Family of woman who died in Tarrant County jail sues for medical records
The family of a woman who says the woman 'essentially starved to death' in the Tarrant County jail filed a lawsuit Monday demanding the county turn over documents related to her death.
Kimberly Phillips, 56, died in custody of the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office on Feb. 18. She was moved from the county jail to John Peter Smith Hospital on Feb. 15 after being put on round-the-clock medical watch in the jail for an unspecified amount of time. She was booked into the jail on Jan. 25, according to county records.
Her family believes she died of starvation after not being fed according to her vegetarian diet.
The family's attorney, Houston-based Chidi Anunobi, said in a news release that reports indicate Phillips had not been fed since Jan. 27. He cited a private autopsy report commissioned by her family that attributed her death to 'complications of anorexia/starvation.'
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office ruled her death to be caused by 'complications from dehydration and malnutrition.'
The family is asking a Tarrant County district court to compel the Sheriff's Office and the Medical Examiner's Office to release medical records it has requested. Those offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment by the Star-Telegram late Monday.
Court records show that Anunobi requested Phillips' records in late February. The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office appealed to the Texas Attorney General's Office to withhold them on grounds that they relate to a pending criminal investigation.
The Attorney General's Office granted the appeal on May 2, permitting the county to withhold the records.
In the news release sent Monday, Anunobi said his client's case is part of a 'persistent pattern of stonewalling and withholding of information to the families of inmates who have died while under the custody of Tarrant County Sheriff's Office.'
The county used the 'pretext of criminal investigation' to refuse Phillips' family the records, he said, adding that 'the little-known circumstances surrounding Ms. Phillips's death suggest possible abuse, denial of necessary care, and systemic failure to ensure inmate safety.'
The District Attorney's Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday.
Anunobi's office filed a petition for a writ of mandamus, a legal remedy that seeks to compel the government to fulfill its official duties or rectify an abuse of power. It is 'an extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance,' according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Among the records the family is seeking to force the government to release are Phillips' autopsy report, medical records, lab reports, diagnoses, pharmaceutical records and videos showing her body, among other records, court records show.
The circumstances warranting a writ of mandamus in Phillips' case, Anunobi argued in the court filing, include 'a long and well-documented history of inmate abuse, preventable deaths, and systemic obstruction of transparency' at the Tarrant County jail.
A total of 70 people have died in the jail since Sheriff Bill Waybourn took office in 2017, according to data from the Sheriff's Office.
The death of Robert Miller in 2019 showed a '[d]eliberate indifference to serious medical needs,' the lawsuit alleges.
Miller died after being pepper-sprayed in August of that year. The medical examiner ruled his death natural due to sickle-cell disease, but a Star-Telegram investigation found that Miller did not have sickle-cell disease. The more likely explanation was an excessive use of pepper spray, experts told the Star-Telegram.
The May 2020 birth and death of the daughter of Chasity Congious, a woman with an intellectual disability who gave birth in her cell without guards knowing, displays a '[f]ailure to monitor mentally ill or vulnerable inmates,' the lawsuit states.
And the June 2020 death of Javonte Myers, who lay dead in his cell for six hours before guards found him, serves as historical precedent for the falsification of records, the lawsuit states. In September 2023, Tarrant County paid a $1 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by Myers' family alleging jailers had falsified observation logs.
'Unfortunately, Ms. Phillips's case is not an isolated incident,' Anunobi said in the news release. 'Over the past few years, Tarrant County Sheriff's Office has seen a troubling increase in inmate deaths, with many cases involving similar allegations of abuse, neglect, and medical indifference.'
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