Nicholson, Nequeva

Tenure Summary

Nequeva Nicholson entered the Georgia Department of Corrections in 2015 as a correctional officer at Macon State Prison, where state payroll records show a promotion to sergeant in 2018 and a second sergeant year in 2019. Records then list lieutenant years in 2020, 2021 and 2022 with no facility assigned, followed by a lieutenant posting at Dooly State Prison in 2023 and a correctional captain posting at Dooly beginning November 22, 2023, and running through 2024. Nicholson appears as deputy warden at Dooly for the first half of January 2025 and as Deputy Warden of Administration at Dooly from January 16, 2025 forward.

GPS's death registry attributes 13 deaths to Nicholson's leadership tenure, all of them at Dooly State Prison. No lawsuit naming Nicholson as a defendant appears in the records reviewed. Of those 13 deaths, the registry classifies two as homicide, three as overdose, one as natural/medical, and seven as unknown/pending.

What happened on their watch

Macon State Prison (2015–2019). Correctional officer, then correctional sergeant. Staff-level positions.

Lieutenant years (2020–2022). Records list the rank without a facility.

Dooly State Prison — lieutenant (2023) and correctional captain (Nov. 22, 2023–2024). Unit-supervisor positions; the death registry attributes no deaths to these postings.

Dooly State Prison — deputy warden (Jan. 1–15, 2025) and Deputy Warden of Administration (Jan. 16, 2025 onward). All 13 deaths the registry attributes to Nicholson's leadership fall in this tenure, at this facility:

• Horatio Philmore died February 2, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; the registry lists the cause as Homicide. An event record states the death was officially ruled a suicide while inmate reports indicate strangulation.
• Timothy Glenn Williams died April 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Overdose.
• Orlando Perez Glass died August 17, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Marshall Davis Crews died September 19, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Willie Mote died October 14, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Paul Counts died October 30, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Darrow Brown died November 7, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Homicide. An event record describes Brown as stabbed to death at the facility.
• Dexter Andres Levy died November 16, 2025, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Overdose.
• Samuel Jacob Blackmon died January 19, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Overdose.
• Martez Desmond Terry died April 29, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Natural/Medical.
• Jerry Mccaster died August 11, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Jerry Jerome Smith died August 21, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.
• Gary L. Harshaw died October 25, 2026, at Dooly State Prison; cause listed as Unknown/Pending.

Around those deaths, internal reports and news coverage describe sustained violence at Dooly. A March 23, 2026 fight injured five inmates and was described by GDC as gang-related, per WGXA; a separate altercation on April 1, 2026 injured six inmates, three of them airlifted. On May 22, 2026, a gang-related fight injured nine inmates and was followed by a statewide lockdown of all GDC facilities, per 13WMAZ and WGXA. On June 7, 2026, an altercation involving three inmates sent one to a hospital. Inside reports to GPS across 2025 and 2026 describe repeated stabbings, a mass stabbing, lockdowns, rival-group conflicts the facility reportedly did not separate, and a May 18, 2026 stabbing during pill call in which an incarcerated person reportedly used a nurse as a shield.

Conditions reports are also dated to this tenure: a January 1, 2026 report describes Dooly holding 1,593 people in a facility designed for 500, and a January 31, 2026 report cites an approximately 50 percent statewide correctional officer vacancy rate. A November 25, 2025 investigation described housing units with no officer supervision for hours or entire shifts. An inside report dated October 10, 2026 alleged a roughly 17-hour gap between the evening meal and breakfast, against a stated GDC food-service standard of 14 hours. A November 3, 2026 inside report describes one incarcerated person striking another and cutting someone's head open while a deputy warden was present in a housing area, and states the official did not intervene; the report does not name the official.

Other records from the tenure include an April 7, 2025 report of an inmate beaten by a lieutenant and a CERT team after requesting protection from gang threats, the October 1, 2025 stabbing of Zeary Davis, and the December 8, 2025 injury of Deputy Warden Charles Hudson, bitten while handcuffing an inmate. Contraband cases include cadet Julius Deshawn Williams Jr., found with 640 grams of methamphetamine and later sentenced to 10 years, per WGXA and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia, and the fraud case against Abraham Rivas, reported by WALB and Wesh.com. AJC reporting dated January 21, 2025 carried a coroner's allegation that Carlos Omar Soldiew-Acosta may have been dead more than 24 hours before his body was found at Dooly, and described James Yarbrough dying of ketoacidosis after months of uncontrolled diabetes in a case alleging medical malpractice.

Sources

• GPS death registry — 13 deaths at Dooly State Prison during deputy warden tenure
• Inside reports to GPS — stabbings, staffing, food service and non-intervention accounts, 2025–2026
• WGXA — gang-related fight coverage; Williams methamphetamine smuggling and sentencing
• 13WMAZ — gang-related fight at Dooly State Prison
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Soldiew-Acosta coroner allegation; Yarbrough medical-malpractice account
• WALB and Wesh.com — Abraham Rivas fraud case
• U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Georgia — Williams plea and sentence
• Facebook (anonymous public comment) — 2025 commissary shortage allegation

Synthesized by GPS Intelligence System on Nov 8, 2026 from positions, attributed deaths, lawsuits, intel reports, and news mentions in the public corpus. The supporting data tables follow below.