With $11M verdict tossed in 2010 death, family fights on
Struggle to hold law enforcement accountable is compounded by lack of video
There is no question Jamail Amron died while in the custody of Harris County constables. But the gulf between what law enforcement said happened and the account given by bystanders has put his family on a decadelong legal and emotional roller coaster from despair to vindication — and back again.
On Sept. 30, 2010, the 23-yearold called for medical help after feeling anxious he was having a bad reaction to cocaine. The four Precinct 4 constables who responded said he was combative, so it was necessary to handcuff him and pin him to the ground to protect him from hurting himself. They said that while secured to a stretcher, Amron suddenly stopped breathing and, soon after, died.
Eyewitnesses watching the confrontation from only several feet away saw something different. Amron was calm until the deputies arrived, they said. He tried to pull away only when the officers handcuffed him. While he was on the ground, two witnesses said a constable pressed his boot directly over Amron’s mouth and nose for several minutes and pushed so hard “I could tell the arch of the neck was going flat along with the asphalt,” one recalled.
At first, the constables’ version stood; none of the officers was disciplined and no charges were filed against them. In 2017 the family rejoiced when a civil jury believed the bystanders, awarding Amron’s parents $11 million for the excessive force that caused their son’s death. They were crushed again this February when an appeals court tossed the verdict.
The Amrons’ long struggle seeking accountability for their son’s death highlights how the relatively recent introduction of cellphone recordings has shifted the balance of power in disputes between police and their accusers. Over the past two weeks, clear differences between the official description of an event and what can be plainly observed in recordings has helped spur a call for an unprecedented overhaul of law enforcement.
“Officers were able to get the
suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical stress,” stated the initial report from the Minneapolis police incident ending in George Floyd’s death. Bystander videos of an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while three others watched told a different story. All four have been criminally charged.
As protests roiled across the country in the wake of Floyd’s death, additional recordings of interactions between citizens and police appeared to show more instances in which the police version of events was inaccurate or, at the least, incomplete. In Buffalo, N.Y., police said a protester injured his head when he tripped and fell. After video showing he was forcefully shoved by two police and left bleeding and unattended on the ground was widely broadcast, both officers were charged with assault.
Discrepancies in the accounts of Amron’s death might have been cleared up by recordings, as well. The four constable cruisers that responded to the scene had dashboard cameras, according to court documents. Each of the constables also wore a body mic to capture audio of their interactions.
None of the devices was turned on.
Other than the presence of a recording of what occurred, the similarities between Amron’s and Floyd’s deaths are unmistakable, said Brad Gilde, the Amron family’s attorney. “This case is a carbon copy in every respect,” he said. “The difference is the cellphone footage caught by disinterested onlookers. We just have the eyeballs of disinterested onlookers.”
A 911 call
Since 2005, just under 1,200 people died in police custody prior to being booked in jail, according to the Texas Justice Initiative.
Although many deaths occurred during a police response to alleged crimes, a number did not, according to a 2017 Austin American-Statesman investigation. In 50 of the fatalities, the only charge the deceased faced was public intoxication or resisting arrest.
In a dozen of the custodial deaths — Amron’s included — the person faced no charges at all.
While he still hoped to become an engineer, Amron was taking a break from attending a local college, working at a fast-food restaurant, his mother Barbara Coats said. Although he still lived at home, the night he died he was staying at his girlfriend’s apartment.
He occasionally did drugs, including trying cocaine, the girlfriend later said. A couple of times he’d become anxious and sought medical help.
Just after midnight, he left her apartment in Spring and called 911. But he told the responding paramedics he didn’t want treatment and walked to a nearby Burger King, where he asked for a glass of water.
Amron was sitting on the curb when the first constable, Bryan Saintes, drove up. Saintes handcuffed Amron soon after approaching him and began walking him toward the ambulance, police reports show. Amron pulled away and the interaction quickly escalated.
Although Amron was never under arrest, “I attempted to detain him for the protection of himself,” Saintes later wrote. Three other constable cruisers rolled up to assist.
Together, the officers wrestled Amron to the ground and pinned him. The medics injected him with a sedative. He was moved to a stretcher. Soon after, reports say, he stopped breathing.
Police and eyewitness accounts diverged on several points. The Burger King assistant manager, Cynthia Lansdale, who handed Amron the water and continued observing through the drive-thru window, described him as out of breath but polite, calm and articulate. When the police arrived, she said, he appeared cooperative.
In their statements, deputies described Amron as “sweating profusely” and “stuttering unknown words.” He was “abnormally stronger than his stature would have ever displayed,” Saintes wrote.
The descriptions are consistent with a controversial syndrome called excited delirium, which has been used to explain the sudden death of people typically under the influence of drugs who display violent and bizarre behavior and can appear to have superhuman strength. Excited delirium deaths occur almost exclusively in police custody. A Minneapolis officer at the scene of Floyd’s death was heard mentioning it.
The constables also said they had to forcibly hold Amron’s head to protect him because he was slamming it against the pavement. Lansdale described him as motionless, and his autopsy mentioned no bruising or injuries on the back of his head.
None of the officers reported putting their feet on Amron to hold him. But that’s what Lansdale and a second Burger King employee saw.
Deputy Kevin Vailes “had his foot across Jamail Amron’s nostrils and his mouth,” Lansdale said, adding that he kept it pressed there between two and five minutes. A cook also said he saw Vailes press his foot on Amron’s face but didn’t note for how long. The autopsy report and photos taken at the time showed several cuts and bruises to the front of his face.
‘Easy’ verdict
The following morning police told Ali Amron his son died of a heart attack, he recalled. The autopsy, released two days later, said he died from acute cocaine toxicity. Experts retained by the family said there was little cocaine in his system; Jamail had died of suffocation due to a combination of Vailes’ foot over his mouth and nose, and vomiting caused by another officer pushing on his stomach.
In 2012, Coats and Ali Amron filed an excessive force lawsuit against Harris
County, Precinct 4, medical responders and the responding constables. The medical parties settled; by 2017 the only remaining parties were Harris County and Vailes.
A spokesman for the Harris County attorney’s office, Robert Soard, said he could not discuss the lawsuit because it is pending.
The trial was held that April. After three weeks, jurors unanimously sided with the eyewitness accounts over those of the deputies: Vailes was responsible for Jamail’s death, and the county was responsible for not communicating and enforcing a policy prohibiting the deputies from using their feet against people in their custody.
“Guilty or not guilty — that was easy,” recalled Joe Ray Cepeda, the jury foreman. “We had no doubt that (Vailes) caused the death. I mean, how do you go from a call for help, to a drink of water, to death? There was no doubt the police were lying.”
One had a record of lying, according to trial testimony. A month before Amron’s death, Saintes had punched a man at a local Hooters restaurant. Although he appears not to have been charged, an internal complaint against him was sustained, according to testimony.
During that investigation, Saintes was found to have given a false, “grossly exaggerated” sworn statement contradicted by eyewitnesses. He was suspended for 10 days, returning to duty just before the Amron call.
The same investigator who determined Saintes lied about the Hooters incident also investigated the agency’s response to the Amron call. Asked at the trial about Saintes’ credibility, he said, “I had no reason to disbelieve what he wrote in that (Amron) report.”
Q. Other than his falsifications and gross exaggerations that occurred a month before?
A. That doesn't mean every time he opens his mouth he's lying.
Q. But you did know about it?
A. He was in trouble (at Hooters). This is just a call to him.
Cepeda said jurors also were troubled that not one of the many police cameras or mics on scene had been activated — a policy Precinct
4 constables had violated numerous times in previous years, according to testimony. Saintes had failed to activate his devices at least twice previously. None of the officers was disciplined beyond a reprimand, according to the testimony.
The officers explained that because the Amron incident began as a medical assistance call, they hadn’t thought it necessary to turn on their recording devices, although three arrived after the altercation already had begun.
“How convenient was that?” Cepeda said.
The only reason the jury deliberated for several hours, the foreman added, is “we just got tied up in the amount” to award the parents. They returned with the tally: $11 million.
“The jury saw what we saw,” Coats said. “That this wasn’t the day he should have died. I was like, ‘Finally! Finally!’ We had finally got justice in some way.”
‘Same nightmare’
Their relief lasted less than three years. Harris County and Vailes appealed the award.
In February, three justices from the 14th Court of Appeals overturned the verdict. The panel concluded that because the elected constable wasn’t an official policymaker for Harris County, the county couldn’t be held liable. And while Vailes may have used excessive force on Amron, the justices said the 2017 jury had been wrong when it concluded that’s what killed him.
The decision reduced the damages to $1 million in survival damages from Vailes — money to pay for Amron’s pain and suffering had he lived. But because the money can come only from Vailes personally, it almost certainly will never be collected, said Gilde, the family’s attorney.
“Outrageous,” said Cepeda, who had not heard the news. “We all listened to the evidence. Where is the accountability?”
Coats and Ali Amron have requested a rehearing of their case. In the meantime, as the 10th anniversary of their son’s death approaches, “We’re just living the same nightmare over and over again,” Coats said. “It’s a never-ending nightmare.”