Major, LEE

Tenure Summary

Lee Major began his career with the Georgia Department of Corrections as a correctional officer in 2010 and rose through frontline and supervisory ranks—sergeant, lieutenant, captain, and unit manager—before reaching the facility-deputy level in 2025. In January 2025 he was appointed Deputy Warden and, weeks later, Deputy Warden of Security at Dooly State Prison. GPS records attribute ten deaths to Dooly State Prison during Major’s leadership tenure, all occurring between January 12, 2025, and January 19, 2026. The facility experienced a cascade of security failures while he served as its top security official: gang-related mass fights, a staffing collapse that left housing units unsupervised, contraband smuggling schemes, and allegations of staff complicity in inmate fraud. Major has been named as a defendant in several federal civil rights lawsuits, though none have resulted in a disclosed monetary settlement.

What Happened on Their Watch

Dooly State Prison (Deputy Warden and Deputy Warden of Security, January 2025 – present)

GPS records show ten deaths occurred at Dooly State Prison while Major held facility-deputy authority. The decedents and their recorded causes are:

* Joshua Parrott, 45, strangled (homicide) on January 12, 2025
* Horario Philmore, 58, homicide on February 2, 2025
* Timothy Glenn Williams, 56, natural/drug overdose on April 17, 2025
* Orlando Perez Glass, 49, cause category 6 (undetermined/pending) on August 17, 2025
* Marshall Davis Crews, 69, cause category 6 on September 19, 2025
* Willie Mote, 70, cause category 6 on October 14, 2025
* Paul Counts, 60, cause category 6 on October 30, 2025
* Darrow Brown, 58, homicide on November 7, 2025—a GPS user report states Brown “was killed by a member of the Crips gang” while being escorted
* Dexter Andres Levy, 32, cause category 6 on November 16, 2025
* Samuel Jacob Blackmon, 40, cause category 5 (natural/drug OD) on January 19, 2026.

Three of the ten deaths were ruled homicides; two were attributed to natural causes or overdoses; five remained undetermined or pending further investigation as of the records’ compilation.

The deaths unfolded against a backdrop of systemic breakdowns. In November 2025, an investigation revealed that many housing units at Dooly had no officer present for hours—or entire shifts—due to a staffing collapse. Earlier, in October 2025, a coroner told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that inmate Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta may have lain dead for more than 24 hours before his body was discovered at the prison. Separately, the same newspaper reported that James Yarbrough’s family alleged he died of diabetic ketoacidosis at Dooly after months of uncontrolled diabetes, characterizing the case as medical malpractice.

Security failures were evident in multiple domains. A corrections-officer cadet, Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., was caught at Dooly in December 2025 with 640 grams of pure methamphetamine; he later pleaded guilty, admitting he intended to deliver the drugs to an inmate. Inmate Abraham Rivas, housed at Dooly, ran a phone fraud scheme from inside the facility, impersonating a sheriff’s deputy to bilk a Florida resident. According to Wesh.com, WALB, and the News-Journalonline, Rivas claimed that correctional staff were aware of inmate scams and that he used fraud proceeds to buy marijuana inside the prison. During Major’s tenure, the prison was also shaken by a series of gang-related altercations: a fight on March 23, 2026, sent five inmates to the hospital; another on April 1 injured six, three of whom required airlift; and a May 22 brawl injured nine and prompted a statewide GDC lockdown and the cancellation of holiday visitation at four facilities, including Dooly.

An anonymous Facebook post in May 2026 alleged that the Dooly commissary had been severely understocked for weeks and accused the then-Deputy Warden of Administration of deliberately depriving inmates, though the post did not name Major. The allegation underscores the type of operational instability that characterized the facility throughout his command.

Special Management Unit (Lieutenant, Captain, and Unit Manager, 2022–2024)

No deaths are attributed to Major’s supervisory roles at the Special Management Unit. Nevertheless, multiple reports from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution detail systemic failures at SMU during the period when Major held successively higher positions there. The newspaper found that GDC officials falsified and backdated prisoner review forms to create an appearance of compliance. In the case of Ricardo Daughtry, no one checked on him for nearly seven hours before his body was found—despite a policy requiring checks every 30 minutes—and prison records later showed him “attending” activities after he had been pronounced dead. The Department of Justice documented GDC’s obstruction of federal investigators, including restricted access and hurried facility fixes. Commissioner Tyrone Oliver publicly characterized accurate news coverage of rising deaths as “propaganda,” and the GDC stopped including preliminary causes of death in monthly mortality reports in March 2024, a step the AJC described as an effort to obscure homicide counts. These developments all took place while Major served in unit-supervisor capacities at SMU.

Earlier Career Postings (2010–2021)

GPS records show no deaths attributed to Major’s earlier roles as correctional officer at Burruss Correctional Training Center, Tactical Squad member at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, sergeant and lieutenant at Metro Reentry Facility, or lieutenant at Burruss CTC. During his lieutenant tenure at Burruss (2019–2021), a civil rights suit—Dorsey v. Lee—was filed against him in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Litigation

• Dorsey v. Lee (5:21‑cv‑00435, GAMD, filed Dec. 7, 2021, terminated Nov. 7, 2024) – civil rights lawsuit naming Major as a defendant.
• Nichols v. Walmart Inc (1:24‑cv‑00236, GASD, filed Dec. 18, 2024, terminated Apr. 23, 2025) – Major listed as a defendant.
• Lee v. Correct Care Solutions Llc (1:19‑cv‑00012, GASD, filed Jan. 24, 2019, terminated Jun. 26, 2020) – lawsuit with Major as a party (role as plaintiff or defendant not explicitly confirmed by the case caption).
• Mccarthian v. Melton (1:11‑cv‑02654, GAND, filed Aug. 10, 2011, terminated Sep. 10, 2014) – Major named as a defendant.
• Childs v. Thurman (3:11‑cv‑00075, GAMD, filed May 31, 2011, terminated Jul. 10, 2012) – Major named as a defendant.

Sources

• GPS intelligence records and death-entry database
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — investigations into GDC homicides, medical neglect at Dooly (including the Soldiew-Acosta coroner allegation and Yarbrough case), SMU falsification of records and Daughtry death, GDC’s obstruction of DOJ, Commissioner Oliver’s misleading statements to lawmakers, and GDC’s concealment of death causes
• Wesh.com — “Georgia inmate impersonating Flagler County deputy,” reporting on Abraham Rivas’s fraud and his claims of staff awareness and drug purchases inside Dooly
• WALB — reporting on Rivas’s scheme and his admission about buying marijuana inside the prison
• News-journalonline.com — additional coverage of the Rivas scam from Dooly
• WGXA — coverage of gang-related fights at Dooly State Prison and the attempted meth smuggling by Cadet Williams
• 13WMAZ — reporting on gang-related fights at Dooly
• Georgia Public Broadcasting — reporting on medical neglect allegations at Dooly State Prison
• Facebook (anonymous public comment) — allegation of commissary shortages at Dooly
• CourtListener dockets for Dorsey v. Lee, Nichols v. Walmart Inc, Lee v. Correct Care Solutions Llc, Mccarthian v. Melton, and Childs v. Thurman

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on May 31, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.