Continuing from Part 3, doctors attempted to take an MRI, but they said the 47-year-old woman was too restless to remain still. She could not walk and she lost any awareness of who she was or where she was. Two days after being admitted into the hospital, the woman died in her hospital bed. The hospital said that the cause of death was both high blood pressure and a kind of fungal meningitis most commonly suffered by people with HIV/AIDS.

The woman’s husband has said that in the videos from the jail, he cannot even recognize his wife. The deceased inmate’s mother has stated that she cannot bear watching them because of the level of suffering her child was going through.

The family has formally complained that the woman was deprived of medical care and that she was housed in inhumane conditions.

An investigative journalist looked into the issue of this inmate’s tragic death not being listed as a custodial death. As mentioned previously, the Texas county jail had released her from custody when they had her admitted into the hospital about two days before her death. Not only is this action a strategy jails have been using to escape scrutiny for deaths of inmates, but the procedures they followed were far from typical.

For a valid release from incarceration, a District Attorney usually drops an inmate’s charges or the inmate signs a written agreement called a personal recognizance (PR) bond. In this case, the release papers reflect that the Sheriff released the inmate and indicated she was not capable of signing anything. After the inmate was in the hospital, someone from the jail requested that the woman’s sister sign the release. However, the jail did not have possession of the sister’s legal power of attorney. The point has been made that, without signing a PR bond, how could the release be valid?

See Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this continuing series to learn more.

This website purposes to help Texas prisoners currently or formerly detained in city and county jails and their families. There is never an intention on this site to infer misdeeds on the part of a person, organization, or institution.

–Guest Contributor