Jury finds Ricks guilty in Harper murder case

The Georgia man who told his girlfriend he wouldn't be getting out of jail may have predicted his future.

Thomas Ricks sat silent and stoic on Tuesday, with no family present, facing ahead as the jury announced he was guilty of aggravated murder in the death of Calvin Harper Jr.

He is scheduled to be sentenced May 3 and faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.

In the same courtroom, Harper's mom Queen Amison closed her eyes and tilted her head back. She had entered the room just 20 minutes before, already crying. Family members said the day leading up to that had been stressful.

"It's wonderful. The Lord is so good to me," Amison said afterward in the hallway outside the courtroom.

It was the same room in which she spent a week viewing gruesome autopsy photos, listening to how her son was shot twice in the head and left to die.

She said after two years she has received justice for her son's death. After about five and a half hours of deliberation, jurors found Ricks guilty of two counts of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and conspiracy to traffic in marijuana and to trafficking in cocaine. Defense attorney Robert Dixon said an appeal would be filed but he would probably not be representing Ricks in that matter.

Officials said Ricks was the man who shot Harper on March 11, 2008. Erie County prosecutors argued the death was a set-up drug deal with the intention of stealing $20,000.

Neighbors found Harper's body the next day.

Investigators never found the stacks of cash he reportedly had in his home to purchase a large quantity of cocaine Ricks and his co-defendant allegedly promised him.

Ricks' co-defendant Aaron Gipson faces trial in June for aggravated murder. Officials say Gipson was Harper's source for cocaine and needed money to pay his own supplier.

One of Harper's friends, Rhonda Farris, cried and tried to leave the courtroom upon hearing Ricks' verdict.

One of the deputies had to grab her, tears streaming down her face, as she was ordered to sit back down.

After the court had been cleared, jury members talked to Judge Roger Binette but declined to talk to anyone else.

Testimony through the week also included three eyewitnesses who put Ricks in Sandusky, including Farris and two others. Those people identified Ricks at a party in Sandusky the night before. There was also testimony about cell phone towers tracing the route allegedly taken by Ricks and Gipson and about how Harper knew them.

Ricks' defense told the jury about two other men initially investigated in the murder, and about a photo lineup where most of the people included were known to the eyewitnesses.

Other evidence included recorded conversations Ricks had with his girlfriend Sonja Perry while incarcerated in Cobb County, Georgia.

In those conversations, Ricks tells her, "they got me."

"It's over you know, it's over for me," he says through tears. "I'm sorry it had to end up this way. I ain't getting out of jail."