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Kaigler, Briana
Status: active
Profile written August 2, 2026
This profile reflects positional accountability — this individual held the leadership roles shown during the dates shown, during which the listed deaths or lawsuits occurred. Inclusion does not constitute a legal finding of personal culpability for any specific incident.
Tenure Summary
Briana Kaigler began her career with the Georgia Department of Corrections as a behavioral health counselor, serving from 2017 through 2021 before ascending to facility leadership. In January 2022 she was appointed Deputy Warden at Coastal State Prison, a role she held through at least the end of 2025, with death records indicating she remained in that position into early 2026. GPS records attribute a total of 95 deaths to her tenure as deputy warden, all occurring at Coastal State Prison. During her watch, the facility became the focus of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, repeated health-code violations, a widely reported human-rights crisis, and a $600,000 state settlement for the death of an incarcerated man in 2022.What happened on their watch
Kaigler’s tenure as Deputy Warden at Coastal State Prison began in 2022. Over the following years, GPS records document 95 deaths inside the facility. Those deaths include a number of homicides: Salomon Andres Ramirez, 43, died in an apparent homicide on October 20, 2023, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation; Ryan Chase Archer, 25, was stabbed to death on December 13, 2023, just months before his scheduled release; Raymond Littles, 49, was killed in an incident classified as a homicide on April 16, 2024. In February 2026, two more men died violently: Aiden Snapp, 21, was “brutally beaten” and died of massive head injuries and internal bleeding, per an inmate report; Anteveis Brown, 49, was killed in a dorm assault described by a prisoner as involving the whole dorm. On February 27, 2026 alone, two other deaths were recorded—Stanley Brown, 61, and Terry Kendall, 67—and a second death within one week was confirmed by the Department of Corrections.The broader pattern of death was accompanied by mounting allegations of systemic failures. In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that Georgia prisons, including Coastal State, were failing to protect incarcerated people from violence, neglect, and unconstitutional conditions, concluding that GDC violated the Eighth Amendment. In February 2026, WTOC reported a human-rights crisis at the prison: workers and prisoners alleged that correctional officers routinely beat inmates, withheld food as punishment, subjected people to lockdowns lasting seven to ten days without shower access, and that crumbling infrastructure exposed them to black mold, rat and mice infestations, and frequent HVAC failures. WTOC further reported that no correctional officers were disciplined for violence against inmates during a six-month period in 2025. Meanwhile, a separate inmate report in May 2026 described the kitchen as closed for “debugging,” with some men receiving no dinner or only a single hamburger and hot dog, and commissary purchases capped at $80 every two weeks—“literally starving us,” the reporter wrote.
Conditions in the kitchen were corroborated by state health inspections. The Georgia Department of Public Health issued a score of 70 in April 2026 after finding live roaches, a dead mouse floating in backed-up mop water, mold-like growth on ceiling tiles, fish held at 122°F and chicken at 98°F—both below the required 135°F hot-holding temperature—and no sanitizer in the three-compartment sink while dishes were being washed. The facility had been on a steady decline in health scores since at least February 2025, according to GPS intelligence. In the same period, maintenance records showed over $5,000 spent on pest control between May and November 2025, while GDC said it had no records of any mold remediation.
Two notable legal actions reached financial resolutions during Kaigler’s tenure, though neither lawsuit named her as a defendant. The state paid $600,000 to settle a liability claim tied to the death of Dennis Carpenter at Coastal State Prison on June 1, 2022, and another $8,000 for a 2023 incident involving Ronald Ray Agan. In addition, a lawsuit filed in 2025 by the mother of Rufus Ramon Lee alleged that a broken cell lock had allowed assailants from other cells to reach and kill him in 2021—an event that predated Kaigler’s deputy warden role but whose legal fallout occurred on her watch.
Sources
- GPS records – personnel, position history, and death-attribution data for Briana Kaigler
- GPS death-tracking and Telegram relay reports – individual decedent records, cause-of-death notes, and inmate reports from Coastal State Prison
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Georgia Prison Homicides Investigation (Salomon Andres Ramirez, Ryan Chase Archer, Raymond Littles)
- WTOC – “Workers, inmates report human rights crisis at Coastal State Prison” (Feb. 12, 2026)
- The Georgia Virtue – health inspection coverage of Coastal State Prison, citing Georgia Department of Public Health findings (April 2026)
- U.S. Department of Justice – 2024 investigation concluding GDC violations of the Eighth Amendment at Georgia prisons, including Coastal State
- GA DOAS Risk Management settlement ledger (Open Records) – liability payouts for Dennis Carpenter (2022) and Ronald Ray Agan (2023)
- Georgia Department of Corrections official mortality data (January 2025 PDF) – cause-of-death entries for Lloyd Chapman and Ricky Chamblee
Positions Held
| Title | Facility | Tenure |
|---|---|---|
| DEPUTY WARDEN | COASTAL STATE PRISON | 2022-01-01 → present |
| BEHAVIORAL HLTH COUNSELOR SPV | 2021-01-01 → 2021-12-31 | |
| BEHAVIORAL HLTH COUNSELOR 3 | 2019-01-01 → 2020-12-31 | |
| BEHAVIORAL HLTH COUNSELOR 2 | 2017-01-01 → 2018-12-31 |
Deaths attributed during tenure
95 people died at facilities under Kaigler, Briana's leadership.
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