Harris County settles case similar to Floyd in Minn.
In what officials are calling long-overdue compensation for a young man who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Harris County constables more than a decade ago, the county will pay the family of Jamail Amron $4.75 million to settle a long-running lawsuit.
Amron’s death in 2010 bears a striking resemblance to that of George Floyd, the former Houston resident who suffocated after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him to the pavement for nine minutes with a knee to the neck. Two weeks ago, Derek Chauvin was found guilty of Floyd’s murder. The city of Minneapolis agreed to pay a $27 million settlement in March.
Hearst Newspapers detailed the Amron’s rollercoaster legal battle last year.
In a tweet announcing the settlement, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo referenced the Minnesota tragedy. “In 2010 Jamail Amron died handcuffed & under the foot of a Harris County constable. The facts of his case were eerily similar to George Floyd’s.”
Although Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said he doesn’t have comparison figures, county officials said the settlement represented one of the largest in recent memory.
“After nearly a decade in the courts, I am glad this lawsuit — which I inherited from my predecessor — has come to a close,” Menefee said. “My office recommended settling the case after evaluating the facts of this incident, the legal issues, and the history of the case.”
For the Amron family, the settlement represents the latest milestone in a tortuous decadelong journey that began with the family being forced to conduct its own investigation into Jamail’s death, persisting through officials’ disbelief and decisive court victories as well as devastating losses.
“The settlement brings some comfort,” said Ali Amron,
Jamail’s father. “But it does not make us happy. No money can bring my son back; we don’t even think about the money. It does not help me get justice.”
It began with Jamail himself summoning help. Worried he was having a bad reaction to cocaine, on Sept. 30, 2010, the 23-year-old had walked to a Burger King restaurant north of downtown to get a cup of water after calling for medical assistance.
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.
The flat bureaucratic description mirrored the initial Minneapolis police description of George Floyd’s death: Floyd was “ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering physical distress. Officers called for an ambulance.”
Unlike the Floyd confrontation, however, which was documented in graphic detail on a bystander’s cellphone, no one recorded Amron’s death, and it attracted little attention. Although the cruisers that responded to the scene had dashboard cameras, and each of the constables wore a body mic intended to capture audio of their interactions, none of the devices was turned on, according to court documents.
The Harris County officers weren’t disciplined and no charges were filed.
Yet from the beginning, Ali Amron was convinced something was missing from the account of his son’s death. “After I saw his photo, I thought, ‘Why is his face so messed up?’ ” he recalled thinking.
On his own, he tracked down eyewitnesses to the confrontation. What they told him differed dramatically from the official account.
An assistant manager working at the Burger King had a close-up view of the incident. She told Ali Amron that one of the constables, Kevin Vailes, had placed his foot over Jamail’s mouth and held it there for several minutes. Another appeared to have pushed his foot into Jamail’s stomach.
Although Jamail’s official autopsy found he’d died of cocaine poisoning, an expert hired by his family concluded there was little of the drug in his system, and that he’d suffocated. Furious that nobody would be held accountable for his son’s death, Ali in 2012 sued Harris County and Vailes for using excessive force causing Jamail’s death.
Following years of legal wrangling, the trail was held in April 2017. After three weeks of testimony, the jury unanimously found Vailes responsible for Jamail’s death, and Harris County responsible for not enforcing a policy prohibiting the deputies from using their feet against people in their custody.
“Guilty or not guilty — that was easy,” Joe Ray Cepeda, the jury foreman, recalled last year in an interview with Hearst Newspapers. “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.”
The jury award the Amrons $11 million. But the family’s satisfaction was short-lived.
Harris County and Vailes appealed the award, and in February 2020 three justices from the 14th Court of Appeals overturned the verdict. They concluded the elected constable wasn’t an official policymaker for Harris County so couldn’t be held legally liable for deputies’ actions. And while Vailes may have used excessive force on Amron, the justices said the 2017 jury was wrong when it concluded that’s what killed him.
The decision reduced the award to $1 million in survival damages to be paid by Vailes personally. But the Amrons never collected; several months later, Vailes declared bankruptcy, according to federal court records.
Vailes still works for the Harris County Precinct 4
office, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
Ali Amron said the settlement from Harris County will not deter him from continuing to push for into an official investigation into his son’s death. “We will fight to the end,” he said. “I want to know: What happened to Jamail Amron that horrific night?”
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