What happened?
A newly released video of the roadside encounter shot on Bland’s own cellphone has prompted calls from Bland’s family, from a lawmaker in Texas, and from two Texas politicians running in the 2020 presidential race — Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro — for renewed investigations into the case.
“Immediately reopen the investigation into Sandra Bland’s arrest and death,” O’Rourke, a former Democratic congressman from El Paso, said on Twitter, calling for “full accountability and justice.”
The video, which state and county officials insist was given to the Bland family nearly two years ago, was publicly broadcast for the first time this week. It has resurfaced a number of questions that have swirled around the case of a 28-year-old African American woman who was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change, shortly before she was to start a new job at Prairie View A&M; University in Texas.
The biggest one is whether the state trooper, Brian Encinia, who is white, should have been held legally accountable for his description of the roadside encounter with Bland.
“My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” Encinia told investigators for the Department of Public Safety’s Office of Inspector General not long after Bland’s death.
A grand jury — based on what was known at the time, including video of the encounter from the officer’s dashcam — indicted Encinia for perjury. But the case was dropped in exchange for a promise from the trooper, who was fired, that he would never again work in law enforcement.
The new cellphone footage prompted O’Rourke to say Tuesday that the close-up look at the encounter that the video provides “leads me to call for a new trial.”
“We now have new evidence, and I hope with that trial, we finally get justice,” O’Rourke said.
But Shawn McDonald, a Houston lawyer who was part of the team of special prosecutors who handled the case against Encinia, said he was unsure whether the government could legally reopen the case against the former trooper.
In any case, he said, the cellphone video does not represent new evidence, since it was known to investigators and was disclosed to the family in response to the wrongful-death lawsuit they filed in the case. The suit was settled in 2016 for $1.9 million.
A number of questions were also raised after Bland’s death about what happened at the jail, and why a 28-year-old woman on her way to start a new job would take her own life.
Most of those questions have already been put to rest: Both her mental health background and the physical evidence in the autopsy report pointed to suicide.
The confrontation at the traffic stop led to Bland being arrested on a charge of assaulting a public servant. She was booked on July 10, 2015, into the Waller County jail in Hempstead, a town of about 6,000 in southeast Texas, and she was placed in a housing area for women.
Three days later, on July 13, a guard making the rounds found her hanging in her 15-by-20-foot cell in what officials described as a “semi-standing position,” with a plastic trash-can liner around her neck and affixed to a U-shaped metal hook overhead. She was pronounced dead shortly after 9 a.m.
The results of the autopsy, announced by officials on July 23, indicated that her injuries were consistent with suicide, not homicide. The autopsy found that the condition of Bland’s head, neck and hands lacked any signs of a violent struggle. Markings around her neck were also consistent with suicide, the medical examiners said.
Waller County officials later expressed regret that Bland had not been placed on suicide watch, particularly in light of her disclosure on a jail screening form that she had once tried to kill herself with pills after losing a baby. She also reported at the time she entered the jail that she had battled depression and was feeling depressed at the time.
“Have you ever attempted suicide?” the form asked. “Yes,” Bland wrote. “In 2015, lost baby, by taking pills.”
A second questionnaire, filled out hours later, said Bland had never been depressed, or was not feeling depressed at that moment, though it did note her earlier suicide attempt. Elton Mathis, the Waller County district attorney, said the discrepancy was a result of jail officials having asked Bland about her mindset at two different times, and her giving different answers.
“I do wish she would have been on a suicide watch,” Mathis said in 2015. “We all do.”
In a series of investigations and legislative hearings that unfolded after Bland’s death, jail officials and others gave varying accounts of Bland’s demeanor during her time in jail.
Dormic Smith, one of the jailers, told interviewers from the Texas Rangers that Bland “told him that she had changed her life and drove from Chicago, Illinois, for a job.” The jailer said he “never once thought she was suicidal, but she appeared to be in a state of disbelief about what was happening to her,” according to the Rangers’ report.
Other jail officials who looked in on Bland in her jail cell said she had seemed OK, but that she was clearly upset after being booked and placed in a holding cell.
Bland was “sitting in the holding cell with her face in her hands and she was crying,” Elsa Magnus, another jail employee, told investigators. “Bland said repeatedly that she did not do anything wrong,” Magnus told Rangers.
Another jailer, Randy Tomczak, said he offered Bland breakfast, but she declined to take the food tray. He then offered to leave the tray aside in case she changed her mind, he said, and she responded, “OK, thank you.”
During a security check at the end of his shift, Tomczak said he stepped into her cell “and told her that he would probably see her tonight, and she replied ‘OK,’” according to the investigative report.
One thing Bland seemed to be worried about, according to those who were at the jail, was getting out, and she had contacted her family for help. She had hoped to raise the $500 cash deposit needed to post her $5,000 bail, but had not managed to do so, the Waller County sheriff, R. Glenn Smith, told The New York Times in 2015.
At one point, according to the Rangers’ report, Bland asked if anyone had telephoned for her. She was told no.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.