ATLANTA — Prosecutors have dropped charges against an Atlanta woman accused of passing contraband to a murder suspect in prison.
Lily Engleman was a social worker for the state's Public Defenders Council.
In 2019, she was arrested and charged with passing "two small unknown items" to murder suspect Ricky DuBose.
"I was completely confused and flabbergasted," said Engleman. "I just felt, like, hunted down. I felt like I was a pawn being used for this nefarious purpose."
Last week, prosecutors dropped charges against her.
According to her lawyer Mark Begnaud, last year, Engleman's defense team obtained a prison video of her conversation with DuBose.
They filed a lawsuit this week, saying the video proves Engleman never passed anything to the inmate.
"We are suing because this was an amoral, unconstitutional prosecution, and it should've never happened," said Begnaud. "Her career was upended for no reason and we believe the responsible parties at the Department of Corrections should be held accountable."
District Attorney Jonathan Adams says he still suspects Engleman passed contraband to DuBose, but thought it was fair to drop charges.
"You could not see actually contraband in the video, and based off of the fact that she was terminated with no prior record and no prior criminal record, we felt at that time was to nolle prosequi the case."
Engleman said, "Of course, I had not done that. My theory is really just that they were trying to do whatever they could to discredit his defense team, to ultimately discredit the capitol defenders office, so that, I think their end goal was to do whatever they could to get him executed."
Engleman lost her job, but says her social-worker's license has been reinstated.
DuBose was one of two Georgia prison inmates accused of killing two corrections officers on a prison bus in June of 2017.
He and Donnie Rowe are still awaiting trial on murder and other charges.