Heather Rodriguez, age 45, was an inmate at Kerr County Jail in Kerrville, Texas, when she died on March 16, 2021. She had been discovered unresponsive and with no pulse earlier that day, and the custodial death report provides no indication of the possible cause of death.

Jail deaths are a concern across the nation. A study was done that examined deaths in 500-plus U.S. jails during a recent 11-year period. Among the facts uncovered by this study was that, during that time, 5,000 people who died had never been convicted of criminal charges. County jails are not like state and federal prisons, where people serve time after being convicted of crimes. Rather, in local jails, the lockups serve to detain individuals that are waiting for arraignment or a trial. There are some exceptions because some inmates serve brief sentences in local facilities.

A conclusion reached in the journalistic writeup on the study was that those 5,000 individuals’ rights of being innocent until proven guilty were subverted. Jail is certainly not meant to be a place where people who have been arrested for alleged crimes go to die before even having the benefit of their day in court.

While people are incarcerated in the U.S., they have a right to receive needed medical attention. In addition, it is the responsibility of jails to protect people who are mentally ill or who are suicidal risks from self-harm.

For additional information, see this ongoing series.

This website’s blog posts seek to help inmates now or previously incarcerated in Texas county jails. There is no intention to infer on this website that persons or institutions have engaged in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor