Caldwell, Antoine Galen

Tenure Summary

Antoine Galen Caldwell rose through the Georgia Department of Corrections from a sergeant at Dooly State Prison in 2000 to lieutenant, chief of security, and deputy warden of security there by 2005. After a 2012 posting as Deputy Director of the Audits and Compliance Unit, Caldwell held warden roles at Wilcox State Prison in 2013 and 2016, at Johnson State Prison from 2017 through 2021, and at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison from 2022 through June 2023, then moved into regional and field operations posts.

GPS records attribute 61 deaths to Caldwell’s facility-leader tenures: 27 at Johnson State Prison and 34 at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison. No deaths are attributed in GPS records to his warden stints at Wilcox State Prison. A lawsuit over the 2021 death of David Lamar Henegar at Johnson State Prison ended in a reported $4 million state settlement in 2026. Multiple deaths at both facilities were documented as homicides by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation.

What happened on their watch

Dooly State Prison (2000–2005)

Wilcox State Prison (Warden, 2013 and 2016)

Johnson State Prison (Warden 1, 2017–2021)

Two deaths at Johnson were documented by the AJC’s Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation as homicides. According to the AJC, David Lamar Henegar, 44, died on October 16, 2021, from manual strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head; Jerry L. Brown, 61, died on November 12, 2020, from stab wounds to the head and blunt force injury to the face.

The Henegar case carried substantial litigation. Lawsuits filed by Henegar’s family allege that prison staff ignored Henegar’s screams and other prisoners’ pleas during a five-hour beating, that Henegar had been housed with a mentally ill cellmate who had previously attacked him, and that officials kept him past his scheduled release date. The AJC reported that Antone Hinton-Leonard was charged with murder in Henegar’s death. GPS records show a $4 million settlement in the Henegar death case was reported on April 6, 2026, on the eve of trial.

Other Johnson deaths during Caldwell’s tenure were classified by GDC’s own custodial mortality coding, obtained by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project, as suicide, natural, or undetermined. That dataset — which is GDC’s own classification, not an autopsy finding — coded deaths such as Richard Lawrence Forrest, Russell Scott Silman, Anthony Termayne Wilson, and Robert Michael Stanfield as suicide, and listed several 2021 deaths, including Charles Bryson, Jeremy Gilbert, Danzell Mitchell, Mark Patat, Steve Lawrence, and Joe Hedden, as undetermined.

Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison (Warden 3, 2022–June 2023)

According to the AJC’s Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation, at least four of those deaths were homicides: Daniel Charriez, 46, died February 23, 2022, from delayed complications of traumatic brain injury after a four-month interval; Boyd Williams, 64, died October 3, 2022, from manual strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head; Elmer W. Pless, 65, died May 15, 2023, from strangulation; and Carrell D. Johnson, 32, died June 6, 2023, from chopping injuries of the head and sharp-force injuries of the torso.

The death of Billy Joe Farmer, 42, on March 25, 2023, is recorded in GPS records as certified suicide by the GBI Division of Forensic Sciences. Farmer’s wife, April Farmer, later disputed that classification, asserting he was killed. According to GPS records, GDC’s own Incident Report 364661 corroborates that Farmer reported a threat to his life minutes before his death, that help was deferred, that the death was not videotaped, and that it was not forwarded for investigation. GPS retains the medical examiner’s manner-of-death determination while preserving the family’s dispute.

Several GDCP deaths during Caldwell’s tenure show gaps in state forensic review. GPS records state that GBI open-records responses returned no responsive autopsy or medical-examiner records for Amos Hubbard, Ricky Morgan, and Kenneth Matthews, leaving their causes unknown or pending. For Ricky Dane Hatcher, GPS records show the GBI reviewed the case but declined to perform an autopsy, leaving the cause of death to the county coroner.

Litigation

Cases listed in GPS litigation records as naming Caldwell as a defendant include:

• McKenzie v. Oliver, No. 4:26-cv-00108, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (GAND), filed April 28, 2026; pending.
• Daker v. Oliver Filing Restriction Per 59 Order, No. 1:25-cv-03191, GAND, filed June 6, 2025; terminated March 30, 2026.
• Thrift v. Caldwell, No. 5:24-cv-00002, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia (GAMD), filed January 2, 2024; pending.
• Carey v. The Georgia Department of Corrections, No. 1:20-cv-02235, GAND, filed May 26, 2020; terminated March 31, 2023.
• Nance v. Oliver, No. 1:20-cv-00107, GAND, filed January 8, 2020; terminated February 13, 2025.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation, including cause-of-death findings for Carrell D. Johnson, Elmer W. Pless, Boyd Williams, Daniel Charriez, Jerry L. Brown, and David Lamar Henegar; reporting on the Henegar lawsuit and $4 million settlement.
• UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project — GDC custodial mortality dataset obtained via open records, covering GDC’s own coding for Johnson State Prison deaths from 2015–2021.
• GBI Division of Forensic Sciences / GBI Medical Examiner records obtained by GPS via open-records requests, including records for Billy Joe Farmer, Ricky Dane Hatcher, Timothy Bernard Revis, and the no-records responses for Amos Hubbard, Ricky Morgan, and Kenneth Matthews.
• GPS records — personnel history, death counts by facility, incidents, and case submissions.
• CourtListener dockets for the five lawsuits listed above.

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 23, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.