For 4 days, deputies from the Harris County Sheriff’s Workplace barred entry to Evan Lee’s hospital room. By the point his mom, Jacilet Griffin, was allowed inside, medical doctors informed her he was brain-dead.
It wasn’t jail officers who defined what had occurred to her 31-year-old son, Griffin stated. The few particulars she acquired got here from hospital employees, who stated Lee had arrived at Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital with a crucial mind harm. Simply 4 months earlier, he was alive and in typically good well being, together with his diabetes and different underlying situations below management, his mom stated. Then he was booked into the county jail.
Although the county health worker dominated his demise a murder as a consequence of a head harm, no public company has ever supplied a transparent account of what led to his harm — and nobody has been charged.
“I do know God is within the midst of this,” Griffin stated. “I do know I’m gonna get the solutions that I’m looking for.”
Greater than three years later, she’s nonetheless ready.
Lee’s case is certainly one of 1000’s nationwide that reveal how the legal justice system fails to account for deaths behind bars. Annually, about 6,000 folks die in prisons and jails, and one other 2,000 throughout encounters with police, in response to estimates by authorities companies and nonprofit teams — numbers that consultants consider are doubtless undercounts. Federal legislation has for 25 years required native companies to report in-custody deaths, however the mandate shouldn’t be enforced. In lots of locations, there’s no dependable public accounting of what occurred or why.
Households who lose family members in custody are sometimes met with silence or conflicting accounts. The authorities tasked with discovering the reality — from jail officers to health workers to state investigators — usually function slowly, with out coordination, or behind closed doorways.
In Lee’s case, the companies that would have defined what occurred supplied competing timelines and contradictory narratives. The burden of uncovering the reality fell to not the system — however to his grieving mom.
About a 12 months earlier than he died, Evan Lee known as his mom from a bus cease in Houston. He’d gotten into an altercation with a person who didn’t converse English after asking for the time.
In line with police, a 3rd man on the cease stated Lee had threatened him with a pocketknife. Lee informed officers he pulled the knife in self-defense, after somebody grabbed him. Nobody was harm, however Lee was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a lethal weapon.
He was launched on bail with an ankle monitor. Eight months later, the machine stopped sending a sign. Lee insisted it had malfunctioned and that he hadn’t realized it wasn’t working. Prosecutors accused him of failing to cost it. His bond was revoked, and he was despatched again to jail.
To get out once more, he doubtless would have needed to pay greater than $3,000, native bail firms informed The Marshall Mission — a sum he couldn’t afford, even together with his full-time job. His makes an attempt to get a decide to scale back his bail weren’t permitted, court docket data present.
Letter from Lee to the court docket stating he believed that his bail quantity was a mistake and pleading for a discount so he may “get again to my household”, mailed in February. It was filed with the court docket in April, virtually a month after Lee’s demise.
Calling from the Harris County jail, Lee informed his mom that when employees didn’t present his diabetes remedy or sufficient meals, he skilled chilly sweats, panic assaults and blood sugar crashes so extreme that different detainees needed to wake him.
Nonetheless, in telephone calls to Griffin and different family and friends, he sounded hopeful. He was utilizing the time to learn and replicate. “There’s a lot to be taught in these books … They’re altering the best way I believe,” he stated in a recorded name obtained by The Marshall Mission. “I ain’t gonna be the identical [person] once I come dwelling.”
4 months into his incarceration, Lee was hospitalized. 4 days later, on March 22, 2022, he was useless.
Jason Spencer, senior coverage and communications advisor for the sheriff’s workplace, declined to reply most of our questions on Lee’s case, citing pending litigation. Spencer famous that the case had been investigated, and no legal prices had been filed.
For those who’re looking for solutions whereas mourning the lack of a cherished one who died behind bars, try this information on the way to request info from a jail or jail. For those who’ve had a buddy or member of the family die in custody, you’ll be able to inform us about your expertise right here.
Lee was nonetheless on life assist when the sheriff’s workplace floated the primary public rationalization for what may need occurred. Eleven days earlier than he died, Lee had been in a combat with one other detainee, sheriff’s workplace spokesperson Deputy Thomas Gilliland informed the media. Medical employees checked him afterward and cleared him to return to his cell, Gilliland stated.
That declare later resurfaced in official accounts. However as paperwork emerged over the subsequent 12 months, they revealed conflicting timelines and differing theories about what induced Lee’s deadly harm.
A couple of week after his demise, the sheriff’s workplace submitted a custodial demise report stating that on the day he was hospitalized Lee had informed jail employees he wasn’t feeling properly. A clinician decided he had “Altered Psychological Standing as a consequence of potential head trauma or ingestion of an unknown substance.”
The county health worker performed an post-mortem shortly after his demise however withheld the outcomes for 9 months. When a partial report was launched, it revealed the examiner had dominated his demise a murder, attributable to “blunt head trauma with subdural hemorrhage.” The post-mortem by no means defined how Lee had been injured.
The Texas Rangers, who’re required to analyze all in-custody deaths within the state, gave appreciable consideration to the speculation concerning the combat, however didn’t seem to conclude it was the reason for Lee’s demise. Of their report, obtained by The Marshall Mission, a jail officer stated she noticed Lee and one other man putting one another in a cell earlier than guards rapidly broke it up. She later recalled the person approaching her and saying, “I didn’t kill Lee.” He was by no means named as a suspect or charged. (The Marshall Mission is withholding his identify.)
The lead Rangers investigator appeared unconvinced that the altercation was severe sufficient to trigger Lee’s head trauma. In an audio recording, he confided to the jail officer: “If he actually didn’t injure him, I gotta work out what occurred — what induced him to die?”
The Rangers didn’t report a definitive conclusion.
The ultimate line of the total post-mortem report forged additional doubt on the combat, which had occurred eleven days earlier than Lee died, noting that Lee’s mind harm was “unlikely to have arisen per week or extra previous to demise.”
Griffin determined to affix a lawsuit that factors the finger at how Lee was handled by jail employees from the second he entered the ability.
Filed as a part of a broader class-action go well with towards Harris County, the criticism alleges that the county disadvantaged Lee of his constitutional rights when jail employees failed to guard him from violence and ignored severe medical wants which will have contributed to his demise. Griffin is represented by civil rights legal professional Ben Crump, who additionally represented George Floyd’s household after he was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
In line with the go well with, Lee entered the jail with prescriptions for psychological well being and diabetes medicines, however employees didn’t present them persistently. The ensuing signs — psychological well being deterioration and severe negative effects from untreated diabetes — doubtless affected his interactions with different detainees.
Additional, the lawsuit claims that one other detainee beat Lee, leaving seen facial accidents, they usually weren’t adequately handled by the jail.
The criticism argues that systemic failures on the jail — together with power understaffing, lack of psychological well being care, and a tradition of violence — contributed not solely to Lee’s demise, however to the intense accidents or deaths of twenty-two folks whose households are bringing the go well with.
In a court docket submitting responding to the lawsuit, Harris County officers argued the plaintiffs are unable to indicate that jail employees “acted with subjective deliberate indifference” and, on the most, detainees or their households had a “disagreement with their medical remedy” — which the county stated doesn’t rise to a constitutional violation.
Whether or not or not that combat induced Lee’s demise, the incident highlighted a bigger threat to detainees, consultants say. The Rangers’ report revealed that the reported altercation befell in what detainees within the jail known as the “combat cell” — a identified blind spot within the facility’s surveillance system.
That blind spot put Lee and others in peril, no matter whether or not the combat was deadly, stated UCLA professor Terence Keel, who leads the Coroner Report Mission and wrote The Coroner’s Silence: Loss of life Information and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence. “The burden of duty there’s on the officers who permit for this blind spot to persist,” Keel stated. “Why is that this blind spot there?”
To higher perceive what occurred, The Marshall Mission reviewed Lee’s jail data, post-mortem report, incident summaries and court docket filings. We requested a bunch of unbiased consultants to evaluate Lee’s case with info we supplied from the paperwork. The reviewers — together with medical doctors, researchers and former legislation enforcement officers — thought-about a variety of potential explanations for Lee’s mind harm that had been steered by officers or discovered within the data: trauma from a fall or combat, issues from untreated medical situations, a diabetic disaster or publicity to a poisonous substance. A few of these components might have contributed not directly, by impairing Lee’s conduct and making him extra susceptible to a fall or violent encounter.
In line with the Rangers’ investigation, Lee often participated in slap-boxing — a type of open-palmed sparring widespread within the jail, which witnesses stated was usually used as a solution to educate fundamental combating expertise. One individual interviewed stated he noticed Lee fall throughout a match and hit his head on a bathroom. This model of occasions aligned with one of many explanations the sheriff’s workplace floated, in 2022, that slap-boxing doubtless performed a task in Lee’s demise.
Afterward, different detainees informed the Rangers investigator, Lee appeared disoriented and slurred his speech. He handed out, they stated, then wakened vomiting and coughing up blood. They stated officers ignored his signs and denied him entry to the jail’s medical clinic. A number of witnesses stated that later that day, Lee was despatched to the clinic for his scheduled insulin dose. When clinic employees there noticed his signs, paramedics have been known as. Lee was taken to the hospital and by no means returned.
Whereas this sequence of occasions may clarify how Lee sustained his deadly harm, the main points within the data have been too restricted to attract definitive conclusions, in response to the consultants who reviewed them.
UCLA professor Keel stated Lee’s signs may even have pointed to severe issues attributable to missed or improperly administered diabetes and psychological well being medicines. “Possibly he was having a well being situation or well being crises on account of low blood sugar ranges, which might be interpreted as an altered way of thinking,” he stated.
Jeffrey Reese, a former Harris County legislation enforcement officer, stated the phrase “Altered Psychological Standing,” cited in Lee’s demise report, may need signaled one thing extra acute. “He was overwhelmed up … or he was having a [mental health] meltdown,” he stated.
“It’s only a full void,” stated Keel.
The circumstances surrounding Lee’s demise have been a tangle of conflicting official statements, non-answers from companies, and essential gaps within the data that have been launched. For instance, the health worker didn’t present a story abstract explaining their interpretation of occasions. Not one of the companies tasked with documenting deaths in custody answered the query of how he died, or acknowledged that they didn’t know.
What remained, the consultants stated, was not only a thriller about one man’s demise — however an indictment of a system unable to elucidate it.
Lee’s demise is certainly one of dozens of circumstances which have drawn scrutiny to the Harris County jail lately.
A 2024 investigation by Houston’s KHOU 11 captured detention officers repeatedly punching detainees within the head with little to no penalties. A state fee that oversees county jails has designated Harris County as non-compliant with minimal jail requirements. The fee has reportedly requested the state legal professional basic to intervene, citing ongoing failures in medical care, deterring violence and monitoring folks going through psychological well being crises.
Even the Texas Ranger assigned to analyze Lee’s demise appeared to acknowledge a broader disaster. In audio recordings from the inquiry, he expressed frustration with the repeated violence and lack of accountability on the jail.
“All of the assaults which can be occurring in right here is getting type of uncontrolled,” the Ranger stated. “I get bored with doing this, ’trigger this occurs on a regular basis. I don’t need to see folks get away with it, both.”
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez has stated most of the current deaths within the jail stemmed from pure causes or preexisting situations, noting that detainees usually have poorer well being than the final inhabitants.
“We course of over 100,000 people that come via our doorways yearly, and plenty of include poor well being,” he informed native information station KPRC 2 in 2023. “They discover themselves … right here within the county jail, as a brief dwelling, and tragedy would possibly strike.”
He additionally cited overcrowding, understaffing and outdated infrastructure as contributing components. “Our condolences exit to any household that’s been impacted … by the lack of life of somebody that was below our custody,” he stated. ”As an company, and me personally, I take it very laborious, it’s one thing that we need to enhance on.”
Below the federal Loss of life in Custody Reporting Act, state and native legislation enforcement companies are required to report in-custody deaths to the U.S. Division of Justice. The legislation, handed in 2000 and up to date in 2014, was meant to assist officers analyze systemic failures and forestall future deaths.
However information assortment below the legislation stays incomplete and unreliable.
Late final 12 months, the Justice Division revealed aggregated totals of deaths reported between 2019 and 2023. As a consequence of a technical glitch, The Marshall Mission was in a position to obtain the total dataset — a loophole that was rapidly closed. (The division has not revealed unredacted demise in custody datasets previously due to privateness points and issues about information high quality.) The data we reviewed confirmed widespread gaps: lacking causes of demise, obscure entries and inconsistent particulars from jail to jail.
These gaps make it practically unimaginable to carry establishments accountable, consultants say.
“You’ll be able to’t have that dialogue with out the information,” stated Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and one of many legislation’s authentic authors. “That’s why we handed the legislation.”
Lee’s demise was included within the database. However the entry was minimal: the way of demise listed as “Unavailable, investigation pending.” It made no point out of the murder ruling — or any of the conflicting theories which have emerged since.
Of the 72 folks listed as having died within the Harris County jail throughout that four-year interval, most entries contained little greater than “pending post-mortem outcomes.”
Griffin has sought the explanations behind her son’s demise for 3 years.
At Houston Memorial Gardens, a cemetery south of the hospital the place her son died, Griffin remembers standing with him in 2020, watching George Floyd’s casket cross via the iron gates. They have been masked, grieving strangers amongst 1000’s — mourning a person whose demise sparked a nationwide reckoning.
Now her son rests close by.
Floyd’s killer was convicted. Griffin stated she nonetheless goals of holding somebody accountable for what occurred to her little one.
Since Lee’s demise, she has thrown herself into advocacy — becoming a member of the class-action lawsuit, working together with her state consultant on jail security laws, and advising Houston’s public defender workplace on the way to higher assist households after in-custody deaths. Becoming a member of forces with different grieving households, she has garnered important native media protection.
However the seek for solutions has come at a steep value.
Griffin informed The Marshall Mission she tried to maintain working, however the grief overwhelmed her. She had dizzy spells and different stress-related well being issues, and ultimately went on medical depart from her nonprofit job. Quickly after, she stated, she was terminated. She misplaced her financial savings and her dwelling. At the moment she lives in a small condo, counting on assist from family and friends. A longtime reverend, she now relies upon financially on donations from her church neighborhood.
Greater than three years later, she stated, nobody from the Harris County Sheriff’s Workplace has formally knowledgeable her of her son’s demise or defined it. “Not a postcard, or something,” she stated. “Like nothing occurred.”
In 2023, Griffin traveled to Austin for a gathering of the Texas Fee on Jail Requirements, the place the sheriff was current. At first, she hesitated to confront him. However after listening to one other advocate converse out, she did too.
“Somebody murdered my son in your care,” she informed the sheriff, “and no one stated something.”
Gonzalez informed Griffin that her son’s demise was being investigated by an unbiased company, and supplied his condolences. He didn’t share any details about what may need led to Lee’s deadly harm.
Griffin stated she noticed worry in Gonzalez’s eyes. “[It was] like he simply stopped respiration,” she added later, with a small smile. “I’m not gonna mislead you, that made me really feel actually good.”
When Lee had known as her from jail, she by no means imagined it might be the beginning of a years-long combat for accountability. He spoke with optimism about his future. He informed her he cherished her. He believed he could be coming dwelling.
“I’m not going to let [the jail] … take my life from me for no cause,” he stated.
