A Texas prison inmate accused of beating a Barry Telford Unit correctional officer to death in 2015 is asking for a new lawyer.
Billy Joel Tracy, 39, filed a motion in his death-penalty case last week titled "defendant's pro se written objections to defense counsel ineptitude and sabotage of strategy and motion for appointment of new counsel."
The motion complains that his lead defense lawyer, Mac Cobb of Mount Pleasant, has failed to address important issues, has failed to arrange for him to have copies of evidence the state has provided the defense, has done nothing to address an assault he claims to have suffered at the hands of guards in late 2015 and has done nothing to stop prison officials from stealing his mail and personal items. It also alleges Cobb tricked him into signing a document last month.
Tracy's numerous filings in the case have been the subject of much discussion at pretrial hearings in the last several months. Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp told the court she is concerned Tracy's motions put the state in a difficult spot.
"As you know, it is the state's theory that your client is intentionally filing motions and including legal arguments that are contrary to the arguments his attorneys are making in an effort to set up points for appeal," Crisp wrote in a letter filed as a record in Tracy's case to Cobb and his co-counsel, Jeff Harrelson of Texarkana.
"I have repeatedly and continuously argued that Billy Tracy is not entitled to hybrid representation," Crisp's letter states. "In my opinion, it perfectly sets up the scenario in which we now find ourselves-he is arguing for a speedy trial, and you are not."
Crisp's letter includes excerpts from correspondence Tracy wrote to a supporter in which he discusses his opinion of court-appointed lawyers and the likelihood of a favorable outcome at the appellate level. Crisp's letter led Cobb to file a motion asking the court to prohibit the state from making comments about the attorney/client relationship in Tracy's case.
At a pretrial hearing Dec. 9, Cobb presented the court with a waiver of speedy trial signed by Tracy. The waiver states that Tracy is not seeking a speedy trial and that he wants his lawyers to take up all matters addressed in Tracy's filings. Bowie County District Attorney Jerry Rochelle asked Cobb at the hearing if the waiver would mean an end to Tracy's filings on his own behalf. As Cobb appeared ready to agree that it would, Tracy spoke up, making it clear that he would not agree to let his lawyers handle the legal filings in his case if he deemed them inadequate.
Tracy doesn't limit his complaints about lawyers in the case to Cobb. In a motion he recently filed asking the court to strike Crisp's references to his correspondence from the record, Tracy accuses Crisp of attempting to deceive others as to his motives.
"The state's attorneys have departed from norms of professionalism so as to have a more personal hand in the anticipated and state-sanctioned murder of this defendant," Tracy's motion states.
Tracy describes Crisp and Rochelle as misrepresenting his communications regarding case strategy and "the Texas death machine." Tracy complains that prosecutors are attempting to thwart his case by "mining the appellate pathways ahead with legal IEDs (improvised explosive devices) timed to detonate in the appellate forum-more particularly, it falsely portrays his struggles to obtain meaningful representation as somehow calculated to 'set up' his attorneys."
Tracy characterizes the prosecution's filings about his pro se motions as "unfair, scurrilous and shameful."
Tracy also wants 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart to rule that Texas law gives him the right to hybrid representation, meaning Tracy believes he is entitled to represent himself at the same time he is represented by lawyers. Tracy also asks that if Lockhart rules against him on the hybrid representation issue that he be allowed to ask for a ruling on the matter from the 6th District Court of Appeals headquartered in Texarkana.
Tracy's next pretrial hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27. The state is seeking a capital murder conviction and death sentence for Tracy in the July 2015 death of 47-year-old Correctional Officer Timothy Davison.
Tracy allegedly slipped a hand free of its cuff and grabbed a metal tray slot bar, which officers use to manipulate the opening in cell doors, and wielded it like a baseball bat to strike Davison again and again in full view of multiple prison surveillance cameras. Davison was taking Tracy back to his cell in administrative segregation following an hour of recreation when the inmate allegedly attacked.
Tracy has a long history of violence in and out of prison. Tracy's prison history began in 1995 when he was just 18 and sentenced to a three-year term for retaliation in Tarrant County, Texas. Three years later, Tracy was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, plus 20 years for burglary, aggravated assault and assault on a public servant in Rockwall County, Texas. In 2005, Tracy received an additional 45-year term for stabbing a guard with a homemade weapon at a TDCJ unit in Amarillo, Texas. Tracy was sentenced to 10 years in 2009 for attacking a guard at a TDCJ unit in Abilene, Texas.
Jury selection, which could take weeks, is scheduled for September at Bowie County Courthouse in New Boston, Texas.