Fort Worth Star Telegram: Texas jail commission begins appointing outside agencies to investigate custody deaths

The Texas Commission on Jail Standards posted on March 24 its first list of third-party law enforcement agencies to investigate deaths of people in county jails.

The list’s publication comes after a Star-Telegram investigation found that the commission had not been following state law requiring it to make the appointments for the last seven years.

Posted to the Reports page of the commission’s website, the list includes appointments for nine deaths in county jails in Texas since March 1.

“We look forward to seeing a more comprehensive list of all deaths that are currently under investigation by an independent law enforcement agency,” she said.

Dean Malone, a lawyer on the subject from Dallas who notified the Star-Telegram of the list’s publication, called it “a good start,” but said some of the appointments on it are “problematic.”

“For example, why would a Bexar County constable be appointed to investigate a Bexar County jail death?” he said in an email exchange. “Families of those who die in Texas jails deserve transparency. They also deserve investigations by agencies which do not appear to be connected to the county at issue.”

Gundu noted that the list does not provide answers to the families of more than two dozen people whose deaths in the Tarrant County jail were not investigated by independent third-party agencies from 2021 to 2023.

In October, KERA confirmed that the deaths of 26 people in Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office custody from that time period were not investigated by outside law enforcement agencies, per the 2017 Sandra Bland Act. Rather, the Fort Worth Police Department performed reviews of the Sheriff’s Office’s internal investigations into the deaths.

In February, the Star-Telegram found that Wood sent a memo to Texas sheriffs and jail administrators in December 2017, less than three months after the Sandra Bland Act went into force, requiring them to send the commission Custody Death Notification Rosters. These were effectively lists of pre-approved agencies to be assigned to investigate in-custody deaths.

The rosters violate “both the letter and the spirit” of the Sandra Bland Act, Michele Deitch, a UT Austin law professor who served as an expert consultant to one of the key authors of the bill, told the Star-Telegram.

Full Article at Fort Worth Star Telegram