Man criticizes judge and his lawyers
Inmate accused of killing Telford guard says he’s fighting to prevent ‘my own murder’
NEW BOSTON, Texas—A Texas prison inmate accused of capital murder in the July 2015 beating death of a correctional officer at the Barry Telford Unit in New Boston criticized the prosecutor, the judge and his own defense team at a pretrial hearing Friday.
Billy Joel Tracy, 39, faces the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole if convicted of beating 47-year-old Timothy Davison to death with a metal bar July 15, 2015. Since being indicted a few months after Davison’s death, Tracy has repeatedly filed motions on his own behalf, which have led Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp to express concern that Tracy is purposefully creating issues that might help him on appeal.
“I understand the inconvenience to everyone for me fighting against the statesanctioned taking of my life, my own murder,” Tracy read from a prepared statement near the end of Friday’s hearing.
Tracy has been given an opportunity to speak at his pretrial hearings by 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart. At Friday’s hearing, Tracy described the proceedings in his case as a “dog and pony show,” and accused Lockhart of ignoring his plight by disregarding his multitude of complaints about Crisp and his lead defense attorney, Mac Cobb of Mount Pleasant, Texas.
“The court mistakes me for someone who does not comprehend well,” Tracy said.
Lockhart accepted a copy of Tracy’s statement with the promise of addressing it at Tracy’s hearing in April.
Briefly addressed in the hearing was an 18-page notice from the state of its intent to introduce a long list of examples of Tracy’s allegedly violent and noncompliant behavior while in custody. The extraneous offenses date back to 1995, when Tracy was convicted of threatening a witness against him in a case in Tarrant County, Texas. A multitude of attacks on other inmates and jail and prison staff are included as well. The assaults include throwing human waste, stabbing with a pencil, and stabbing with razor blades.
The first matter taken up at Friday’s hearing concerns a witness who is scheduled for deployment to Iraq in less than two weeks. Mark Adcock Jr., who serves in the armed forces, was in charge of the video surveillance system at Telford when Davison was attacked. The beating was reportedly caught on camera from multiple angles.
Adcock answered questions about how he preserved the video footage and transferred it from the prison’s computer system to media such as compact discs and thumb drives. Adcock’s testimony in court Friday was videotaped “out of an abundance of caution” because of his upcoming deployment to a hostile environment. Adcock is expected to be back in the United States to testify at trial later this year.
Cobb said he plans to argue a motion to suppress the Telford video footage at Tracy’s next hearing April 7. The capture of Davison’s murder on video and statements Tracy allegedly made to investigators with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Office of Inspector General following the killing make it likely that Tracy’s trial is more about determining punishment than guilt.
Davison was walking Tracy back to his cell in administrative segregation from an hour of recreation in a prison day room, when Tracy allegedly slipped a hand free of its cuff and attacked, according to a TDCJ critical incident report. After knocking Davison to the floor, Tracy grabbed Davison’s metal tray slot bar and wielded it like a baseball bat to beat him before tossing Davison down a flight of stairs. The alleged assault was over in less than two minutes.
Before locking himself back into his cell, where Tracy had allegedly already packed his belongings in expectation of a transfer, Tracy allegedly threw the bar at an approaching group of guards and doused the air with Davison’s pepper spray. Tray slot bars, which were only being used at a few Texas prisons in 2015 and which have reportedly been phased out in favor of less dangerous, retrofitted equipment, were used to manipulate the rectangular openings in cell doors to allow the passing of meal trays, for example.
Jury selection in the case is scheduled to begin in September at the Bowie County Courthouse in New Boston.
llarowe@texarkanagazette.com