One of two former inmates at Augusta State Medical Prison, both of whom are accused of murder in unrelated homicides, was granted a $150,000 bond Tuesday, Sept. 20.
Because Deontae L. Holsey wasn’t indicted within 90 days, he was entitled to bond under state law. Holsey was indicted last month in Columbia County Superior Court in connection with the killing of 43-year-old Terry Lee Bennett.
Holsey and Bennett were cellmates at the prison which sits on the border of Columbia and Richmond counties. On Jan. 19, 2021, a guard noticed blood on the walls and floor of the cell shared by the men. Bennett was dead — his head battered, Assistant District Attorney Todd Hughes said Tuesday during Holsey’s Columbia County Superior Court bond hearing.
Bennett’s hands and feet were bound, and his body was found with his head in the toilet, Hughes said.
Holsey was in prison in connection with 2013 convictions for credit card fraud and entering an automobile with intent to commit a crime in Baldwin County. He has a release date in September 2023.
MORE: Georgia Supreme Court affirms murder convictions
Defense attorney Isabella Levy asked Chief Judge James G. Blanchard Jr. to consider Holsey’s lack of violent history, and that there are more facts about what happened. He will have a defense, Levy said, because he was protecting himself from Bennett. The prison guards on duty have admitted they did not do rounds as scheduled, and there’s a reason some have taken to calling the medical prison a “murder factory”, Levy said.
In June, the Columbia County grand jury indicted Daniel L. Ferguson on murder charges in the May 2, 2020, strangulation death of 39-year-old Eddie Gosier Jr. According to media reports, it is the second time Ferguson has been accused of murder in an inmate’s death. He was also accused on the Deb. 26, 2013, death of Damion McClain, 27, at Hayes State Prison in Chattooga County.
Ferguson, who the Department of Correction states was born in 1990, is also serving a life sentence for a 2008 murder in Walton County.
Both Holsey and Ferguson are being held in a maximum-security prison in Jackson.
The Augusta state prison is one of the prison facilities included in the federal investigation of Georgia prisons by the Department of Justice. The investigation under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act was announced last September.
According to the Justice Department, 44 homicides occurred in state prisons from 2020 to September 2021. In 2019, there were 12 homicides, and in 2018 and in 2017, there were only seven each year.
To contact the Justice Department with information about Georgia prisons and the safety of inmates, call or write: (844) 401-3736 or Community.GeorgiaDOC@usdoj.gov
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.Â
