Five years after the slayings of two Georgia Department of Corrections officers, the death penalty trial of Ricky Dubose began Wednesday, June 1, in Putnam County Superior Court.
After two full days of testimony, Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison T. Burleson announced on Friday, June 3, that the trial would be recessed for five days. Testimony was slated to resume Wednesday, June 8, the day after The Eatonton Messenger went to press.
Dubose is one of two inmates accused of shooting to death GDOC officers Sgt. Christopher Monica and Sgt. Curtis Billue on a GDOC transport bus that was traveling through Putnam County on June 13, 2017. Billue was driving the bus, and Monica was guarding. They were transferring approximately 30 prisoners from Baldwin and Hancock State prisons to Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison in Jackson.
A few days after the murders, the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s office announced the death penalty would be sought on both Dubose and his co-defendant, Donnie Rowe. Rowe’s trial was held in September 2021 in Putnam County. The jury, made up of Grady County jurors, returned with a guilty verdict on all counts including the malice and felony murder charges. However, the jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on the death penalty, so Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Chief Judge Brenda H. Trammell sentenced Rowe to two consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. At the time of the murders, Rowe was already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a prior armed robbery conviction.
The slayings happened while the bus was traveling on the roadway of Georgia State Route 16, near Lawrence Shoals. After killing the two officers on the bus, Dubose and Rowe escaped the bus and subsequently led authorities on a three-day manhunt across state lines before being captured in Tennessee. Due to the widespread fear and lockdown of all business in Putnam and Morgan counties the day of the escape, along with international news coverage of the manhunt, jurors were selected and brought in from other counties to ensure impartiality. The jurors in Dubose’s trial are from Glynn County.
The prosecution
In his opening statements at Dubose’s trial last week, District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale took the jurors back to the day it all began.
“It was early morning, a typical start to a hot, middle Georgia summer day,” he said. “Not too far from this courthouse, a bus was traveling down Highway 16. …. At 6:40 a.m., evidence will show the defendant sitting at that table busted through the gate that separates the inmates from the guards… and he shot Christopher Monica and Curtis Billue in the head with Monica’s gun.”
Barksdale positioned the fingers on his hand as an imaginary gun and acted out what he was saying. He gave specific details of the trip, telling how the bus picked up Dubose and Rowe at Baldwin State Prison in Milledgeville, then went to Hancock State Prison in Sparta to pick up some other inmates.
“While the officers were in the Hancock prison, the defendants went through the gate and retrieved the lunch of the two officers and literally ate the lunch of the two men they were about to murder,” Barksdale said. “And then as the bus was traveling on Highway 16 and crossed over the (Oconee River) Lake Sinclair bridge and into Putnam County, the defendant breached the gate again, but this time, he was not looking for lunch. What you will see is someone with skill and precision retrieves the Glock 9 at the front of the bus, loads it, and shoots officers Monica and Billue, then kicks out a window and escapes. All in 40 seconds. Forty seconds is all it took, and you’re going to see every second of it,” he added.
Barksdale continued providing details of the incident, telling how the inmates hijacked a car and drove to Eatonton, then on to Madison where they hid the car and abandoned it, ripped the prison blue stripes from their pants, took off their prison inmate shirts and carefully concealed them in a drainpipe. From there, the two walked to a house which they burglarized and changed into civilian clothing. They continued walking along a creek bed and through the woods into rural Morgan County, where they stole an F250 pickup from a rock quarry. They used that to drive 250 miles into Shelbyville, Tennessee, which Barksdale referred to as “the old stomping grounds of Donnie Rowe.”
The D.A. continued providing specific details of how the two methodically concealed their whereabouts from authorities until they gave up and surrendered in Rutherford County, Tennessee.
“At the end of the evidence of the case, what you’re going to be left with is an intelligent, calculated individual motivated by his desire to escape the Georgia Chain Gang,” Barksdale told the jurors.
The defense
Capital Defense Attorney Gabrielle Amber Pittman did not dispute the happenings in her opening statements. She did, however, counter the D.A.’s comments that her client is “an intelligent, calculated individual.”
“This case is about a terrible crime committed by a man suffering from mental illness,” Pittman said. “And he was a member of a gang, the Ghost Face gangsters, but that’s not evidence and that’s not the whole story. He is a mentally and intellectually disabled person.
“I acknowledge that this is a tragedy, and our hearts go out to the Billue and Monica families and the Department of Corrections,” she continued. “The truth is, Ricky is guilty and he’s intellectually disabled, and he’s mentally ill,” she added, placing emphasis on the word and each time.
Pittman set down two white cardboard file boxes in front of the jurors and told them the boxes contained volumes of records that will prove her client is mentally ill. She said he was experiencing PTSD, having flashbacks of childhood abuse and molestation.
“No matter what the state may be alleging, Ricky Dubose was not a criminal genius,” she said. “He was trying to get help and dull the memory of his childhood abuse. He’s intellectually disabled, so he has a hard time processing information. He is a follower. The bus video will show Ricky following Donnie through that gate. We’re not saying this makes him not guilty; we are saying that it matters.”
Pittman said Dubose had been in and out of jail since he was 12 years old, yet in spite of his criminal history, he had never before been on trial before a jury. She pointed out that Rowe, who already was serving a life sentence, had nothing to lose; but, at the time of the murders on the GDOC bus, Dubose was getting out of prison in a few years.
The trial continued Wednesday and Thursday, June 1-2, with a total of 23 witnesses testifying for the prosecution. Several law enforcement officers from Rutherford County, Tennessee, had driven to Putnam County to testify on Friday but were unable to do so because of the aforementioned order to recess the trial for five days. The reason was never given, and the court order was immediately sealed by Judge Burleson.