Ricky Allen “Juvie” Dubose, who on June 16 was sentenced to death by lethal injection for murdering two correctional officers five years ago during an escape from a Georgia prison transport bus, committed suicide Sunday in his cell on death row at the state prison near Jackson, officials said.
Details of how Dubose, 29, from northeast Georgia, killed himself were not immediately clear, said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who confirmed Dubose’s death to The Telegraph.
Sills said Dubose apparently hanged himself.
The GBI has been called in to investigate the incident.
Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit DIstrict Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III, whose office prosecuted Dubose and his accomplice in the killings, Donnie Rowe, who was sentenced to life without parole in the murders last year, said Sunday evening that he didn’t “really have an opinion either way” when asked for a comment on Dubose’s death.
“What happened this afternoon … is done in his hands,” Barksdale said.
Sills, the Putnam sheriff who was the lead investigator in the murders of the slain officers, Curtis Billue and Christopher Monica, said of Dubose, “I feel sorry for his family, I do. … At least some of his family. Just like I did when we arrested him.”
Sills, who has overseen investigations of seven other death penalty cases in which six of the killers have since been executed — one was sentenced to life without parole — said that in his experience an inmate who is “determined” to take his own life can be difficult to deter.
The sheriff said Dubose’s case would likely have run a 20-year course through the court system, adding matter-of-factly that his death Sunday “sure saves the taxpayers of Georgia a lot of money on appeals.”
Lawyers who represented Dubose at trial could not immediately be reached for comment.
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