Panel upholds discipline in jail neglect case
Hearings for 2 officers detail action taken after inmate found amid feces
More than two years after a mentally ill inmate was left languishing in a rancid jail cell, the Harris County Sheriff ’s Civil Service Commission upheld disciplinary actions against two officers in the case.
The commission upheld the firing of former Detention Sgt. Milton Demaret, 38, and the five-day suspension of 46-year-old Sgt. Samuel Hayes for their roles in the neglect of Terry Goodwin during separate hearings on Thursday that detailed one of the worst scandals the Sheriff ’s Of- fice suffered under the leadership of then-Sheriff Adrian Garcia.
In October 2013, an internal jail inspection team found Goodwin, then 23, in a cell smeared with feces, infested with thousands of gnats and littered with scores of food trays. The toilet was clogged and shower damaged. Jail staff discovered Goodwin had torn his uniform to shreds and hung the strips from the ceiling and shredded apart his mattress.
Goodwin, now 25, was originally booked into the Sheriff ’s Office jail at 1200 Baker St. in 2013 on a marijuana charge while on probation. He was later transferred to a prison near Dallas.
Reached via phone, Goodwin’s mother praised the commission’s decision.
“I’m elated and grateful that the board decided to uphold the ruling as far as dismissing them,” Mashell Lambert said, adding that her son was freed last August and is living back at home.
In several hours of often-contradictory testimony, witnesses from the Sheriff ’s Office revealed a jail compliance inspection team discovered the situation Oct. 9.
“I saw the most horrific
conditions I’d ever seen a cell block in,” Capt. Paul Davidson testified, adding that he ordered his subordinates to take photos of the squalor, admonished a floor sergeant to clean the situation and later called a night-shift lieutenant and advised him of the incident.
That lieutenant, Lawrence Rush, testified that he arrived later that evening and found that the jailers instead had returned Goodwin to his cell.
Initial i nvestigation of Goodwin’s case cut a broad swathe through the jail, implicating about 50 people, including jailers, detention sergeants and higher-level command staff, witnesses testified.
“It was a third of the people in one building this investigation was affecting,” testified Maj. Sheila Jones, who was then over the department’s jails and who has since been demoted.
‘ Training matter’
She said she treated the case as a “training matter” and reprimanded her subordinates with “letters of counseling.” The systemic problems exposed by the incident prompted Jones to step up supervision of her subordinates, request more resources and bulk up training for the jailers, which she said had to be stopped because of the department’s budgetary constraints.
The incident was not made public until a year later, when the sheriff ’s office launched a separate, internal investigation that resulted in Garcia suspending 23 deputies or jailers and firing six others, two of whom also were indicted on charges of tampering with a governmental record. All of the fired staffers and Hayes — the suspended sergeant — appealed the decision, according to Sonny Mims, the commission’s director.
The county also later was forced to pay $400,000 to settle a lawsuit Goodwin’s f amily brought against the sheriff ’s office.
In Thursday’s hearings, county attorneys sparred with lawyers for Hayes and Demaret over when, exactly, the conditions in Goodwin’s cell had started to deteriorate and how long he was forced to fester in his own filth. Witnesses revealed that the inmate had as many as 150 food trays in his cell, meaning he could have been in there for more than six weeks. However, other witnesses said they did not start to notice serious problems or odors coming from his cell until early October, a little more than a week before Davidson’s jail compliance team found him.
Tony Lawson, another jailer disciplined in the case, testified to county attorneys that Demaret and other floor sergeants had ordered jailers not to remove Goodwin from the cell because he was “crazy.”
Made a ‘scapegoat’
The Sheriff ’s Office declined to provide specifics about Goodwin’s case and instead blamed the incident on Garcia’s administration and said current Sheriff Ron Hickman took “immediate action” to improve the jail by raising the minimum age of detention officers from 18 to 21, abolishing the use of online virtual training for jailers and opening a professional training academy for all detention personnel.
Bob Thomas, Demaret’s lawyer, portrayed the young former jailer as an eager and hardworking rookie who had not received needed training and who had only worked the floor sporadically in the period before Goodwin was found festering in his cell.
He portrayed Demaret as a victim of uneven discipline and the victim of Garcia’s political ambitions in his failed mayoral bid.
“They made him a scapegoat of him, it’s just wrong,” he said, after the hearing, of the sheriff ’s office’s decision to fire the jailer.
Officials representing the sheriff ’s office, however, said Demaret and his colleagues failed to use common sense and treat Goodwin as their job and position demanded.
“Ignoring unsanitary conditions is not an option at the Harris County,” said Pegi Block, with the Harris County Attorney’s Office, in her closing remarks. “The sheriff ’s office needs employees who will do their jobs, even when those duties involve very unpleasant tasks, such as dealing with very unsanitary cell conditions.”