MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Two brothers jailed for more than a year in connection with the 2016 shotgun slaying of Deandre “Ricky” Bolston each pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of aggravated assault and were sentenced to time behind bars, probation and fined in Baldwin County Superior Court Friday.

Defense Attorney William Smith, who defended William Brown, said the case involved two young men with no criminal history background, who had never been in trouble in their lives.

Brown was 16 at the time of his arrest, and is now 17.

“They can’t help it that they are young and African-American, and poor and live in a neighborhood where gang members exist,” Smith said after his client and his brother pleaded guilty to aggravated assault charges in front of Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison Burleson. “They can’t help that, therefore they’re going to encounter gang members. They are going to have friends who encounter gang members, and they may friends who are gang members.”

The two can’t stop the gang problems, Smith said.

Burleson sentenced both Askew and Brown under the Georgia First Offender Act.

Askew was sentenced to 10 years with the first year to be served in confinement and the remainder to be served on probation. She also fined him $2,000 and required him to pay all court costs.

Brown, meanwhile, was sentenced to 10 years with the first two years to be served in confinement and the remainder to be served on probation. He also was fined $2,000 and ordered to pay all court costs.

Both defendants were credited with time already served in jail.

“One of the important things in this case was that they were at their apartment on Lee Street and Mr. Bolston came over there and Mr. Bolston came there and tried to enter their house,” Smith said. “He (Bolston) shook on the door and tried to enter the house. And they (defendants) didn’t do anything. They didn’t let him know they were there. They left. They went somewhere else trying to avoid this man.”

Bolston later caught up with Brown and Askew at The Milledgeville Manor Apartments.

At that point, Smith said Askew and Brown thought they needed to at least talk with Bolston.

“So, they go out on the balcony (of an apartment) where he (Bolston) starts firing at them,” Smith said. “And again, and Rick (Garner, the other defense attorney involved in the case) said this in our preliminary hearing, how many times does somebody shoot at you before you get to shoot back?”

That hearing took place Oct. 28, 2016, while Bolston’s murder happened several weeks earlier in September.

Garner also weighed in on the case after his client pleaded guilty and was sentenced.

He said one of the big facts of the case was that Bolston was a gang member. He called him a member of the 1831 Piru gang.

“He (Bolston) also was a convicted felon,” Garner said. “And he shouldn’t have had a firearm. He went over to the apartment where these two lived. There was a beef with someone, but not with them. He came over to their apartment, but they wouldn’t go outside.”

Instead, they went to a friend’s apartment where the shooting later happened, Garner said.

The man that Bolston was looking for had been there, but he had already left, Garner said.

The brothers went to friend Voisel Javon Renfro’s apartment at The Manor, he added.

“He challenged my client, Kevin Askew, to a fight,” Garner said.

During the gunfight, Bolston fired five gunshots at Askew and Brown, the defense attorney added.

“Will Brown, who was 16 at the time, shot back once with a shotgun and hit him (Bolston),” Garner said. “They fled the scene. They feared the gang and probably didn’t feel like they would be treated fairly.”

Renfro, who provided the shotgun used to kill Bolston and later buried it at the request of his friends, pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and was sentenced to probation. Earlier this year, Renfro was gunned down in a separate murder case. 

Authorities later arrested Orlando Terrell Tatum in connection with Renfro’s slaying. Authorities said that Renfro’s killing was in retaliation for the Bolston murder.

Askew, who was 22 at the time of his arrest, is now 23.

Both defense attorneys said they tried to talk their clients out of pleading but the defendants chose to plead guilty to the lesser offense and get out of jail earlier.

“From day one, you have to acknowledge there was misbehavior on both sides,” Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit District Attorney Stephen A. Bradley told The Union-Recorder after the sentencing. “Mr. Bolston came over there and he’s flashing a gun. He was acting in a menacing way. This is what we laid all out to the judge. He (Bolston) was misbehaving.”

Bradley said the problem with the what happened was that the two brothers interjected themselves into a feud that appeared to surround a gang dispute.

“You can’t interject yourself in a gang dispute; ask gang members to go get you a gun; go outside when you’re in a place of refuge; not ask law enforcement to assist you; not ask rational neighbors or family members to assist you, and then claim somehow there there’s a self-defense claim,” Bradley said. “Obviously that’s not what the law intends. The law looks to avoid loss of life. We’re trying to minimize violence in our community. Obviously, they didn’t do anything to avoid it.”

On the other hand, Bradley said he believed defense attorneys contended that he, too, thought they had “a very good” self-defense case because Bolston fired first.

“There’s no question about it,” Bradley said, in reference to which one of the three fired first. “However, these two individuals forfeited the right to say, hey this is all purely self-defense when they’re the ones who went and got a gun, aimed it at Mr. Bolston and then took off running, and hid the weapon. It involved all their friends in a cover-up.”

Bradley called it a sad case in that Bolston lost his life, even though he also acted in a wrongful manner.

“Like the judge asked the defendants themselves, you have to acknowledge there was some real wrong here,” Bradley said. “Unfortunately that led to Mr. Bolston’s death, but the truth is they had a good self-defense claim. We strongly acknowledge the right to self-defense. We support that. The law is very clear about that, which is why we dismissed count one, which was the murder against Mr. Bolston, because clearly the firing of the weapon was in response to somebody else using deadly force against them. However, the being out there on the porch and aiming the gun at them, there’s no way to explain that. That crime had already been completed.”

When the case was presented to a Baldwin County grand jury, Bradley said he didn’t ask grand jurors to do anything.

“We were very, very neutral with the grand jury and told them about the law of self-defense,” Bradley explained. “We told them about the law of homicide, and the grand jury indicted on murder and aggravated assault.”

The case later moved to a committal hearing before Judge E. Trenton Brown III, who set “a very high bond” for Brown and Askew, Bradley said, noting the defendants were never able to post bond and get out of jail.

Bail was set for $200,000 each for Brown and Askew.

Brown and Askew have been in what Smith called protective custody since they were arrested and later indicted on murder charges.

“They couldn’t hold them in Baldwin County for safety reasons,” Garner said.

“I think this was a good result; it’s a compromise,” Bradley said. “It acknowledges that these individuals were wrong, but they were not completely wrong, and I think that it ultimately was a good result that hopefully will encourage folks next time to not go get a gun and take matters into their own hands, but instead call the law, or some responsible friend. In this case, I feel certain had they called their mother, their father or another family member or law enforcement, I think that we wouldn’t be here in anyway.”

Bradley pointed out that this wasn’t just one of those times when his office randomly dismissed a murder case.

“This is one where we’re acknowledging that they (defendants) were being threatened by someone with a gun,” Bradley said. “But there were other options the defendants could have taken.”