Last updated November 4, 2026.(DS)

Dooly State Prison: A Medium-Security Prison Run as Something Else

Dooly State Prison sits in Unadilla, in Dooly County, on the Central Georgia corridor. It opened in 1994, was constructed in 1993, and was designed to hold 500 men. It now holds roughly 1,700 — GPS's facility record puts the current population at 1,711 against a rated capacity of 1,702, or 100.5 percent of rated capacity and more than three times the original design. The 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 is designated medium-security and is used for men who cannot be housed in county prisons, including many sex-offense and medically limited populations. It offers GED and basic education and limited vocational and religious programming. What follows is an attempt to describe what those facts have produced: a facility where the death registry, the incident record, the records productions, and the accounts of people inside converge on the same set of failures.

Overcrowding, Classification Drift, and the Staffing Collapse

The gap between Dooly's design and its population is the structural fact from which most of the rest follows. GPS's facility record lists a rated capacity of 1,702 and a population of 1,711. GDC's own custody figures, cited in the evidence base, show the prison holding 601 of 1,701 people in close custody in September 2026 — 35.3 percent of the population — at a facility designated medium-security. In October 2025 the figure was 455 of 1,590, or 28.6 percent. The direction is upward.

Against that, the officer corps has thinned. GPS has documented a systemwide vacancy rate that has run between 49.3 and 60 percent for multiple years against a national standard of no more than 10 percent, and has documented that the hiring pipeline cannot close the gap: an acceptance rate under 15 percent, 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."

At Dooly specifically, GPS reporting describes housing units with no officer present for hours or entire shifts. 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. He described posts once worked 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. In August 2024, when GDC human resources balked at firing him for raising the alarm, the agency sent Assistant Commissioner Ahmed Holt to meet with him; Ryals recorded the meeting and gave the recording to GPS. On it, Holt offered no plan to address the staffing crisis, 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." GDC records state Ryals resigned twelve days after his warning, on or about August 13, 2024; Ryals did not write a resignation letter.

GPS records show eight distinct sources reporting staffing shortages at Dooly in the past twelve months, concentrated in May and October 2026.

The Zeary Davis Homicide and the Warning That Preceded It

On the evening of September 26, 2024, Zeary Davante Davis, 31, was stabbed in Dorm E1 at Dooly. GDC's own EAH inmate-death report classifies the death as "INMATE DEATH — HOMICIDE — BY INMATE" and records the incident time as 21:42 in a dormitory building. The report states that security staff observed Davis on the dormitory floor, that EMS was notified at 21:44 and arrived at 21:55, that life-saving measures continued until 22:12 when there were no signs of life, that Dooly County Coroner Hudson was notified at 22:23, and that Davis was pronounced deceased at 22:40. The report records the cause of death as "undetermined" at pronouncement.

Three days earlier, on September 23, 2024, a private citizen had written to Commissioner Tyrone Oliver at his government email address 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 also stated that a close-security Blood was living alone in room 215 at the medium-security prison after forcibly removing his roommate, and that another Bloods member was sleeping in a room he was not assigned to. GPS reporting describes the sequence: Davis was stabbed to death on his birthday, three days after the letter was sent.

The accounts GPS has collected from inside describe what the response looked like from the floor. GPS reporting states that no officer was in Dorm E1 when Davis was stabbed; that no officer had the keys to the three gates between the dorm and outside medical help; that the prisoners' own volunteer fire crew reached Davis before the shift supervisor did; and that two prisoners kept pressure on his wounds. GPS has separately documented that Dooly has no panic buttons and that the only way to summon help from E1 was a contraband cellphone. Multiple sources at Dooly have reported to GPS on the absence of officers and the delay in emergency access; those accounts are aggregated here rather than itemized.

The criminal case has moved. Qwinterrious Jerod Dodson was indicted in State v. Dodson, Indictment No. 26DR-0063, Superior Court of Dooly County, July Term 2026, with a true bill filed August 10, 2026. The five-count indictment charges malice murder under O.C.G.A. 16-5-1(a), two counts of felony murder under O.C.G.A. 16-5-1(c), aggravated assault under O.C.G.A. 16-5-21, and unlawful acts of violence in a penal institution under O.C.G.A. 16-10-56. 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. An indictment is a charge, not a conviction. District Attorney Lyndsey Walters of the Cordele Judicial Circuit, in an October 26, 2026 interview with GPS, described the counts against Dodson.

GDC's records production in response to GPS's request on this case was partial — records for the death incident only. The agency did not provide the use-of-force report, the medical staffing roster, GBI/DA/law-enforcement referral records, disciplinary histories for three named individuals, classification and housing and transfer history for one incarcerated person including a Dooly-to-Washington State Prison transfer approval, correspondence to the Commissioner, Regional Director, or Ombudsman, or the Section-D incident records including an August 3 fractured-jaw incident, a September 17 incident, a June 23, 2023 disturbance, and E1 contraband seizures. What GDC did produce included a 20-page Main Control logbook for the death shift and IR 400132, redacted with a redaction date of July 14, 2026. IR 400132 records that no use of force was used in the Davis incident, flags a weapon/contraband-hard element, and lists the nature of the incident as including inmate-to-inmate assault, death, injury, disruptive behavior, contraband-hard, disruptive event, and homicide.

The notification trail runs to the top of the agency. GDC Commissioner Tyrone Oliver, Chief of Staff Alan Watson, Assistant Commissioners Ahmed Holt and Jack Sauls, and a list of other officials were personally notified of the homicide on September 27, 2024, between 03:57 and 03:58.

A Death Registry That Keeps Its Own Counsel

GPS has recorded 52 deaths at Dooly State Prison since January 1, 2020. That figure is a floor — GDC reports deaths roughly two months late — and it is the since-2020 registry count, not an all-time figure. The full list is maintained at https://gps.press/georgia-prison-deaths/facility/dooly-state-prison/.

By cause, GPS's registry records 20 deaths as Natural/Medical, 14 as Unknown/Pending, nine as Homicide, five as Overdose, three as Suicide, and one as Other.

The most recent 25 people on that list:

• 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; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 61.
• Jerry Mccaster died August 11, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; GPS's registry lists the cause as Unknown/Pending. He was 60.
• 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.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's running list of Georgia prison homicides documents the same deaths from the outside. The AJC reported that Raquon Ja'Veyonte Tucker, 26, died March 22, 2024, of "complications of blunt force head trauma," and separately that he died after being transported to an Albany hospital with cause pending toxicology and a DOC investigation. The AJC reported that Carlito Omar Soldiew-Acosta, 38, died June 22, 2024, of complications due to blunt force trauma, and that a coroner told a TV station he may have been dead for more than 24 hours before his body was found. It reported that Brian Lee Wainwright, 59, died January 4, 2024, in a manner ruled a homicide; that Chad Taylor Roadifer, 45, died October 27, 2023, of delayed complications of blunt force head trauma sustained months earlier; and that Dimitri Merci Jackson, 36, died January 3, 2023, of a stab wound to the chest.

The registry's Unknown/Pending column is not a neutral gap. GPS has documented that GDC's own cause-of-death coding — the coding UCLA's Law Behind Bars Data Project obtained by open records request covering 2015-2021 — is a departmental classification, not an autopsy finding, and that in multiple Dooly records no pathologist examined the body before a "Natural" designation was entered. The DOJ's October 2024 findings documented GDC's systematic misclassification of homicides as unknown or undetermined causes. At Dooly, the pattern is visible in individual files: the medical examiner declined to examine Terry J Davis, and the GBI production contains no cause and no manner of death for him. Deroski Harris, 36, was found unresponsive in the lockdown unit on April 25, 2022, and pronounced dead May 17, 2022; the GBI Medical Examiner declined to perform an autopsy or external examination, and signed out multisystem organ failure with intestinal infarction due to probable stimulant abuse. A frayed fan cord plug was found sparking on the metal toilet in his cell, and a DOC investigation found no electrical hazard.

Where autopsies were done, they sometimes tell a different story than the coding. GPS reporting describes the case of Joshua Parrott, initially ruled a suicide and later reclassified as a homicide by strangulation. The GBI Division of Forensic Sciences autopsy report for John Murray, Jr., who died April 14, 2022, at 25, lists ligature hanging as the cause and suicide as the manner. Jeremy John Wells, 51, died March 5, 2023; the Medical Examiner ruled the manner suicide and the cause hanging, with toxicology positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine. Thomas Adrian Chamblee, 32, died November 18, 2024; a complete autopsy found the combined toxic effects of MDMB-4en-PINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid, and methamphetamine, and certified the manner as accident. Dexter Levy's GBI autopsy lists hypertensive cardiovascular disease as the cause and natural as the manner.

Violence as Routine: The 2026 Cluster and the Gang Question

The incident record at Dooly is not a series of anomalies. Between March and October 2026, GDC and news outlets documented a run of fights that injured people in numbers large enough to require air transport. On March 23, 2026, five inmates were injured in a gang-related fight contained to one dormitory; all five were transported to an outside medical facility with non-life-threatening injuries. On April 1, 2026, six inmates were taken to local hospitals, three by Life Flight, from a gang-related altercation early that morning. On May 22, 2026, nine inmates were injured in a gang-related altercation believed contained to two dorms; seven had returned by the following day. That fight was followed by a statewide lockdown of all GDC facilities, and visitation was cancelled at Dooly, Washington, Ware, and Hancock state prisons over the Memorial Day weekend. On June 7, 2026, three inmates were involved in an altercation; one was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and returned.

GPS records show 38 distinct sources reporting alleged inmate-on-inmate assaults at Dooly over the past twelve months, with the heaviest concentrations in April and May 2026. GPS has received recurring accounts of stabbings in the housing units, of weapons recovered in the aftermath, and of staff response that arrived late or not at all; those accounts are aggregated here.

The gang question is where the record and the agency's own framing diverge. GDC consistently describes these fights as gang-related. GPS reporting describes something more specific: that gangs at Dooly were running housing units, telling officers "we're moving so-and-so into this cell" and getting the cell moves approved. The September 23, 2024 letter to the Commissioner described exactly that — a close-security Blood living alone in room 215 after removing his roommate. GPS has documented 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.

GPS's own reporting describes accounts that Qwinterrious Dodson broke a man's jaw in Dorm E1 on August 3, 2024, and that he admitted it to the warden's face and was not disciplined. The fractured-jaw incident is one of the Section-D records GDC declined to produce.

The Kitchen: Perfect Scores and What the Workers Describe

The Georgia Department of Public Health inspected Dooly's inmate kitchen on June 23, 2023; June 18, 2024; March 14, 2025; May 8, 2026; and May 13, 2026. Every one of those inspections was routine and every one scored 100, Grade A. The staff dining room, under permit FSP-046-000043, scored 100 at every recorded inspection from 2023 through 2026. The inmate kitchen operates under permit FSP-046-000022.

Those scores should be read against what GPS has separately documented. GPS's systemic investigation of GDC food service found that DPH scores systematically fail to capture conditions in prison kitchens because inspections are scheduled walkthroughs that do not assess equipment under load. At Dooly, inmate-maintenance workers have described to GPS opening kitchen equipment, including tray-prep tables, and finding active and severe roach infestations — thousands of roaches inside the equipment. Workers described a commercial dishwasher out of service since 2025, trays rinsed in trash cans with minimal soap and bleach and stacked wet, a walk-in freezer that failed and a replacement refrigeration container that repeatedly ran out of fuel with interior temperatures rising to 55 to 60 degrees, freezers rated for -10 to 20 degrees reading 30 to 40, a mouse infestation in the dry goods warehouse with rodents nesting in stored food, chicken thawed in trash containers, and food served to the population before mice were discovered in it. GPS's reporting has documented that meals at Dooly are served on visibly contaminated trays and that the tray-sanitizing equipment has been broken for sustained periods.

The contradiction is the finding. A kitchen can score 100 on a scheduled walkthrough on a single day and still serve food from equipment that workers describe as infested and broken. GPS has documented professional overlap between inspectors and facility staff in small-county settings as part of the regulatory-capture dynamic developed in its scores-without-sanitation reporting; the documented evidence is the gap between the score and the witness accounts, not any individual inspector's conduct.

The Marshall Project's May 16, 2026 investigation independently reported rats in kitchens, insects in food, moldy trays, and visible malnutrition across Georgia facilities, and quoted GPS connecting chronic underfeeding to the violence pattern DOJ documented. GPS has documented that GDC spends approximately $1.69 per person per day on food in 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 roughly 14 times more on medical care for incarcerated people than on their food.

Medical Neglect, Delayed Response, and the Cases Families Brought

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in January 2025 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 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 Georgia DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger, obtained through open records, records a $700,000 state liability payout tied to Dooly in 2020 linked to a documented death record for James R. Yarbrough.

The AJC also reported that a coroner alleged Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta may have been dead for more than 24 hours before his body was found. GPS has received accounts of in-custody deaths at Dooly where the circumstances were not documented in available reporting, and of medical response that arrived late or not at all.

The settlement ledger is a record of what the state has paid out on Dooly cases over 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), $700,000 to James R. Yarbrough (2020), $3,500 to Thomas Andrew Whittle (2023), and $1,000 to Amos Westmoreland (2023).

Contraband, Staff Complicity, and the Phones That Call for Help

Dooly's contraband problem is documented in both directions — what comes in, and who brings it. GPS's analysis of GDC's own contraband reports found that Dooly leads the system in incidents naming a staff-class person: 29 staff-class people across 77 incidents, ahead of Calhoun (28 in 159), Wilcox (26 in 131), Valdosta (25 in 56), Telfair (23 in 132), and Smith (20 in 105).

In December 2025, GDC cadet Julius Deshawn Williams Jr. was found during a routine search 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, which 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 March 2026, a Palm Coast, Florida resident reported sending two $500 payments to someone impersonating a Flagler County deputy. The funds were traced to Abraham Rivas at Dooly State Prison. Detectives obtained an arrest warrant charging Rivas with an organized scheme to defraud and grand theft. Rivas allegedly used the proceeds to purchase marijuana inside the prison, and told investigators that other inmates were running similar scams and that correctional staff were aware of the activity. In September 2024, the AJC reported that Magnum Jelani Neely used contraband cellphones to lead an Augusta-area drug ring from Dooly, contacting couriers to deliver meth inside and outside Georgia prisons; he was sentenced to 278 months.

The contraband phone cuts both ways. GPS reporting describes that on the night Zeary Davis was stabbed, the only way to summon help from E1 was a contraband cellphone. GPS has documented that GDC deploys Managed Access Systems cell-phone blocking technology at multiple prisons including Hays, Calhoun, Wilcox, and Dooly — a deployment that, at Dooly, coexists with a record of phones running fraud rings and calling for medical help.

Leadership, Records, and What the File Does Not Contain

Mark Agbaosi has been warden at Dooly since February 16, 2025. The deputy wardens of security are Lee Major, since January 16, 2025, and Lameka A. Kendrick, since August 16, 2026. Nequeva Nicholson is deputy warden of administration, since January 16, 2025, and Mable Larose Chaney is deputy warden of care and treatment, since January 1, 2016. Lameka Kendrick was deputy warden of security at the time of Jerry Jerome Smith's death, and Mark Agbaosi was warden.

GPS's reporting has noted the appointment of a warden at Dooly who lacks a bachelor's degree, as part of its documentation of the collapse in hiring standards that runs alongside the officer vacancy crisis.

The records themselves are part of the story. GDC's production on the Davis case was partial, and the agency declined to produce the use-of-force report, the medical staffing roster, the referral records, the disciplinary histories, the classification and transfer history, the correspondence to oversight, and the Section-D incident records. GPS's assessment is that the request was only partially fulfilled and has recommended a follow-up demand for the outstanding items with statutory withholding citations. The absence of those records is not itself proof of what they contain; it is a documented gap in what the public can see.

GPS's reporting also describes a mentoring program launched at Dooly in 2025 that participants described as effective and that collapsed after the staff member who ran it was promoted and transferred to another facility and the administration withdrew support — a pattern GPS has documented across GDC, in which programs end when an administrator changes roles.

Sources

This analysis draws on Georgia Department of Corrections records — EAH inmate-death reports, incident reports including IR 400132 and IR 401001, Main Control logbooks, offender lookup data, and custody figures — and on GDC records productions in response to GPS open-records requests, including the agency's partial production on the Zeary Davis homicide. It draws on court records: the five-count indictment in State of Georgia v. Qwinterrious Jerod Dodson, Superior Court of Dooly County, No. 26DR-0063, and the Georgia DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger obtained through open records. It draws on autopsy and medical examiner records produced by the GBI Division of Forensic Sciences, including reports for John Murray, Jr., Jeremy John Wells, Thomas Adrian Chamblee, Dexter Levy, Deroski Harris, David Smith, Dwight Junior Lance, Martez Terry, Ancion Wallace, Willie Garrett, Joel Lamar Long, and Terry J. Davis. It draws on Georgia Department of Public Health food-safety inspection records. It draws on reporting by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia Public Broadcasting, 13WMAZ, WGXA, WALB, WESH, and News-JournalOnline, and on The Marshall Project's May 2026 investigation of Georgia prison food. It draws on GPS's own investigative reporting, including its documentation of the staffing collapse at Dooly and its systemic findings on food service, contraband, classification, and mortality coding, and on the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset. It draws on firsthand narratives published in Georgia Prisoners' Speak — Tell My Story, and on public Facebook posts by Solomon Rowland, Marcus Johnson of the Georgia Prison Reform Coalition, and former GDC officer Tyler Ryals, whose account of the May 17, 2026 stabbing at Dooly — in which he wrote that a nurse was used as a human shield by an inmate being stabbed and was not physically harmed — is his own account and not a GPS finding. It draws on inmate, family, and worker accounts collected by GPS, aggregated here to protect the people who provided them.