Sandra Bland, 28. Image courtesy of Facebook.
A former guard at the Waller County Jail in Texas recently admitted to falsifying entries on a jail log, showing that he checked on Sandra Bland an hour before her death when he actually didn’t, a lawyer for the Bland family said.
Despite the jailer’s testimony, an attorney for Waller County is challenging the lawyer’s interpretation of the statement.
“Numerous depositions have been taken in the case involving dozens of hours of testimony,” attorney Larry Simmons said. “It is a gross miscarriage of justice and a misrepresentation for any party to cherry-pick or mischaracterize a small portion of that testimony, and take it out of context.”
According to the Houston Chronicle, a source familiar with the state’s investigation into Bland’s death confirmed that special prosecutors were made aware of the falsified records. However, a Waller County grand jury failed to indict anyone associated with the sheriff’s office.
Jailer Rafael Zuniga was a relatively new employee at the facility who relied on instructions he was given to log future checks when he was finished making his rounds, the source claimed.
Similar violations have prompted criminal indictments and/or disciplinary actions against jailers who falsified observation records and other internal reports, the Houston Chronicle reports. Such crimes are a violation of Texas state law that can range from a misdemeanor charge to a felony.
Twenty-eight-year-old Bland died at the jail on July 13, 2015, three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who pulled her over for failing to use a turn signal. Dash cam video of the confrontation sparked outrage, as the officer dragged Bland from her car and repeatedly threatened to “light her up.”
The Texas woman was later booked into the Waller County Jail and charged with assaulting an officer. Three days later, she was found hanged in her cell with a plastic garbage bag wrapped around her neck.
Bland’s death was ultimately ruled a suicide, but her family remains skeptical. According to Atlanta Black Star, Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, filed a federal lawsuit in Houston arguing that her daughter should have never been in that jail cell.
According to Veal’s lawyer, Cannon Lambert, the jailer testified he wrote in the jail log that he observed Bland in her cell around 8:01 a.m., less than an hour before she was found dead. Lambert asserted that jailers never checked on the Texas woman nor any of the other inmates during that hour.
“There’s no question that it did not happen,” he said.
Simmons’ account of the jailer’s actions paints quite a different picture.
“The overwhelming testimony has been that the Waller County jail staff treated Sandra Bland with courtesy and respect, and even afforded her special privileges, including giving her free access to the jail staff’s toll free phone, which she used to reach out to her family,” he wrote.
According to the New York Daily News, a federal judge ordered mediation in the lawsuit Wednesday.
So far, no one has been indicted for Bland’s death. However, arresting officer Brian Encinia has since been fired from the Texas Department of Public Safety and now faces a charge of misdemeanor perjury.
