Crippled Inmate Beaten By Guards

Crippled inmate was alone with guards
Prisons chief says he wasn't beaten

BY MICHAEL BIESECKER - STAFF WRITER
Published: Sat, May. 02, 2009 04:03AM

Modified Sat, May. 02, 2009 04:06AM

RALEIGH -- The head of the state prison system said Friday that
security camera footage of Timothy E. Helms being pulled from his
smoke-filled cell shows guards did not beat him. But a second segment
of tape shows the inmate being taken into another cell where he was
alone with up to five guards, out of view of the prison's cameras,
for 22 minutes.
Reviews of the Aug. 3 incident by both the state Department of
Correction and the State Bureau of Investigation have failed to
determine precisely how Helms received extensive blunt force injuries
that left him a quadriplegic.
The prosecutor who Wednesday said there was not enough evidence to
pursue any criminal charges was not shown footage of guards at
Alexander Correctional Institution taking Helms to another cell after
they removed him from the one he set on fire. Helms, who had a long
history of mental illness, had been held in solitary confinement for
more than a year.

The video shows four officers taking the inmate to a cell in another
section of the maximum security state prison in Taylorsville. Helms
is handcuffed and wearing a white T-shirt and long pants. He is seen
on the video walking upright and without assistance as the guards
escort him into the cell. A fifth officer then enters the confined
space.
For the next 22 minutes, Helms is in the cell with guards, out of
view of the camera, until medical personnel are taken to see him.
When four guards take him out of the cell six minutes later, at 10:18
p.m., he is wearing only underwear. Two of the officers appear to be
helping support him as he is hustled out of the cellblock.
At noon the next day, Helms was taken in the back of a squad car to
the emergency room of a hospital in Hickory, where medical records
indicate he told his doctor that he had set a fire in his cell and
that guards then beat him with sticks.
A CT scan showed that his skull was fractured in two places and a
doctor wrote that Helms had welts on his back and chest "consistent
with multiple blows from a Billy club."
Within days, as the bleeding in his brain continued, Helms slipped
into a coma.
Helms now lives in a hospital ward at Central Prison. Though can now
speak in a whisper, he can't sit up on his own, feed himself or
control his bowels. Extensive bleeding damaged the parts of his brain
tied to speech and memory.
Helms has been imprisoned since he was sentenced to three life terms
in 1994 after a fatal drunken-driving crash.
Alvin W. Keller Jr., secretary of the state Department of Correction,
said at a news conference Friday that there is no evidence that Helms
was abused by the staff at Alexander Correctional.
To bolster his case, Keller, a former military judge and prosecutor,
played a video clip recorded on the night of the fire, showing guards
removing Helms from his cell while his bedding was ablaze. That video
shows officers dragging Helms from his cell and into a nearby shower,
out of view. A short time later, the officers can be seen carrying
him out of the smoky pod of cells.
"I think that when you look at the tape, when you truly look at the
tape, these gents were focused on trying to do a good job here," said
Keller, who took over the top job at DOC in January. "I was quite
proud to see what they were doing. There focus was on trying to get
Helms out of there."
Keller said the video discredited the account Helms gave his
emergency room doctor of his being beaten by guards using batons.
A written DOC statement released Thursday said that guards on the
cellblock where the fire occurred were not issued batons until a
month later. On Friday, officials acknowledged that officers in
neighboring cellblocks who responded to the emergency did carry
batons, as could be seen in the video clip Keller showed at the news
conference.
michael.biesecker@... or 919-829-4698