Beasley, Jacob

Tenure Summary

Jacob Beasley entered the Georgia Department of Corrections as a correctional officer at Rogers State Prison in 2007 and rose through the ranks — sergeant at Rogers in 2009, lieutenant and then unit manager at Telfair State Prison in 2012 and 2014, a sergeant's post at Telfair in 2016 and a lieutenant's post at Valdosta State Prison in 2017 — before moving into facility leadership as deputy warden at Hays State Prison in 2018. He was deputy warden at Telfair from 2019 through 2021, deputy warden at Valdosta in 2022, and Warden 3 at Smith State Prison in 2023 and 2024. In 2025 he moved to Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison as Warden 3, where he remains; his status is listed as active.

The death registry maintained by Georgia Prisoners' Speak attributes 46 deaths at facilities during his leadership tenures: 19 at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification, 14 at Telfair, 7 at Valdosta and 6 at Smith. Three federal dockets name him personally as a defendant — Grier v. Jacob Beasley (pending), Hamilton v. Beasley (pending) and Jackson v. Beasley (terminated) — and none of the eight dockets in the records records a payout amount. His Smith tenure overlapped the June 2024 kitchen shooting that killed an Aramark worker and put the entire prison system on lockdown, and his Georgia Diagnostic tenure has run through a death-row execution cycle, a homicide investigation into an inmate's death, and AJC reporting on staff criminal conduct at the facility.

What happened on their watch

Hays State Prison — Deputy Warden, 2018. The facility totals attribute no deaths to this posting. The records do carry one Hays item from that year: officer Voltaire Pierre, over a four-month period in 2018, received $7,000 for bringing marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine into the prison in noodle-soup containers and was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison.

Telfair State Prison — Deputy Warden, 2019–2021. Fourteen deaths are attributed to Telfair during this tenure. The pattern in the registry is violent: Aldrich Norval Cain died April 23, 2020, and Marcus Derrelle Pearson Jr. died May 29, 2020, both from multiple stab wounds, with incident reports listing four and two other inmates involved respectively; Cedric La'Troy Johnson Sr. died March 13, 2020, by strangulation; Luis Garcia Palacio died July 28, 2020, of blunt impact injuries to the head. Juan Carlos Arguelles-Reveles died May 7, 2021, from a stabbing in an incident report that lists 11 other inmates involved. The Georgia DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger records three Telfair payouts for 2021 incidents during this tenure: $2,600 (Derrell Ruth), $5,361 (Darryl Thomas) and $1,850 (David Morris). He had also served at Telfair earlier as a lieutenant (2012), unit manager (2014) and sergeant (2016).

Valdosta State Prison — Deputy Warden, 2022. Seven deaths are attributed to Valdosta during this posting. Dexter Jarrod Burnett died September 16, 2022, of a stab wound to the torso; a prisoner was indicted in February 2024 on a charge of killing him with a homemade knife. Hakeem Olajuwon Williams died February 28, 2022, of a stab wound to the chest; a claim filed against the state alleged an officer placed him in a cell while handcuffed and he was attacked by a cellmate. The DOAS settlement ledger records two Valdosta payouts for 2022 incidents: $1 (Jordan Hunter) and $70 (Earl McClendon). He had served at Valdosta earlier as a lieutenant in 2017.

Smith State Prison — Warden 3, 2023–2024. Six deaths are attributed to Smith during this tenure. Donquerius Lamonte Mahone died February 4, 2024, at Smith State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide. Gineli Antoine Gray died February 9, 2024, at Smith State Prison; Unknown/Pending. Jaydrekus Cartez Hart died June 16, 2024, at Smith State Prison; Suicide. Richard Jermine Williams died September 7, 2024, at Smith State Prison; Overdose. Orlando Jordan died September 13, 2024, at Smith State Prison; Unknown/Pending. Calvin Bernard Craft died December 14, 2024, at Smith State Prison; Unknown/Pending.

On June 16, 2024, inmate Jaydrekus Hart shot and killed 24-year-old Aramark food service employee Aureon Shavea Grace in the prison kitchen before shooting himself; the GDC placed all state prisons on lockdown and cancelled visitations, and Governor Brian Kemp announced a system-wide assessment by Guidehouse Inc. Investigators alleged the firearm was smuggled in by drone, per Georgia Public Broadcasting. Five days later, correctional officer Robert Clark, 42, was killed by a prisoner with a homemade weapon, suffering multiple stab wounds per death certificate records. The AJC described Smith as among the most understaffed and violent facilities in the state, with about two-thirds of officer posts unfilled, and reported a former officer's allegation that the supply gate lacked a metal detector; The Marshall Project quoted officer Andrew Phillips on being the sole officer over 600 men with no working fire extinguishers. AJC reporting also described inmate Nathan Weekes allegedly orchestrating murders and drug trafficking by contraband phone, and inmate Ricardo Silva running a meth operation from segregation. AJC reporting in this period alleged that then-former warden Brian Adams took cash payments in a contraband scheme; those allegations name Adams, not Beasley.

Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison — Warden, 2025–present. Nineteen deaths are attributed to this facility during his tenure. Daniel Claude Callahan died July 26, 2025, at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison; Natural/Medical. Christopher Wayne Crook died August 5, 2025, there; Unknown/Pending. Charles Ramen Coppeak died November 19, 2025, there; Overdose. Tabaya Marshall Gray died November 27, 2025, there; Unknown/Pending. Juan Jose Rodriquez died December 10, 2025, there; Overdose. Trevone Lavelle Lovett died January 10, 2026, there; Natural/Medical. Novice H Langston died January 12, 2026, there; Natural/Medical. Christopher Lee died January 31, 2026, there; Natural/Medical. James Thompson died February 6, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Terry Junie Marshall died March 2, 2026, there; Natural/Medical. Phillip Dwayne Rogers died June 14, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Mark Rutledge died June 26, 2026, there; Homicide. Leonel Cedillo died June 27, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. James Nelson Hall died July 2, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Shaun Corey Farrell died July 13, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Walter Brown died August 3, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Tommy L Tucker died August 6, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Michael Wayne Forker died August 8, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending. Thomas Harold Broach died August 22, 2026, there; Unknown/Pending.

The GDC's Office of Professional Standards led the investigation into Rutledge's death, sending the body to a GBI crime lab, per the incident records. AJC reported in January 2026 that officer Vera Jackson admitted receiving thousands of dollars to give death-row inmate Eric Perkinson information on shakedowns and staff. Federal sentencings in September 2026 closed a drone-smuggling case involving Deivon Waller (240 months), Tristahn Ash (92 months) and Asa James Ward (56 months), all tied to the prison in the records. The execution cycle for Stacey Humphreys ran through this tenure, including a December 17, 2025 scheduled date, clemency denials, and a September 16, 2026 date reset after litigation over parole-board conflicts of interest. A September 2026 video by former officer Kerri-Ann Crumbley, shared by the Human and Civil Rights Coalition of Georgia, described hiring and retention problems and a hospital-post policy dispute; accounts differ on whether she resigned or was fired.

Litigation

• Grier v. Jacob Beasley, No. 1:25-cv-00074 (GAND), filed January 7, 2025 — pending; Beasley named as defendant per the CourtListener docket.
• Hamilton v. Beasley, No. 6:25-cv-00057 (GASD), filed July 22, 2025 — pending.
• Jackson v. Beasley, No. 4:23-cv-00198 (GAMD), filed December 8, 2023, terminated January 8, 2024.
• Miller v. Holt, No. 5:25-cv-00356 (GAMD), filed August 25, 2025 — pending.
• Humphreys v. Oliver, No. 1:25-cv-06100 (GAND), filed October 24, 2025, terminated December 10, 2025.
• Humphreys v. Oliver, No. 1:25-cv-07012 (GAND), filed December 9, 2025, terminated January 15, 2026.
• Daker v. Oliver Filing Restriction Per 59 Order, No. 1:25-cv-03191 (GAND), filed June 6, 2025, terminated March 30, 2026.
• Pak v. Sprayberry, No. 4:21-cv-00113 (GAND), filed June 15, 2021, terminated March 4, 2022.

No outcome amount is recorded in any of these dockets.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Smith State Prison understaffing, contraband and corruption reporting (2023–2024); Vera Jackson case (January 2026)
• Georgia Public Broadcasting — drone-smuggling and contraband testimony before the Senate study committee (August 2024)
• The Marshall Project — officer staffing and conditions at Smith State Prison (January 2024)
• WGXA, WRDW and The Georgia Virtue — drone-smuggling sentencings and Humphreys clemency litigation (2026)
• CourtListener federal dockets — eight cases listed above
• Georgia DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger (open records) — Telfair 2021 and Valdosta 2022 payouts
• GDC Office of Professional Standards — Rutledge death investigation
• GPS death registry — date, facility and cause for each decedent named above

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Oct 18, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.