Family of Sandra Bland settles Texas wrongful death suit for $1.9 million, lawyer says

Reporting from HOUSTON  —  Relatives of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died last summer in a Texas jail after a contentious traffic stop, have reached a $1.9-million settlement in their wrongful-death lawsuit, the family’s attorney told a Houston television station Thursday.

Local officials insisted that the agreement is not final and that it was supposed to remain confidential.

But attorney Cannon Lambert said the settlement is “absolute” and the civil lawsuit will be dismissed in several days.

Lambert told the Associated Press in an interview at his Chicago office that the deal requires the county to have a nurse or emergency medical technician at the Waller County Jail during all shifts and to install electronic sensors to ensure staff are properly monitoring inmates.

Lambert said the county also agreed to advocate for state legislation to fund training of jail personnel to better care for prisoners.

Bland, who was from the Chicago area, died in her cell three days after she was arrested by a white Texas state trooper for a minor traffic offense. Her death was ruled a suicide, and Bland’s family later sued the county and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, said any legislation passed to benefit Waller County must be named in her daughter’s honor.

“It’s awesome,” Reed-Veal told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’s a victory for mothers across the country.”

Waller County Atty. Larry Simmons confirmed Thursday that a potential settlement had been reached but said it was not final. He also said the parties agreed in writing to keep the agreement confidential until it was complete, and the county intended “to honor this commitment.”

Simmons said lawyers on both sides were “still working through a few details” and that any settlement must be approved by county commissioners. The county “vigorously” denies any fault or wrongdoing in Bland’s death, he said, “and the settlement does not involve any such admissions.”

The agreement would cost the county “a modest $1,000 deductible” under its liability insurance, he said.

Jeff Rensberger, a professor at the Houston College of Law, said the settlement showed that both the county and its insurance carrier wanted to “get this behind them.”

“The cost of the settlement is good risk to them as compared to the risk what a jury might do in this case,” he said.

The other provisions attached to the agreement, while unusual, are “not rare or unheard of,” particularly in a wrongful death lawsuit against a government agency, Rensberger said.

“Part of the motivation for bringing wrongful death suits in cases like this is for reform purposes as well as compensation,” he said. “So this goes to that reform purpose.”

Bland’s sister did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment from the Associated Press.

Bland, 28, was pulled over by a state trooper in Prairie View, northwest of Houston, for changing lanes without signaling. The stop grew confrontational, and the trooper, Brian Encinia, ordered her from the car before forcing her to the ground. She was taken into custody on a charge of assaulting a public servant but could not immediately come up with the $500 bail, according to investigators.

Video from the July 10, 2015, traffic stop shows Encinia drawing his stun gun and telling Bland, “I will light you up!” She can later be heard screaming off-camera that the trooper was about to break her wrists and complaining that he knocked her head into the ground. The video provoked national outrage and drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Encinia was later fired and charged with a misdemeanor perjury charge stemming from the arrest. He has pleaded not guilty.

In an affidavit, Encinia’s said he removed Bland “from her vehicle to further conduct a safer traffic investigation,” but prosecutors said Waller County grand jurors found that statement to be false.

Bland, who attended Prairie View A&M University just outside Hempstead, was in the process of moving to Texas from the Chicago area to take a job at the school. Three days after her arrest, she was found hanging from a jail cell partition. A medical examiner ruled the death a suicide, and a grand jury declined to charge any sheriff’s officials or jailers.

In their lawsuit, Bland’s family contended jailers should have checked on her more frequently and that the county should have performed mental evaluations once she disclosed she had a history of attempting suicide.

In her lawsuit, Reed-Veal also contended that Encinia falsified the assault allegation to take Bland into custody and that jail personnel failed to keep her daughter safe. County officials said Bland was treated well while locked up and produced documents that showed she gave jail workers inconsistent information about whether she was suicidal.

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UPDATES:

11:15 a.m.: This article has been updated with new information and comments throughout.

This article was originally published at 8 a.m.