Harmon, Orbey

Tenure Summary

What happened on their watch

Fatal violence appears repeatedly in the records. Amos Bennett Huff Jr., 60, died March 30, 2023; the Richmond County Coroner listed ligature strangulation and homicide, and the AJC’s Georgia prison homicides investigation identified the same death, with an event record stating his cellmate was charged. Rodarick Lee Hayes, 29, died May 25, 2024 from sharp force injury of the torso; event records say two prisoners and a correctional officer were charged, and the Department of Justice investigation found Hayes had been attacked multiple times before his death. Lamar Wesson Phillips, 39, died June 8, 2024, and Thomas Preston Johnson, 56, died April 12, 2024; incident-report data described both as homicides involving inmate assaults.

More recent records include Jerry Merritt, 59, who died Jan. 20, 2026 after what a user report describes as a stabbing with a “sharpened object” in the chest and shoulder; the report names John Jaquis Trimer as the accused. Jacobi Chomicki, 23, died May 22, 2026; a witness report describes a homicide in the D2 unit that sent one person to the hospital and one to the morgue, and the GDC May 2026 mortality report confirmed Chomicki’s death. Donald Hugh Young’s death was reported Aug. 5, 2026; GPS records state that GDC’s exact-ID lookup for Young was purged — which GDC uses for deceased individuals — and that a subsequent ASMP sweep did not re-see him; cause of death remains unknown.

Broader ASMP-related allegations catalogued in the record include AJC findings that a guard moved a prisoner with a violent strangulation history into Eddie Gosier’s cell before Gosier’s murder, and that Thomas Henry Giles was left for hours in a smoke-filled cell; the Giles matter resulted in a $5 million state settlement in January 2025. The AJC’s wider reporting during this period documented corruption, understaffing, and record homicides in GDC, and the 2024 Department of Justice report described violence, sexual assaults, and gang-run prisons enabled by a culture of indifference.

Litigation

• Martin v. Philbin, No. 1:18-cv-00212 (S.D. Ga.), filed Dec. 10, 2018, terminated Oct. 23, 2019.
• Martin v. Philbin, No. 1:19-cv-00216 (S.D. Ga.), filed Dec. 17, 2019, terminated Jan. 8, 2020.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Georgia prison homicides list and prison-system failures investigations, including ASMP-specific allegations
• U.S. Department of Justice — 2024 report on GDC violence, sexual assaults, and gang-run prisons, as cited in AJC reporting
• Richmond County Coroner’s Office summaries — ASMP death classifications, 2023–2026
• GDC mortality reports — Jan. 2025, May 2026, and CY2024 official mortality data
• GBI Medical Examiner’s Office — Stephen Prochaska autopsy and certification
• GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger — ASMP-related state payouts, including Thomas Henry Giles settlement
• Federal court dockets, Southern District of Georgia — Martin v. Philbin records

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Aug 30, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.