Watson, Kochelle

Tenure Summary

Kochelle Watson held multiple Georgia Department of Corrections posts, moving from correction operations and lieutenant/unit-manager roles in 2015–2018 into facility leadership. GPS records place her as Deputy Warden at Johnson State Prison from 2019 through 2021, as Correctional Superintendent at Emanuel Probation Detention Center in 2022 and again in 2023, and as Warden/Warden 1 at Johnson State Prison beginning in 2024. GPS records attribute 67 deaths at Johnson State Prison to Watson’s tenures there; no deaths are listed for the Emanuel PDC posting. The record includes multiple AJC-cited homicide findings and settled claims tied to Johnson State Prison during her time, including a $1,449,640 state payout in the 2020 Jerry Lee Brown death and a $4,000,000 payout in the 2021 David Lamar Henegar death, per the Georgia DOAS settlement ledger.

What happened on their watch

Johnson State Prison — Deputy Warden (2019–2021)

During Watson’s deputy-warden tenure, GPS records show deaths including Jerry Lee Brown, 61, who died Nov. 12, 2020. The AJC’s Georgia prison homicides investigation lists his death as a homicide from stab wounds to the head and blunt force injury to the face. David Lamar Henegar, 44, died Oct. 16, 2021; the AJC lists manual strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head. The DOAS settlement ledger records payouts of $1,449,640 for Brown and $4,000,000 for the Henegar estate. In the Henegar case, the AJC reports lawsuit allegations that officers ignored hours of screams and pleas, that Henegar was housed with a mentally ill cellmate who had previously attacked him, and that he was held past his scheduled release date. Other deaths during this period carry GDC’s own classifications of natural, suicide, or undetermined in the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project dataset, including Richard Lawrence Forrest (suicide), Anthony Termayne Wilson (suicide), and Charles Bryson (undetermined).

Emanuel Probation Detention Center — Superintendent (2022–2023)

GPS records show no deaths attributed to Watson’s Emanuel PDC superintendent tenure.

Johnson State Prison — Warden (2024–present)

During Watson’s warden tenure, the AJC identifies Kenneth Adam Robinson, 50, who died Aug. 10, 2024, as a homicide. GPS records note Michael Elias Peschel, 36, died Mar. 14, 2026, with a note that he suffered 20 stab wounds from his cellmate; Paul Russell Brewster, 48, died June 9, 2025, with a prisoner report listing homicide; and Phillip Lamar Byrd, 46, died Jan. 18, 2026, with a prisoner-sourced Telegram account alleging he was beaten, left in the cold, and injected with drugs. The GDC June-2026 monthly mortality report confirmed the fact of Ernest Perez’s death on June 23, 2026, but gave no cause. Martrese Jamon McKay, 30, died Apr. 18, 2026; GPS sources gave conflicting accounts — an initial suicide report and a later report of a sudden collapse. Many other 2024–2026 Johnson deaths appear in GPS records without cause narratives. During this period, a former GDC CERT commander, Tyler C. Ryals, said in a YouTube video that around spring 2024 the roughly 1,400-man Johnson compound operated with four staff total and no lieutenant; GPS records treat this as a witness claim. In April 2026, GPS received reports and photos of contaminated food trays at Johnson that some incarcerated people said had caused illness.

Litigation

• Wade v. Morgan, No. 3:23-cv-00073 (S.D. Ga./GASD), filed Aug. 31, 2023. CourtListener lists the docket as pending. GPS records tie the suit to the Oct. 16, 2021 killing of David Lamar Henegar at Johnson State Prison, and the AJC reports the plaintiffs’ allegations that prison staff failed to protect him. GPS records separately note a $4,000,000 settlement in the Henegar matter.

Sources

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution — Georgia prison homicides investigation and April 2026 Henegar settlement reporting
• CourtListener — docket for Wade v. Morgan, No. 3:23-cv-00073
• Georgia Department of Administrative Services Risk Management settlement ledger (Open Records)
• UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project custodial mortality dataset (based on GDC open records)
• Tyler C. Ryals (YouTube) — former GDC CERT commander’s account of Johnson State Prison staffing, spring 2024
• GPS records — incident reports, death records, the GDC June-2026 monthly mortality report, obituary research, and source submissions

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.