Local officials, victim’s family clash over records in Macon jail death. Here’s why
An attorney working on a jail death lawsuit against Sheriff David Davis in July 2025 requested records regarding other deaths in the jail, alleging it would prove a pattern of unconstitutional conduct, but county officials are insisting they can’t release the documents because they’re part of other court cases.
Since he never received them, the lawyer has asked a Bibb County judge to order the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office and the Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office to release the evidence he asked for, according to court records.
The lawsuit arose from Carlos Shelley’s death in 2022 at the Bibb County Jail while on suicide watch. He and another incarcerated man, Joseph Moore, had an argument that escalated when he began strangling Shelley for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, according to the lawsuit.
Davis, as well as many other employees of the Bibb County Jail, were sued in 2024, accused of failing to prevent the incident, court records show.
As the case developed through the legal system, attorney Michael Hill — alleged that Davis allegedly made contradictory statements during depositions in the case, where he testified that he didn’t have any specific recollection of unconstitutional conduct and was not involved in the daily operations at the jail, court records show. Hill is the lawyer for Ashanti Williams and Carlos Jackson, Shelley’s surviving children who filed the lawsuit.
Hill, believing Davis’ statement was untrue, requested multiple documents from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office and the district attorney’s office. He asked that the sheriff’s office provide information regarding the deaths that have occurred in the jail since 2020, staffing reports from 2017 through 2022, every message Davis and other employees have sent from 2017 through 2022 regarding staffing conditions, and other administrative documents, according to court records.
“The documents that we requested are direct evidence of that knowledge and the pattern of unconstitutional conduct that created unsafe conditions of confinement leading to Mr. Shelley’s death,” he told Charles Adams, Davis’ attorney, via email, according to court documents.
Hill also asked for the district attorney’s office to provide all the cases related to the deaths of incarcerated people at the Bibb County Jail, especially deputy Christopher Knight’s in 2021, as well as documents that mention the conditions at the Bibb County Jail regarding staffing and institutional practices.
“We cannot … ignore the connection between poor detention conditions and tragic outcomes like this case,” Hill wrote in court records. “The evidence suggests that past institutional practices administering ‘jail justice’ to inmates contributed to circumstances that led to Deputy Knight’s death.”
As of Thursday, Hill hadn’t gotten the records and a court hearing was scheduled for Friday to determine whether the records should be turned over.
Why the sheriff’s office, district attorney don’t want to release records
Adams told Hill in an email that “we feel that your … Request for Production of Documents is to a great extent irrelevant and overbroad,” court records show.
“Moreover, responding to it would involve an untold amount of man-hours, at substantial cost to the Sheriff’s Department and the taxpayers, something I think would be of concern to the Court, in light of the very tenuous relevance of many of these requests,” Adams said, according to court records.
Cindy Adams, chief of appeals for the district attorney’s office, said that, due to a pending felony murder case against Moore, the office cannot share information on that case because “the release of which … would likely serve potentially to harm and to prejudice the State’s prosecution of its criminal case against Moore,” according to court records.
She also argued that Hill didn’t file his request on time, therefore he is not entitled to have a judge compel the production of the materials he wanted, court records show. Adams also requested that the request for documents be dismissed.
Senior Judge Richard Winegarden, who is overseeing the case, will preside over the hearing Friday.
