64 People Have Died Inside This Jail — And A Right-Winger Is Being Blamed (2024)

Jacqualyne Johnson took her son to a mental health hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 19. Anthony Johnson Jr. had not slept for two days, and he suffered from schizophrenic episodes. This time it was “hot and heavy,” she said, and Anthony was trying not to harm himself.

Anthony always wanted to be a trusted man among his family, his sister Chanell said, and planned to earn college degrees. He wanted to fix his mental health issues and have a home for his family. But this was his second recent trip to a hospital; a prior manic episode spurred a visit in February.

Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Associated Press

After a 15-minute assessment, medical officials decided not to keep him at the hospital, saying it was best if he stayed with his family. When they arrived back home, Anthony got two bags of clothes and left. That was the last time Jacqualyne Johnson saw her son. Less than 24 hours later, her son called and said he had been arrested and was in the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth. The 31-year-old Marine veteran was held on charges of evading arrest and drug possession.

“I told him to be safe in there, and we will work on getting you out of there on Monday,” Jacqualyne Johnson remembered.

But he died on April 21 inside the jail. According to authorities, a struggle took place between Johnson and several officers as deputies were conducting a routine contraband check.

Tarrant County Jail

Surveillance footage and a cellphone video show several officers struggling with Johnson while attempting to handcuff him outside of his cell. Officer Rafael Moreno knelt on Johnson’s back. Johnson can be heard responding: “I can’t breathe.”

The footage did not show the full encounter, according to Daryl Washington, the attorney representing Johnson’s family. This month, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Johnson’s death a homicide by asphyxiation.

Last month, a grand jury indicted Tarrant County Sheriff’s Officer jailer Moreno and Lt. Joel Garcia on murder charges.

Garcia’s attorney released a statement to KTXA-TV in Fort Worth, saying the officer was “heartbroken” about Johnson’s death but that he committed “no crime.”

Johnson was one of 64 people who have died in the Tarrant County Jail in the last seven years. The causes included suicides, overdoses — and fatal encounters with staff.

Calls For Federal Oversight

Multiple officials in Texas are sounding the alarm for federal intervention at the jail.

In early June, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) urged the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into “the distressing pattern of inmate deaths and jail incidents at the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth.” Veasey also wrote a letter to the Justice Department in May, raising alarms about people in the jail dying due to drug overdoses and poor supervision.

“From physical altercations to drug overdoses and even an unattended birth, the loss of any life within correctional facilities is intolerable and warrants immediate investigation and action,” the letter said.

Critics have also homed in on Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn, who is in charge of the jail. “The sheriff has lost all institutional control of that facility, and it needs to be controlled by the feds at this point. I don’t know how many deaths have to occur,” Washington, the lawyer for Johnson’s family, said.

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Waybourn fired Garcia and Moreno on May 16 following Johnson’s death, but he reinstated them a week later, then fired them again.

When Johnson died on April 21, Waybourn said department policy was violated when an officer knelt on Johnson’s back. But Waybourn has not commented on the case since the two sheriff’s officers were charged.

The Tarrant County Jail is the third-largest county jail in Texas, with capacity for about 5,000 prisoners. Tarrant County spent $18 million in 2022 to move some people to a correctional facility in tiny Garza County, nearly 300 miles west, to alleviate overpopulation. But after a jail standards review, the lockup was found to be out of compliance with “minimum jail standards” in December 2023. The county has since considered canceling the agreement with the Texas prison contractor. People who were sent to Garza County are scheduled to return to Tarrant County in September and October, Tarrant County officials told HuffPost.

But advocates and officials say jail staff have poor supervision of people’s living conditions and that the jail is still overcrowded. The sheriff’s office disputed that and said it welcomed any outside agencies to investigate the facility.

“Sheriff Waybourn welcomes the Department of Justice and any other investigatory agency into the jail,” Robbie Hoy, public information officer for the sheriff’s office, told HuffPost. He claimed that an as-yet unfiled inspection from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards preliminarily found the culture inside the facility is “positive; the inmates appear to respect the staff; the leadership is active and engaged” and that the facility is “impressive; impeccably clean — one of the cleanest facilities we’ve seen.”

Waybourn did not respond to repeated requests for comment that were sent to his personal phone and his campaign staff.

Other criminal justice advocates in the county have demanded that Waybourn, who has been sheriff since 2017, resign. Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons said Waybourn isn’t doing his job.

“I am seeking transparency for those people that we serve, for our constituents. It is clear that there are problems at this jail,” Simmons said. “We are going to be paying out more and more multimillion-dollar settlements if our leadership does not change at the sheriff’s office. We have a sheriff who is not implementing meaningful reforms that will ensure the safety of those in custody. The sheriff, my colleagues and I on the Commissioners Court bear a responsibility for all of these deaths and the spending of taxpayer dollars to settle with these grieved families.”

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Tarrant County isn’t deep red: President Joe Biden very narrowly edged Donald Trump there in 2020. But Waybourn has aligned himself with some far-right politics that could endanger his reelection bid in November. His Democratic opponent is Patrick Moses, and residents have led demonstrations this month demanding Waybourn’s resignation.

In 2016, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association endorsed Waybourn’s campaign. CSPOA is a political organization for sheriffs who believe they have authority over local, state and federal authorities within their counties.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted in the August 2020 killing of two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, amid unrest over the police shooting of a Black man, posted a photo last year with Waybourn and Cary Cheshire, a Texas activist. Cheshire is executive director of Texans for Strong Borders. The Texas Tribune reported last year that the group’s founder and president, Chris Russo, had close ties to Nick Fuentes, a far-right commentator with white supremacist ties.

“He is the elected leader of the jail. It is all under his watch and under his leadership. And he is posing with Kyle Rittenhouse and taking money from these white supremacists’ PAC groups. Those are all reflections of his character that create a culture of disregard, particularly for Black inmates and their life,” Joshua Lucas, a criminal justice reform co-chair of the Justice Network of Tarrant County told HuffPost.

More Deaths, Few Answers

Robert Miller died in the Tarrant County Jail in 2019. State medical experts ruled that sickle cell anemia was the cause and cited overexertion. But a 2021 autopsy report amended the cause of death to “undetermined.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that officers pepper-sprayed Miller three times and that he did not receive medical attention after telling a nurse he couldn’t breathe.

Medical experts interviewed by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram years after the ruling said medical officials in the county were confusing a person having a sickle cell trait, which Miller did have, with sickle cell disease and that it was an unlikely cause of death.

Amanda McCoy/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Getty Images

In 2020, three Tarrant County officers at the jail were arrested for beating a man named Cory Rodrigues, who suffered a broken cheekbone, broken ribs and a collapsed lung, according to arrest records. The county’s district attorney later dismissed the charges.

Twenty-one people died in custody in 2020, which was 3.5 times the mortality rate of the Dallas County Jail, its eastern neighbor, according to county records.

Last month, the county approved the largest settlement in county history following the death of a baby born inside the Tarrant County Jail that year. Chasity Congious gave birth while alone in a cell. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Her lawsuit claimed jail staff took nearly 40 minutes to realize she was giving birth.

Congious and the baby were taken to a hospital, and the baby was pronounced dead 10 days later.

Another woman, Chasity Bonner, died in the jail on May 27 following a drug overdose. Simmons, the county commissioner, told HuffPost she is concerned about how many drugs appear to be getting into the jail and the recent number of deaths that have been linked to possible drug use while in custody.

At a County Commissioners meeting last month, residents expected to learn more about Bonner’s death, but Waybourn did not attend the meeting, and no further updates were provided. Janell Johnson, Anthony Johnson’s sister, was forced out of the meeting after she directed a fiery statement toward officials as she demanded more answers about the jail deaths of her brother and other people.

Searching For Answers

Anthony Johnson’s mother also still wants answers, and she wants access to the full video of the incident that preceded her son’s death.

“That one video should raise a lot of suspicion as to what is happening in the facility. My son was in custody, and they did the same thing to him that they did to George Floyd. This is like George Floyd 2.0,” she said, referring to the May 25, 2020, police murder of the Black man in Minneapolis.

Washington, her lawyer, says federal intervention of the jail needs to occur.

“They heard Anthony say that he could not breathe. The sheriff said the maneuver was not something he approved of,” Washington told HuffPost.

“You would think after what happened to Anthony that they would be taking every step to make sure everyone is full protected. “The sheriff has lost all institutional control of that facility, and it needs to be controlled by the feds at this point, I don’t know how many deaths have to occur. These are individuals who are mostly considered innocent. They have not had their day in court.”