By Tom Relihan
The Enterprise, Brockton, Mass.
PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Three former guards at Bridgewater State Hospital were acquitted Monday in the death of a patient eight years ago.
Judge Jeffrey Locke ruled in Plymouth Superior Court that the conduct of Derek Howard, John C. Raposo and George A. Billadeau did not constitute wanton and reckless disregard for patient safety.
They were charged in the death of Joshua Messier, a 23-year-old from Charlton, who suffered a heart attack on May 4, 2009, after a half-dozen guards forcefully strapped him to a bed.
Their trial for involuntary manslaughter charges and criminal civil rights violations began on Tuesday.
Locke said that there is no doubt that Messier, who was committed to the secure mental health facility due to his paranoid schizophrenia, required restraint based on his assault of a staff member. Such an action constitutes a “sudden emergency,” triggering the need for restraint.
During that restraint, Messier was placed in four-point restraints by a team of seven guards. At one point, two of the guards, Howard and Raposo, pressed down on his back first with their arms, then with their own body weight – a technique known as “suitcasing.” Billadeau supervised the restraint.
Once Messier was partially under control, Locke noted, the guards released the pressure. Messier went into cardiac arrest and died soon after. His death was initially ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner.
A special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Martha Coakley contented that the trio’s actions constituted “wanton and reckless” disregard for patient safety, arguing that the incident violated state regulations barring the use of restraint for punishment, allowing such measures to be taken only after a medical assessment or authorization, banning officers from using excessive force and forbidding the placement of pressure on a patients back due to the risk of suffocation.
Locke said the evidence does not show that four-point restraints were used to punish Messier and that the facility has an informal policy of only performing medical assessments once a patient is secured. He said the policy barring the use of pressure on a patients back only applies once the patient has been restrained – the point at which all four restraints are secure.
But, Locke noted that the officers were “woefully” untrained to perform the restraint.
“The Department of Corrections had a robust training program but did not train correctional officers in appropriate techniques for restraining a resistant patient, leaving that crucial learning to ‘on-the-job’ training,” he said. “The Commonwealth has not shown an intentional, willful, reckless disregard of regulations regarding use of force.”
Locke said medical experts who testified during the trial noted that a variety of factors that were all present at the time of the restraint -- schizophrenia, Clozapine in toxic levels, agitation, hypertension, obesity and positional asphyxiation -- could have been equally likely to have caused Messier’s heart attack.
“The line here is a thin one, but on balance the court cannot conclude, beyond reasonable doubt, that, in the moment, the defendants Howard and Raposo were aware or should have been aware that the technique they employed was excessive to the resistance presented,” Locke said.
“In the final analysis, Joshua Messier’s death resulted from a perfect storm of circumstances; a series of institutional lapses and errors, combined with a patient with a series of risk factors for cardiac arrest,” he continued. “Hindsight is 20/20 and since 2009, the Department of Correction has entirely revamped its training and its equipment to be used in a transition of patients from hard to soft restraints, and indeed, has put mental health professionals, rather than correction officers, in charge of operations at Bridgewater. Retrospectively, the conduct of these three defendants left much to be desired, but does not constitute wanton and reckless conduct causing the death of Joshua Messier.”
Relatives of the guards wept as the verdict was read.
Lawyers for the three defendants said the circumstances and evidence pointed toward systemic failures rather than the conduct of the officers as the primary cause of Messier’s death.
“Being a correctional officer at Bridgewater State Hospital is a unique job, you’re dealing with severe mental health issues, they have no medical training, and they don’t know what they’re susceptibility is to use of force. It’s really set up for failure, it wasn’t these guys,” said Edward Harrington, Raposo’s lawyer. “They just happened to be there with Joshua Messier.”
Lisa Brown, Messier’s mother, said she was shocked by the verdict.
“My whole heart thought they were going to be found guilty, because it was common sense,” she said, referring to the restraint techniques used. “You don’t need training to know that you don’t do that to someone. That’s how someone dies. Not in a million years did I think they’d be found not guilty.
Brown said she takes solace in the changes that have come to Bridgewater State Hospital in the wake of her sons death, including the transfer of operations to an independent correctional care company, Correct Care Solutions, and the removal of correctional officers from the facility.
“I think many other things will be changing in the future, and I pray to God nobody else gets killed there,” she said. “I never held any hate for the guards, but I felt they need to be held accountable.”
©2017 The Enterprise, Brockton, Mass.