EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains graphic content that some readers may find disturbing.
NEW BOSTON, Texas-A video of the fatal July 2015 beating of a correctional officer was played for a Bowie County jury on the first day of trial for Billy Joel Tracy, a Texas prison inmate facing a capital murder charge and possible death sentence.
The video shows a shirtless inmate in white shorts as he walks up the stairs, hands behind his back, in E pod of building 12 of the Barry Telford Unit in New Boston with Correctional Officer Timothy Davison at about 9 a.m. July 15, 2015. The two stop in front of cell 66 and Davison slides open the door. The inmate's hands, free of their cuffs, come from behind his back and he attacks, knocking Davison to the floor.
The video shows the inmate snatch Davison's tray slot bar, a 16-inch metal pipe, which the inmate uses to deliver blow after blow. The pipe is forked on one end and used to manipulate the opening in a cell door.
Davison manages to regain his footing briefly but is quickly knocked down again. The inmate swings the bar with both hands above his head and wields it like a hammer into Davison's head and face.
The beating is over in less than a minute.
The inmate sets the slot bar on the floor, takes the officer's pepper spray and grabs Davison's motionless body by the feet, raising them into the air and hurtling them over his head and his body down the stairs. The inmate douses the air with pepper spray, throws the slot bar down the stairs where a gathering of officers can be seen in the corner of the video, and retreats to the confines of cell 66.
"His (Davison's) head and his face had just been destroyed. There's really no other way to put that, I guess," said trauma surgeon Rachael Keilin under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp.
Keilin said she pronounced Davison dead about an hour after he was airlifted from a field next to Telford to CHRISTUS St. Michael Health System in Texarkana, Texas. Keilin said injuries similar to those she observed on Davison's face might be seen if a person was riding unrestrained in the back of a pickup truck as it smashed into a building at 70 miles per hour.
Former Correctional Officer Marti Bradford testified that she was working in the E pod pickett, a locked room with windows all around where doors can be remotely locked and unlocked as officers escort inmates through the prison. Bradford testified E pod, where Tracy was being housed in cell 66, is an administrative segregation unit where inmates are kept in one-man cells, which they only leave with hands cuffed behind their backs. Bradford, obviously shaken by her memories of the day Davison was attacked, testified that the inmate in the video is Tracy.
"He grabbed him by his legs and picked him up and threw him down the stairs like trash," Bradford said.
Bradford said she quickly put out a panicked call for help and unlocked doors to let the responding officers enter the area. Bradford described Davison, who had less than a year of experience, as "easy going and calm," and testified she had never seen any trouble between him and Tracy or any other inmates.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Lt. Undre Johnson testified that the stress in Bradford's call for help sent him running. Johnson said he could barely breathe because of the pepper spray fouling the air where Davison lay across the stairwell.
"He was really disfigured and he was covered in blood," Johnson said. "You couldn't recognize him."
Johnson said he saw the slot bar being thrown by an inmate from the floor above and heard the cell door slammed so hard it bounced open before it was shut and the distinctive click of the lock engaging could be heard.
Under questioning from Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards, Officer Kevin Squibb, who was completing the on-the-job training phase of his employment at Telford, said Johnson yelled for him and other nearby officers to follow.
Squibb, who has experience as a medic, said he and another officer grabbed Davison by the knees and shoulders and carried him down the hall to a safer area where they were eventually met by medical staff hurriedly pushing a gurney.
Alicia Rushing, a medical assistant, testified that Davison's bleeding quickly filled a bucket and that a Telford doctor struggled to insert a breathing tube. Nurse Practitioner Jamie Barker, who testified she knew Davison, said she believes Davison was having seizures and that his condition was dire.
"His face was so swollen and there was so much blood coming from his mouth, his eyes, his ears, you couldn't tell who he was," Barker said.
Gary Siefert, a registered nurse paramedic who was on the helicopter that carried Davison to the hospital, said Davison had head fractures so severe that brain matter was visible. Siefert said he performed CPR on Davison in the helicopter and as the wounded officer was taken into the emergency room.
A number of other Telford officers and staff identified Tracy as the man in the video.
In his opening statement for the defense, Texarkana lawyer Jeff Harrelson talked about intent, implying that Tracy didn't mean to end Davison's life, and asked the jury to reserve judgment until all of the evidence has been presented.
In her opening statement, Crisp told the jury that the video would leave them with little doubt about Tracy's intentions.
"When you stand over a man and hammer him repeatedly, that's intentional," Crisp said.
Testimony is not expected to resume until Wednesday morning. The jury was placed in a long recess by 102nd District Judge Bobby Lockhart because of evidentiary matters, which will take time to address Tuesday outside the jury's presence. At a pretrial hearing last week, Lockhart said he expects the guilt or innocence phase of trial to take about a week.
If Tracy is convicted, Lockhart has tentatively scheduled the punishment phase of trial to begin Nov. 1. The jury has the option of sentencing Tracy to life without the possibility of parole or death by lethal injection if they find him guilty of capital murder.
Tracy was sentenced to two life sentences and a 20-year term by a jury in Rockwall County in 1998 for aggravated assault, burglary of a habitation and assault on a public servant. Since being imprisoned, Tracy has received additional 10-year and 45-year sentences for attacks on correctional officers.