The family of a man who died after a Tarrant County jailer knelt on his back wants the county added back on to a wrongful death lawsuit.
The parents of Anthony Johnson Jr. sued Tarrant County and 15 detention officers after Johnson’s death last year. In February, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor excused Tarrant County from the lawsuit, ruling the Johnsons failed to prove the county’s policies and procedures led to Anthony's death.
O’Connor also dropped the case against several of the jailers named in the lawsuit, although it continued against others.
The Johnson family now argues they should get another chance to sue the county and the dismissed jailers, in an appeal filed last week with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The history of deaths in the Tarrant County Jail is enough to prove jail policy and training fail to keep people safe in custody, the Johnson family’s attorneys argued.
“When Anthony Johnson, a Tarrant County pre-trial detainee who was suffering from a mental health episode, was killed by Tarrant County jail officers, it should have come as no surprise to Tarrant County,” the appeal filing read. “It was simply business as usual.”
In a brief emailed statement, the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office said: “We agree with the trial court’s ruling.”
Johnson was a Marine veteran who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to his family. He died after detention officers pepper sprayed him and restrained him face-down on the floor of the jail, according to the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office and video of the incident.
Then a jailer knelt on his back for 90 seconds while Johnson shouted he couldn’t breathe. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office determined his death was a homicide by asphyxiation.
Two now-former jailers have been indicted for murder and are awaiting trial: Rafael Moreno, who knelt on Johnson, and Joel Garcia, who filmed the incident. They are also two of the remaining defendants in the lawsuit.
The number of jail deaths spiked under Sheriff Bill Waybourn, who took office in 2017. Deaths during his tenure peaked at 17 in 2020, according to in-custody death data from the Texas Attorney General’s Office. While numbers have gone down in recent years, lawsuits over deaths and allegations of neglect and abuse behind bars have continued.
The county paid out its biggest lawsuit settlement in history -- $1.2 million– to Chasity Congious, a woman who gave birth alone in her cell in 2020. Her daughter Zenorah died at 10 days old.
In July, Judge O’Connor dismissed a lawsuit against the doctor in charge of jail medical care when Congious was in custody. He ruled the lawsuit failed to prove the doctor was deliberately indifferent to her medical needs.
He also dismissed a lawsuit over the in-custody death of Trelynn Wormley, who died of a fentanyl overdose in 2022, months into his jail stay. The lawsuit failed to prove county policies and procedures led to Wormley’s death, he ruled– like he did in the Johnson case.
Waybourn has previously said Johnson’s death was an isolated incident, and the jailers involved are being held accountable by the courts.
The lawsuit was on the Tarrant County Commissioner’s Court agenda Tuesday, in part of the meeting that is not open to the public.
Before commissioners met for closed session, Democratic Commissioner Alisa Simmons said the county needs to admit wrongdoing and end the lawsuit, saving tax dollars.
“We’re gonna fight it to the end, I guess, and waste all your money,” she said.
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