Not every death in jail custody needs an outside investigation, Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells argued in a letter to the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
Under state law, every in-custody death in a county jail requires an independent investigation from a law enforcement agency besides the one that runs the jail. In a letter to Attorney General Ken Paxton, dated March 21, Sorrells argued that people who die of illnesses in the hospital, while they’re in custody, don’t need the same scrutiny.
“Scarce law enforcement resources are being diverted needlessly to the investigation of non-controversial custodial deaths that occur outside of county jails,” he wrote.
Sorrells also asked the AG’s office to clarify whether all deaths in county jail custody require investigation, or just deaths that happen within the county jail building.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards is the state's jail watchdog agency, which helps enforce the rules for how county jails are run. The commission's current interpretation of the law, which requires an investigation into every in-custody death, "imposes an unnecessary and unfair burden on county sheriffs and outside law enforcement agencies," Sorrells wrote.
In a statement emailed to KERA News, the Tarrant County DA's Office claimed, "The District Attorney is not advocating a particular side on this issue."
Eliminating the requirement to investigate all jail deaths would give sheriff’s offices a way to avoid accountability, Krish Gundu wrote in an emailed statement. She’s the cofounder of Texas Jail Project, a nonprofit that advocates for better conditions in county jails.
"If the [Office of the Attorney General] rules that deaths that occur in hospitals after transfer from county jails don't need independent investigations then it's safe to presume that almost everyone going forward will be listed as dying in the hospital,” she wrote.
Experts have previously told KERA News every death in custody needs investigation — even deaths deemed to be of natural causes.
“You gotta do a deep dive. You have to, because you will find the death may have been able to be prevented, or was the result of neglect, one or the other,” said Paul Parker, an independent death investigator and former head of a sheriff’s oversight board in San Diego, Calif.
Sorrells is asking the attorney general’s office for an opinion on how the law should be interpreted. While AG opinions are “considered persuasive,” only courts can make the final determination on what laws mean, according to the Texas State Law Library.
Sorrells’ request comes after months of reporting from multiple news outlets, digging into Tarrant County’s failure to get outside investigations into more than two dozen deaths in custody.
In October, Bolts magazine was the first to report that the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office assigned death investigations to Fort Worth police, who never actually investigated the deaths.
The Fort Worth Police Department acknowledged to KERA News and the Fort Worth Report they just reviewed the sheriff’s own internal investigations. The jail commission admitted to missing the violations for years.
But the commission's executive director, Brandon Wood, said there was nothing he could do to punish Fort Worth police or the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff’s office assigned the deaths to Fort Worth police, but it’s not necessarily their fault police didn’t investigate, he said.
“I could write a strongly worded letter to Fort Worth PD, perhaps, but there’s no repercussions,” Wood said in January. “There’s no penalty outlined in statute for an appointed agency if they do not conduct that outside investigation.”
Michele Deitch, a UT Austin criminal justice expert who helped craft the law requiring independent jail death investigations, says the state is misinterpreting it. The jail commission should be the one appointing investigating agencies, not sheriff’s offices themselves, she said.
The jail commission seems to have responded to that criticism. It posted a list of death investigation assignments for March online, specifying those appointments were made by the commission, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Tuesday.
Two Tarrant County lawmakers have filed bills aiming to strengthen the jail death investigation process.
State Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, has filed a bill that aligns more with Sorrells' argument. It would make deaths deemed “natural” exempt from the investigation requirement.
He filed a similar bill in 2023, which passed the Texas Senate but died in the House. Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn supported that measure.
Deaths in jail custody have spiked under Waybourn, compared to his predecessor, and his handling of those deaths has become the most controversial issue of his tenure. Since 2022, the county has paid out more than $4.3 million in lawsuits over deaths and allegations of abuse and neglect behind bars.
Two now-former jailers were indicted for murder last year after the death of Anthony Johnson Jr. Johnson told jailers he couldn’t breathe while one knelt on his back. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide by asphyxiation.
Waybourn has said jailers who do wrong face consequences for their actions. He also says many people come into jail with serious preexisting health problems, making some in-custody deaths inevitable.
Got a tip? Email Miranda Suarez at msuarez@kera.org.
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