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, docs 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 received got here from hospital workers, 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 usually good well being, together with his diabetes and different underlying circumstances beneath management, his mom stated. Then he was booked into the county jail.
Although the county medical expert dominated his loss of life a murder resulting from a head harm, no public company has ever offered 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 one in every of hundreds nationwide that reveal how the prison justice system fails to account for deaths behind bars. Every year, about 6,000 folks die in prisons and jails, and one other 2,000 throughout encounters with police, in response to estimates by authorities businesses and nonprofit teams — numbers that specialists consider are seemingly undercounts. Federal regulation has for 25 years required native businesses to report in-custody deaths, however the mandate is just not 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 businesses that would have defined what occurred provided competing timelines and contradictory narratives. The burden of uncovering the reality fell to not the system — however to his grieving mom.
About a yr 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 keeping 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 seemingly 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 cut back his bail weren’t authorized, court docket information 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, nearly a month after Lee’s loss of life.
Calling from the Harris County jail, Lee informed his mom that when workers 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 cellphone 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 way in which I feel,” he stated in a recorded name obtained by The Marshall Mission. “I ain’t gonna be the identical [person] once I come house.”
4 months into his incarceration, Lee was hospitalized. 4 days later, on March 22, 2022, he was lifeless.
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 prison expenses had been filed.
If you happen to’re looking for solutions whereas mourning the lack of a liked one who died behind bars, take a look at this information on tips on how to request data from a jail or jail. If you happen to’ve had a good friend or member of the family die in custody, you possibly can 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 might need occurred. Eleven days earlier than he died, Lee had been in a struggle with one other detainee, sheriff’s workplace spokesperson Deputy Thomas Gilliland informed the media. Medical workers 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 yr, they revealed conflicting timelines and differing theories about what prompted Lee’s deadly harm.
A few week after his loss of life, the sheriff’s workplace submitted a custodial loss of life report stating that on the day he was hospitalized Lee had informed jail workers he wasn’t feeling effectively. A clinician decided he had “Altered Psychological Standing resulting from doable head trauma or ingestion of an unknown substance.”
The county medical expert carried out an post-mortem shortly after his loss of life however withheld the outcomes for 9 months. When a partial report was launched, it revealed the examiner had dominated his loss of life 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 idea concerning the struggle, however didn’t seem to conclude it was the reason for Lee’s loss of life. Of their report, obtained by The Marshall Mission, a jail officer stated she noticed Lee and one other man hanging one another in a cell earlier than guards shortly 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 prompted him to die?”
The Rangers didn’t report a definitive conclusion.
The ultimate line of the complete post-mortem report solid additional doubt on the struggle, which had occurred eleven days earlier than Lee died, noting that Lee’s mind harm was “unlikely to have arisen every week or extra previous to loss of life.”
Griffin determined to affix a lawsuit that factors the finger at how Lee was handled by jail workers from the second he entered the power.
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 workers failed to guard him from violence and ignored severe medical wants that will have contributed to his loss of life. Griffin is represented by civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who additionally represented George Floyd’s household after he was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
In keeping with the go well with, Lee entered the jail with prescriptions for psychological well being and diabetes medicines, however workers didn’t present them persistently. The ensuing signs — psychological well being deterioration and severe unwanted side effects from untreated diabetes — seemingly affected his interactions with different detainees.
Additional, the lawsuit claims that one other detainee beat Lee, leaving seen facial accidents, and so they weren’t adequately handled by the jail.
The criticism argues that systemic failures on the jail — together with persistent understaffing, lack of psychological well being care, and a tradition of violence — contributed not solely to Lee’s loss of life, 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 workers “acted with subjective deliberate indifference” and, on the most, detainees or their households had a “disagreement with their medical therapy” — which the county stated doesn’t rise to a constitutional violation.
Whether or not or not that struggle prompted Lee’s loss of life, the incident highlighted a bigger threat to detainees, specialists say. The Rangers’ report revealed that the reported altercation came about in what detainees within the jail known as the “struggle cell” — a recognized blind spot within the facility’s surveillance system.
That blind spot put Lee and others in peril, no matter whether or not the struggle was deadly, stated UCLA professor Terence Keel, who leads the Coroner Report Mission and wrote The Coroner’s Silence: Loss of life Data and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence. “The burden of duty there may be on the officers who enable 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 information, post-mortem report, incident summaries and court docket filings. We requested a bunch of impartial specialists to evaluate Lee’s case with data we offered from the paperwork. The reviewers — together with docs, researchers and former regulation enforcement officers — thought-about a spread of doable explanations for Lee’s mind harm that had been instructed by officers or discovered within the information: trauma from a fall or struggle, problems from untreated medical circumstances, a diabetic disaster or publicity to a poisonous substance. A few of these components could have contributed not directly, by impairing Lee’s habits and making him extra weak to a fall or violent encounter.
In keeping with the Rangers’ investigation, Lee incessantly participated in slap-boxing — a type of open-palmed sparring widespread within the jail, which witnesses stated was usually used as a option to educate primary preventing expertise. One individual interviewed stated he noticed Lee fall throughout a match and hit his head on a rest room. This model of occasions aligned with one of many explanations the sheriff’s workplace floated, in 2022, that slap-boxing seemingly performed a job in Lee’s loss of life.
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 workers there noticed his signs, paramedics had 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 small print within the information had been too restricted to attract definitive conclusions, in response to the specialists who reviewed them.
UCLA professor Keel stated Lee’s signs may even have pointed to severe problems 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 could be interpreted as an altered frame of mind,” he stated.
Jeffrey Reese, a former Harris County regulation enforcement officer, stated the phrase “Altered Psychological Standing,” cited in Lee’s loss of life report, might need signaled one thing extra acute. “He was crushed up … or he was having a [mental health] meltdown,” he stated.
“It’s only a full void,” stated Keel.
The circumstances surrounding Lee’s loss of life had been a tangle of conflicting official statements, non-answers from businesses, and essential gaps within the information that had been launched. For instance, the medical expert didn’t present a story abstract explaining their interpretation of occasions. Not one of the businesses tasked with documenting deaths in custody answered the query of how he died, or acknowledged that they didn’t know.
What remained, the specialists stated, was not only a thriller about one man’s loss of life — however an indictment of a system unable to elucidate it.
Lee’s loss of life is one in every of dozens of circumstances which have drawn scrutiny to the Harris County jail in recent times.
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 lawyer normal 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 loss of life 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 are occurring in right here is getting form 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 lots of the latest deaths within the jail stemmed from pure causes or preexisting circumstances, 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 short lived house, 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 beneath our custody,” he stated. ”As an company, and me personally, I take it very arduous, it’s one thing that we need to enhance on.”
Below the federal Loss of life in Custody Reporting Act, state and native regulation enforcement businesses are required to report in-custody deaths to the U.S. Division of Justice. The regulation, handed in 2000 and up to date in 2014, was meant to assist officers analyze systemic failures and forestall future deaths.
However information assortment beneath the regulation stays incomplete and unreliable.
Late final yr, the Justice Division revealed aggregated totals of deaths reported between 2019 and 2023. Because of a technical glitch, The Marshall Mission was in a position to obtain the complete dataset — a loophole that was shortly closed. (The division has not revealed unredacted loss of life in custody datasets prior to now due to privateness points and issues about information high quality.) The information we reviewed confirmed widespread gaps: lacking causes of loss of life, imprecise entries and inconsistent particulars from jail to jail.
These gaps make it practically unattainable to carry establishments accountable, specialists say.
“You’ll be able to’t have that dialogue with out the info,” stated Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia and one of many regulation’s unique authors. “That’s why we handed the regulation.”
Lee’s loss of life was included within the database. However the entry was minimal: the style of loss of life 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 loss of life 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 move via the iron gates. They had been masked, grieving strangers amongst hundreds — mourning a person whose loss of life 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 youngster.
Since Lee’s loss of life, she has thrown herself into advocacy — becoming a member of the class-action lawsuit, working along with her state consultant on jail security laws, and advising Houston’s public defender workplace on tips on how 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 price.
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 finally went on medical go away from her nonprofit job. Quickly after, she stated, she was terminated. She misplaced her financial savings and her house. At the moment she lives in a small residence, 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 loss of life 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 person stated something.”
Gonzalez informed Griffin that her son’s loss of life was being investigated by an impartial company, and provided his condolences. He didn’t share any details about what might need led to Lee’s deadly harm.
Griffin stated she noticed concern in Gonzalez’s eyes. “[It was] like he simply stopped respiratory,” 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 will be the beginning of a years-long struggle for accountability. He spoke with optimism about his future. He informed her he liked her. He believed he can be coming house.
“I’m not going to let [the jail] … take my life from me for no motive,” he stated.
