Jones, Deserre'

Tenure Summary

Deserre' Jones held the rank of Deputy Warden at Macon State Prison for eight consecutive calendar years, from 2018 through 2025, according to Georgia Department of Corrections salary records. GPS records attribute 87 deaths to the facility during Jones’s tenure in that leadership role. No lawsuits personally naming Jones as a defendant appear in the available court data, though multiple high‑profile civil suits and a federal settlement targeted conditions at Macon State Prison while Jones served in the deputy warden post.

What happened on their watch

Macon State Prison — Deputy Warden (2018‑2025)

GPS records attribute 87 deaths to Macon State Prison over the period that Jones served as Deputy Warden. The death records supplied by GPS show a steady stream of inmate fatalities with a particularly heavy concentration of homicides. Among the earliest named decedents, Carrington Jwon Frye, 23, died on March 20, 2020, from stab wounds to the neck and chest, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation; his mother later alleged that he bled for more than half an hour before help arrived. That same month, the AJC documented the death of Rafael Becerra Blass, 36, from stab wounds to the upper torso. In July 2020, Bobby Edward Lee Jr., 38, was strangled to death by a cellmate — a convicted murderer — after officials allegedly placed him in the cell despite Lee’s pleas for protection, a sequence that became the subject of a federal lawsuit that later resulted in a $1.375 million settlement. During Jones’s tenure, homicides attributed to inmate‑on‑inmate violence continued at a pace that drew national scrutiny: Kendrick Malik Brown, 25, died from blunt force head trauma in October 2022; Carlos Sabino Ramos, 34, was stabbed to death in March 2023; and Kevin Deshawn Lamar, 44, died from sharp force chest trauma in August 2023. In 2024 alone, at least seven homicides were recorded, including Reginald Ginn, 31 (blunt force head trauma with a fan motor tied to a belt, per local news reports), Devontae Young, 28 (sharp force chest trauma), and Mathis Lee Ward, 37 (sharp force trauma from a homemade metal shank). GPS notes also document suicides — Calvin Earl Noble, 25, hanged himself in a two‑man cell in August 2025, and Cassiem Mahlon Johnson, 55, died by suicide the same week — adding to the death count.

The tenure coincided with systemic failures that were flagged by the U.S. Department of Justice and local media. The DOJ’s October 2024 investigation described Georgia prisons — including Macon State Prison — as dangerously understaffed, with assaults, stabbings, and rapes “routine.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that by October 2024 about two‑thirds of correctional officer positions at Macon State Prison were unfilled, and the coroner noted that only five to eight officers staffed the entire facility when responding to deaths. The Southern Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit in January 2025 alleging that 96 inmates in a single housing unit were forced to share a single toilet and lacked basic bedding and hygiene supplies. Intel reports collected by GPS additionally detail a drug trafficking ring run by inmates using contraband cellphones to import fentanyl from China, the arrest of four correctional officers for violating their oaths and making false statements in September 2024, and the horrific torture of inmate Christian Krauch, who was found under a bunk with brain bleeds, broken ribs, and necrotic wounds in early 2025. None of these events resulted in a personal legal action against Jones in the records provided, though the deputy warden role carried day‑to‑day oversight of facility operations throughout the period when the deaths and civil rights allegations accumulated.

Litigation

• Estate of Bobby Edward Lee Jr. v. Unknown Defendants — Federal lawsuit filed circa 2020‑2021, alleging that Lee was strangled by his convicted-murderer cellmate due to understaffing and official indifference. The case resulted in a settlement payment of $1,375,000 in January 2025, per GPS event records. No named individual defendants are recorded for Jones.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — “Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation” (multiple death investigations at Macon State Prison, 2020‑2024); reporting on understaffing, DOJ findings, and specific homicides.
• Department of Justice — October 2024 findings on violence and understaffing in Georgia prisons.
• GPS records — salary records confirming Deputy Warden tenure; death-by-facility totals; individual incident dates and cause-category classifications.
• 13WMAZ — reporting on drug trafficking cases originating inside Macon State Prison.
• Southern Center for Human Rights — January 2025 class-action filing over sanitation and bedding conditions.
• Associated Press / local news outlets (41NBC, WGXA, WALB) — individual death reports (e.g., Reginald Ginn, Sanchez Jackson).

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Jun 7, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.