Fort Worth Star Telegram: Tarrant DA asks AG if custody investigation law applies only to deaths within jail walls

The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office has asked the Texas Attorney General’s Office to weigh in on a statute created by the 2017 Sandra Bland Act that mandates independent investigations of deaths in county jails.

Dated March 21, the letter, known as a Request for Opinion, asks the AG if the phrase “the death of a prisoner in a county jail” applies only to those inmates who die within the premises of a county jail but not to those inmates who die in a sheriff’s custody outside the premises of a county jail.

At least 56 of the 70 deaths of people in Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office custody since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017 have been recorded as taking place in John Peter Smith Hospital, not on the jail premises.

An interpretation that the law only applies to deaths that occur within jail walls provides sheriff’s offices with a scapegoat to evade responsibility, according to Krishnaveni Gundu, executive director of Texas Jail Project, an advocacy group.

“If the AG rules that deaths that occur in hospitals after transfer from jails don’t need independent investigations, then I guess everyone going forward will be listed as dying in the hospital,” she said in an emailed statement.

The request for opinion is the Sheriff’s Office’s attempt “to undermine the intent and spirit of the Sandra Bland Act,” she added.