Ricky Dubose, who was sentenced to death in Putnam County Superior Court on June 16, ended up spending only 10 days on death row. Dubose apparently hanged himself to death in his cell on Sunday, June 26, according to authorities.
“I confirmed it with DOC (Georgia Department of Corrections) personnel that he committed suicide,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said Sunday evening.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale said he was notified by state authorities around
5:30 p.m. He said the Region 6 office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is heading up the investigation of Dubose’s death at the Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson.
The last time someone saw Dubose alive in his cell was around 1:15 p.m. Sunday, said Mary Chandler, GBI special agent in-charge. He was discovered unresponsive in his cell at 3 p.m. that day, and attempts were made to resuscitate him. They were unsuccessful, Chandler said.
The Georgia Department of Corrections requested the GBI to investigate the death and process the scene at the prison. Chandler said that was handled Sunday by Special Agent Dell Cole and Crime Scene Specialist Amelia Collier.
Chandler said she could not provide details concerning Dubose’s death until an autopsy determines the exact cause of death.
At age 29, Dubose was the youngest person on death row in Georgia, where executions are carried out via lethal injection at the prison in Jackson. Dubose was convicted by a Glynn County jury in Putnam County Superior Court on Monday, June 13, for the shooting deaths of GDOC officers Sgt. Christopher Monica and Sgt. Curtis Billue in June 2017. Dubose and his accomplice, Donnie Rowe, were at that time inmates traveling on a state prison transport bus from Baldwin and Hancock state prisons to Jackson.
Three days after convicting him, those same jurors voted unanimously for the death penalty, which Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison T. Burleson imposed.
Sunday, Sills said he has had inmates commit suicide in the past, so he was no stranger to it happening.
“It can be done just as quick as he murdered Billue and Monica. It doesn’t take long to hang oneself. It can be done in a matter of seconds,” he said.
Sills, who was one of the officers who escorted Dubose to death row in Jackson, said he was surprised to learn of the suicide. He said Dubose was young and had many years of appeals before his execution would come about.
“It’s not good; it’s not bad,” he added. “But at least the state won’t have to house and feed him and keep up with all the appeals and things associated with the appeals.”