Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas is leaving office in a few weeks, thanks to the voters, but his legacy will live on, thanks to a lawsuit filed over a jailhouse death.Daniel Goldberg recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the department in state district court on behalf of the parents of Alfred Adams, who they claim was beaten to death by county jailors two years ago."The lawsuit is being filed now," Goldberg told Hair Balls, "because the Harris County Sheriff's Department, under the
The Sikh family that says it was harassed by Harris County Sheriff's deputies has been getting to know county politicians more than they might have guessed.Over the weekend, sheriff-elect Adrian Garcia met with the family and many other Sikhs; yesterday is was County Judge Ed Emmett.Emmett apologized for the incident, even though technically it's still under investigation."I apologized for what happened to them, and I kept saying over and over, as kindly as I could, that I can't judge the facts,
When Sean and Erik Ibarra sued attorney Lloyd Kelley in October over legal fees, one of the questions was what would happen to a separate civil-rights lawsuit with several plaintiffs, including the Ibarras and April Walker, against the sheriff's department and certain deputies.(The original suit, however, did accomplish one thing before the fee feud: it's what made Chuck Rosenthal's infamous e-mails public.)It took some time for Kelley to extract clients Walker and Lloyd Henderson from the origi
Photo by alex-sThe Houston Chronicle bannered a headline Saturday over a story about federal inspectors criticizing the Harris County Jail: "County Jail Fails Feds' Probe."The story outlined the results of the inspection, saying "poor access to health care and life-threatening conditions" at the jail violated inmates' rights.What brought on the inspections in the first place? "The Department of Justice initiated its investigation last year after
the jail, which has failed four of its last six st
We told you yesterday about how the Houston Chronicle was being uncharacteristically modest in writing about federal inspectors criticizing the Harris County jail.Their story mentioned only how the jail "came under scrutiny" without mentioning that the scrutiny in question was spurred by Chronicle stories.Cynics that we are, we wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that the guy who wrote those stories, Steve McVicker, is suing the Chron over being laid off. Suits like that tend to ta
