Judge orders release of Bibb County Jail records. What we know
A Bibb County judge ordered the release of some documents that an attorney working on a jail death lawsuit had requested, according to court proceedings from Friday.
Michael Hill, the attorney representing the surviving children of Carlos Shelley, who died in 2022, asked Sheriff David Davis and the Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office on July 30, 2025, for certain documents he said would prove a pattern of unconstitutional conduct at the Bibb County Jail.
Since he never received the documents, Senior Judge Richard Winegarden conducted a hearing on Friday afternoon to resolve the issue and order the release of the records, even though they were limited and under a protective order.
Davis and the district attorney’s office will have 60 days from Winegarden signing the order to deliver the records.
Didn’t receive records because they were ‘irrelevant and overbroad’
Hill, on behalf of Ashanti Williams and Carlos Jackson, sued Davis and other employees of the Bibb County Jail in 2024 for failing to prevent the incident that led to Shelley’s death. Shelley died in 2022 after 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.
As the case progressed and Hill conducted depositions of Davis, he noticed that the sheriff mentioned he didn’t have any specific recollection of unconstitutional conduct and was not involved in the daily operations of the jail — something he believed was not true. To challenge the statement, he requested from Davis and the Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office multiple records regarding criminal conduct by those incarcerated, internal investigations of the deaths that have occurred in the jail, and logbooks that show how many officers were working in different sections of the jail and what they were doing.
He also requested communications between Davis and other employees of the jail, District Attorney Anita Howard, and U.S. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock regarding understaffing and the conditions to which inmates are subjected inside the jail.
However, Charles Adams, Davis’s attorney, declined to give Hill all the records he requested because they were “irrelevant and overbroad,” according to their email conversation shown in court records. Cindy Adams, the chief of appeals for the district attorney’s office, said she couldn’t provide the records relating to Moore, as it would affect the pending felony murder case.
‘Unusual posture’
Winegarden, before addressing the records, asked Cindy Adams, who was there on behalf of the district attorney’s office, why she never responded to Hill’s request for the records until the week of the hearing, when she asked for the request to be dismissed.
“First of all, this was a pending criminal case in our office, and we normally do not respond to give anything with a pending criminal case, while that case is pending,” Cindy Adams said. “Also, this … was a little bit of an unusual posture for this case, because this is a case in which the sheriff’s office was involved; also, everything we get, as far as what the district attorney’s office has for this case, comes from the sheriff’s office.”
Winegarden wasn’t satisfied with the answer, even when Cindy Adams argued that Hill’s request for the records was late. He denied Cindy Adams’ request to dismiss Hill’s request for records.
What the attorney will receive
The judge, to find a resolution between Hill, the district attorney’s office, and Davis’ legal team, allowed the release of the records Hill requested, but they were limited and under a protective order.
Hill will receive from the district attorney’s office communications between Davis and Howard regarding the poor conditions of the jail from Jan. 1, 2021, when the district attorney first took office, until Friday. He will also receive interviews that were conducted by the sheriff’s office with inmates around the time Shelley died, but will be under a protective order since Moore’s case is pending.
He will also receive the grand jury’s inspection reports of the jail from the district attorney’s office. Hill seeks these records to investigate claims made by some of the defendants during depositions that the jail was unsafe.
As for the records Hill requested from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, he had only received two of them. He requested internal reports and other investigative documents for the deaths of Marcelles Williams Sr. and James Geiger at the Bibb County Jail. Davis’ legal team agreed to release the internal reports and other investigative documents for other people who have died at the jail, including information on Dakota Smithers, Christopher Knight and William Homan.
“We have to show a pattern,” Hill said when asked why he wanted the records on the deaths at the Bibb County Jail.
Hill will also receive correctional staffing records from 2020 to 2022 to determine whether there is understaffing.
On top of that, Hill will receive records of all criminal activity that has taken place at the jail, including suicides, but excluding obstruction of an officer charges from 2020 until 2022. Hill noted in court that violence against inmates was rising at the jail because of the lack of staffing.
He’ll also receive email communications in which employees of the Bibb County Jail, including Davis, discuss the lack of staffing at the jail, housing, and inmate safety. Hill will also receive communications that Davis has had with Howard, as well as Ossoff and Warnock regarding the conditions at the jail.
Hill will also receive logbooks that detail correctional officers’ actions at the infirmaries and the south and west wings from 2022.
