After quickly moving through the House, a Bill that would bring forth major changes inside the Harris County Jail is one step closer to being signed by the Governor.
House Bill 3434 was authored after an inmate named Evan Griffin Lee died in March of last year, after what’s been ruled a homicide.
The Bill includes language to help ensure the separation of inmates with mental disabilities like Evan from general population.
It also creates other avenues for more transparency and accountability.
“I was just mortified. It really, really hurt,” said Evan’s father, Timothy Lee about his son’s death.
For the past 581 days, he and Evan’s mother, Jacilet Griffin, have been trying to find out how their 31-year-old son was murdered.
”His death was ruled a homicide by the Texas Rangers, and we have not received an autopsy at all,” Jacilet Griffin said.
She says her son was locked up in December of 2021 and thrown into general population despite having a mental disability.
On top of that, they say they had no idea he had been seriously hurt until getting a call from a doctor in the hospital in March of last year.
”To get authorization to get him a surgery that was needed for blunt injury to his head where blood was trapped between his skull and his brain,” she added.
Distraught he didn’t make it, Evan’s family is also upset because they say they still don’t even know why he was jailed in the first place.
”We only know that the judge needed to talk to him, and that there was an error in the system,” she said.
Most concerning for the family is how he went from physically healthy to dead.
They add he isn’t the only inmate to die after being locked up there.
”[In] 2022, 35 deaths. [In] 2023, 15 deaths already. And just last night, a suicide,” Jacilet Griffin said.
The lack of answers in Evan’s case is what has pushed his family to call on District Representative Ron Reynolds to author House Bill 3434, also to be known as the Evan Griffin Lee Bill. It would require jailers to wear body cameras among other changes.
“An outside agency that has no bias, they’re going to take a neutral approach to be objective and look at what is happening and come up with some recommendations so that we can implement those recommendations,” Reynolds said.
“It gives my heart some peace to know at least his death would not have gone in vain,” Jacilet Griffin said.
This is a bracketed bill. It would be specifically for the Harris County Jail. Since it swept through the House unanimously, the hope is it passes through the Senate and gets to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk within the next two weeks. The session ends May 29.