AUSTIN — A yearslong spike of in-custody deaths in the Tarrant County Jail could come under scrutiny by the Texas Legislature with a bipartisan pair of bills filed by Tarrant County House members Nicole Collier and David Lowe.
Collier, a seven-term Fort Worth Democrat, and Lowe, a freshman North Richlands Hills Republican, said they were taking legislative action in response to public concern over dozens of custodial deaths in the downtown jail under Sheriff Bill Waybourn, who was reelected to a third term in November.
The lawmakers unveiled the measures in advance of a Friday deadline for bill filings and within the same week that the sheriff’s department said it was late in reporting the Feb. 8 death of Charles Stephen Johnson due to a clerical error. Sheriff’s officials said the death occurred after a suicide attempt and an autopsy is pending.
The bills take different approaches, but Collier and Lowe each said they are driven by the same goal of ending a public controversy that has ignited protests, created anguish for inmate families and drawn unfavorable national attention to Tarrant County. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat, called for a U.S. Justice Department investigation into the “distressing pattern” of deaths in 2024.
“There’s a public outcry for more intervention and safety in our jails,” said Lowe, an Army veteran who once served as a deputy and jailer in Collin County. House Bill 5450 would create a state advisory committee on jail safety that he said would have oversight of all jails, not just in Tarrant County.
Collier, an attorney who has specialized in criminal justice issues during her 12 years in the House, said her bill follows complaints from families of the deceased and legal watchdogs who accuse Tarrant jail officials of breaking state policy by not initiating independent investigations into more than two dozen deaths. The issue was first reported by Bolts magazine and confirmed by KERA and the Fort Worth Report last year.
In a statement at the time, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office said the jail standards commission had been advised of every in-custody death investigation and never rejected the reviews or indicated concerns until last fall.
“This system has been in place for years,” spokesperson Robbie Hoy said in October. “The law mandates the commission to appoint an investigative agency. Should the commission have determined a concern with the process, we would have been notified.”
Current policy requires jail officials to notify the Texas Commission on Jail Standards when a death occurs, and mandates the commission to bring in outside law enforcement, such as the Texas Rangers or local police, to conduct an independent investigation.
Collier’s bill, House Bill 3841, would embed the requirement into state law, mandating “the commission to appoint a law enforcement agency other than the law enforcement agency that operates the county jail.” The inmate’s death would also be posted on the commission’s website for at least two years.
“We weren’t seeing an investigation,” Collier told the Fort Worth Report. The bill, she said, will ensure that the commission “is actually appointing a law enforcement agency to do the investigation” and then following through with a final report.
As originally introduced, the bill required the jail standards commission to name an independent investigative agency no later than 30 days after being informed of a prisoner’s death but Collier said she plans to retool the bill to require an immediate start.
“I just don’t want there to be any confusion,” she said. “I want that investigation.”
The bill, she said, will ensure that the commission “is actually appointing a law enforcement agency to do the investigation.”
Lowe’s bill calls for the creation of an 11-member advisory committee that would include a family member of a person who died in jail, a jail expert with no association to a law enforcement agency, a criminal defense attorney, a medical examiner and three other appointees. The Commission on Jail Standards would appoint the committee no later than Oct. 1.
The panel would meet monthly to collect and review reports and evidence of all in-custody deaths, including a critical assignment of identifying deaths that could have been prevented. Committee members would make recommendations on “rules, policies, and training” to reduce preventable deaths in county jails.
Additionally, the jail standards commission would be required to publish an annual report on its website that summarizes each death that occurred in a county jail and, among other things, whether the death was preventable and whether “force was used on the inmate” before the prisoner’s death.
“We need to make sure we have a third party to look at these jail deaths to see how we can prevent them in the future,” said Lowe, who gathered law enforcement input before introducing the bill.
The deaths dominated Waybourn’s 2024 race for reelection, with critics spotlighting the deaths of more than 65 Tarrant County inmates since the incumbent Republican took office in 2017. The former Dalworthington Gardens police chief, endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott, defeated Democrat Patrick Moses 54% to 46% after emphasizing his goal to complete improvement projects such as a new sheriff’s training academy.
A press spokesman for the sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment, and calls to a voicemail at the Jail Commission were unanswered. Waybourn has previously said the vast majority of people who have died in the custody of the sheriff’s office have died in a hospital under a doctor’s care. Research shows many people in county jails have serious underlying medical conditions, which Waybourn said is true in Tarrant County.
The Texas Jail Project, which spotlighted the alleged reporting violations, worked with Collier to help advance her bill.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Krishnaveni Gundu, co-founder and executive director of the justice advocacy project, stressing her support of the legislation.
The parents of a family who sued jail officials after their son died in custody also said they welcome the legislation.
“The bills are long overdue,” said Jacqualyne Johnson, whose son, Anthony Johnson Jr., 31, died in April 2024 after an altercation with Tarrant County jailers. “Had the bills been in place my son would probably still be alive.”
Johnson and her husband, Anthony Johnson Sr., sued Tarrant County and 15 jailers last year. U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor removed the county as a defendant, ruling that the suit failed to prove that Tarrant policies led to Johnson’s death. The family has lodged legal action to try to keep the county as a defendant.
Jail experts and justice advocates say the deaths have marred the intent of the landmark Sandra Bland Act, which Abbott signed into law in 2017 to require that independent law enforcement agencies investigate jail deaths. The law was named after Bland, a 28-year-old Illinois resident who was arrested at a Southeast Texas traffic stop and found dead days later in a Waller County jail cell in what authorities said was a suicide.
“Sadly, the Legislature has, since the passage of the Sandra Bland Act, been moving backwards in their efforts at jail and prison accountability,” said Broadway Baptist Church senior pastor Ryon Price, who has been an outspoken critic of the jail deaths and the county’s response.
Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Innovation Lab at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs, played a key advisory role in the legislative deliberations that produced the Bland Act.
Instead of curtailing jailhouse deaths like Bland’s, she said, there’s been an “extraordinarily high number” and “the bottom line is that those deaths have gone uninvestigated, which is completely unacceptable and contrary to the statute.”
“Deaths in custody are an incredibly serious problem,” Deitch said. “A family has lost a loved one, a death has occurred in a facility that is responsible for keeping people safe and healthy. It creates a tremendous problem all around at a humanitarian level, at a financial level, at an operational level. So we all ought to care about what’s going on there.”
The Fort Worth Report’s Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Dave Montgomery is an Austin-based freelance reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.