BUTTS COUNTY, Ga. — While taking part in the defense of Putnam County prison bus escapee Ricky Dubose, Lily Engleman ended up in her own legal nightmare.
Engleman was falsely accused of giving Dubose contraband during her work as a mitigation specialist, a social worker who gathers mitigating information about defendants facing the death penalty, according to her attorney Mark Begnaud.
Dubose and co-defendant Donnie Rowe were accused of killing two corrections officers during a brazen prison bus escape in 2017.
After a defense meeting at the Special Management Unit — the toughest prison in Georgia — on Sept. 6, 2019, Begnaud said Engleman was cuffed, booked and humiliated under false claims she gave Dubose contraband.
She was an investigator with the Public Defenders Council at the time, and she was fired from her job.
But 1.5 years later, the charges were eventually dropped after a "well-lit" video showed no contraband changing hands, but in a federal lawsuit, Engleman's attorneys say that the damage was done and her civil rights were violated.
"Lily went back to waiting tables at the restaurant she had left years before; she could no longer practice social work, the calling she had worked for years to realize," the lawsuit said.
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed against the investigator and other GDC officials ended with a $750,000 settlement agreement, Begnaud announced, after the attorneys argued they not only lied under oath but also unconstitutionally surveilled their confidential meetings with Dubose.
A regular meeting under surveillance:
According to the lawsuit, it all started during a normal meeting between Engleman and Dubose as part of his defense.
Typically, lawyers and social workers are granted confidential visits with their defense team. But after roadblocks by the GDC, the GDC was required by a court order to offer Dubose's defense team visits "in a confidential setting," the lawsuit said.
But starting in September 2019, Adkerson was accused in the lawsuit of targeting Dubose's defense, "surreptitiously recording privileged meetings" between Dubose and his team.
It was during one of those recordings that Adkerson said in a sworn affidavit that video caught Engleman in the act of giving Dubose "two small unknown items" that he then picked up and stashed in his sock.
On her way out after the meeting, Engleman was cuffed and booked. When she arrived at the jail, they said a news crew from Atlanta was already there, capturing the hours-long booking process.
But 1.5 years after her arrest, the video was released, the lawsuit said.
"The video is well-lit and clear as day; Lily did not pass anything to Mr. Dubose," the lawsuit says "Once the video came to light, the Butts County prosecutors dismissed the case against Lily on May 6, 2021 — a year and half after her arrest."
Plus, Dubose was stripped and searched before and after his meeting, which uncovered no contraband stashed in his sock, the lawsuit says.
But regardless, the lawsuit said the investigator did not stop.
"Adkerson's investigation was fruitless — Mr. Dubose's defense team was not doing anything illegal," the lawsuit said. "Instead of closing his investigation, however, Adkerson drew up false charges against Lily."
The lawsuit says that those actions had consequences.
"Lily's life has been forever damaged by the series of patently amoral, unconstitutional acts of Georgia Department of Corrections investigator Nathan Adkerson," the lawsuit said. "She is entitled to compensation for these grave offenses."
In court, Adkerson said that he "sincerely believed" that he saw something illegal, but a judge said that didn't make sense.
"Adkerson’s mischaracterization of the video is hard to understand," her attorney said in a press release. "He says that he had a sincerely held belief that [Lily] passed Dubose contraband, or at worst, a mistaken belief that she did. But that understanding is totally at odds with the content of the video."
Now, Engleman has reached the $750,000 settlement, Begnaud said. On top of Adkerson, the lawsuit was also filed against another investigator, Mary Jane Moss, and former Warden of the Special Management Unit Jose Morales.
While she originally lost her job, since the charges were dropped, Begnaud says that Engleman now works with the Federal Defender's Office in Atlanta.
The GDC says because they weren't involved directly in the settlement, they would not comment on the claims made in the lawsuit.
Dubose later died by suicide only 10 days after he was convicted in 2022.