his sworn statement and did not deny that lone female officers were holding male prisons. Holt reframed the crisis as a nationwide issue — "It's not just a GDC issue. It is a system-wide issue. It is a nationwide issue" — asked Ryals whether 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." GPS reporting describes that Holt offered no plan to address the crisis. GPS has also noted that Holt appears in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation, cited by GPS, in which he swore in 2022 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.

The staffing numbers behind Ryals's account are systemwide and severe. GPS has documented officer vacancies running between 49.3% and 60% across Georgia's prisons for multiple years, against a national standard of no more than 10%. The hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: acceptance rate under 15%, with 82.7% 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." DOJ and the Guidehouse 2024 consultant assessment independently concluded that gangs effectively run multiple facilities, controlling access to phones, showers, food, and bed assignments.

GPS's intelligence system records staffing-shortage signals at Dooly across multiple months in 2026, including a May 2026 concentration of six distinct sources. Inmate accounts collected by GPS describe a missed scheduled count, emergency count procedures, a large number of officers absent on a single day, and a single officer responsible for a large section of the facility.

Classification Drift: A Medium-Security Prison Holding Close-Security Men

Dooly's profile is not incidental to its violence. GPS has documented a systemic pattern of classification drift in which medium-security facilities house close-security populations without the staffing or infrastructure that classification requires. GPS's analysis has found that four medium-security prisons — Dooly, Wilcox, Calhoun, and Washington State — house close-security populations at rates up to ten times higher than other facilities, with homicide rates four to five times higher than properly classified prisons. GPS has documented that GDC's own numbers show medium-security prisons functioning as high-security facilities, and that the DOJ found all four facilities in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The Dorm E1 letter to Commissioner Oliver is a case study in what that drift looks like on the ground: a close-security Blood living alone in a medium-security room after forcibly removing his roommate, and another Bloods member sleeping in a room he was not assigned to. GPS's intelligence system records classification-related accounts at Dooly in which a close-security man was housed at a medium-security facility, which witnesses describe as a violation of classification protocols.

Food: Perfect Scores and What Witnesses Describe

The Georgia Department of Public Health has inspected Dooly's kitchen eight times since June 2023, and every inspection returned a score of 100, Grade A. The inspections were routine, conducted by Chris Warren (May 2026), Nicole Hays-Morrison (March 2025), Brenna Maize (June 2024), and Joshua Jones (June 2023).

Those scores should not be read as a clean bill of health. 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. GPS's reporting specifically describes inmate-maintenance workers at Dooly State Prison reporting that opening kitchen equipment, including tray-prep tables, reveals active and severe roach infestations — thousands of roaches inside the 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. High DPH scores at GDC facilities coexist with sustained witness reports of equipment failure and food contamination; that contradiction is the analytical center of the GPS investigation "Dunked, Stacked, and Served."

The broader economics are documented too. GPS has reported 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. The Marshall Project corroborated the pattern on May 16, 2026, in an investigation by Schwartzapfel, "Rats, Insects and Mold," independently 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.

Family members who contacted GPS describe large rats in cells, doors, and kitchens at Dooly, roaches and bed bugs in dormitory housing, no air conditioning, and no hot water — and say they raised concerns with the warden multiple times without action.

Contraband, Fraud, and the Cadet Who Brought Meth

Dooly's contraband record runs in both directions — through the fence and through the staff entrance.

In June 2024, GDC officers found four packages of methamphetamine hidden in the pants of cadet Julius Deshawn Williams Jr. during a routine search. A subsequent vehicle search uncovered four more packages and a pistol, totaling 640 grams of 100% pure methamphetamine. Williams pleaded guilty in December to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, admitting he intended to bring the drugs into the prison to give to an inmate. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia.

Contraband cellphones have driven a parallel economy. The AJC reported that Magnum Jelani Neely, an inmate at Dooly, used contraband cellphones to lead a drug ring in the Augusta area, contacting couriers to deliver methamphetamine inside and outside Georgia prisons; he was sentenced to 278 months. GPS has documented that GDC deployed Managed Access Systems cell-phone blocking technology at multiple prisons including Hays, Calhoun, Wilcox, and Dooly, and that Georgia spent $50 million deploying phone-blocking technology at 35 prisons — a crackdown GPS's reporting links to a quadrupling of homicides, with violence erupting within weeks at every facility where GPS confirmed activation dates.

Fraud schemes have run out of Dooly as well. 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 two $500 payments intended for bond and an ankle monitor — funds traced to his prison commissary account. Detective First Class Douglas obtained an arrest warrant charging Rivas with organized scheme to defraud and grand theft following an investigation and interview at Dooly. 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 were aware of the activity.

Leadership and the Warden Without a Degree

Dooly's current warden is Mark Agbaosi, who has held the post since February 16, 2025. GPS reporting has documented that Agbaosi was appointed warden of Dooly State Prison without a bachelor's degree. 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).

The leadership context above Dooly matters to how its incidents were handled. 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." GPS reporting describes that the September 23, 2024 letter warning about Dorm E1 reached Oliver's government email address three days before Zeary Davis was killed.

What GPS Records Show at Scale

Beyond the individual incidents documented above, GPS's intelligence system records the following patterns at Dooly State Prison over the twelve months ending October 2026: 36 distinct sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults across six months, with concentrations of twelve sources in May 2026 and eleven in April 2026; nine sources reporting family safety concerns across four months; eight sources reporting staffing shortages across two months; seven sources reporting named staff misconduct across five months; six sources reporting unnamed staff misconduct across three months; and three sources reporting a death in custody across three months, all at critical severity. Three sources reported family fear for an incarcerated person's life in March and April 2026.

GPS has additionally received recurring accounts of stabbings in Dooly housing units, of a nurse used as a human shield during one such incident, and of a medical staff member resigning afterward over fear. GPS has received accounts of an incarcerated person found restrained at the facility, and of an incarcerated person transported to a hospital with a head injury followed by a shakedown and the lifting of a lockdown.

The through-line across all of it is structural. A facility built for 500 now holds roughly 1,711. Its officer posts go unstaffed for hours. Its gangs assign cells. Its kitchen equipment is infested while its inspection scores are perfect. Its dead are recorded, and then recorded again as unknown. GPS has independently tracked 1,913 deaths in GDC custody system-wide since 2020 — a floor, not a ceiling.

Sources

This analysis draws on GPS's mortality registry and facility records; Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger data obtained through Open Records; Georgia Department of Public Health food-service inspection reports; GDC contraband and incident reporting; U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia charging and sentencing records; reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WGXA, 13WMAZ, WALB, WESH, and News-Journal Online; The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation by Schwartzapfel; the October 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings letter and the 2024 Guidehouse assessment; and inmate, family, and staff accounts collected by GPS staff, including the recorded August 2024 meeting between former GDC CERT commander Tyler Ryals and Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt.