‘Don’t let them erase her.’ How some Texas jail-related deaths go uncounted

Diane Bailey lay bleeding and unresponsive on the floor of a Dallas County jail cell Feb. 2 when detention officers discovered her. But when she died three weeks later from the stroke she suffered in jail, it did not count as occurring on Sheriff Marian Brown’s watch. 

On Bailey’s second day of treatment in the hospital, the sheriff’s office removed her from its custody after prosecutors dropped her charges in a motion stating she was unlikely to recover.

Because Bailey, 74, was out of sheriff’s custody when she died Feb. 23, the circumstances around her stroke — whether officers responded properly and if she requested medical attention before it occurred behind bars — are not being investigated by the state. 

Texas law requires independent investigations only when people die in custody, a gap that reform advocates say incentivizes hasty deathbed releases and undercounts the true number of jail-related fatalities across the state.

By releasing injured or ill people before their last breath, taxpayers aren’t responsible for medical bills or paying deputies to guard hospital rooms. But sheriffs avoid scrutiny and a full accounting of deaths connected to their jails.

“I want to know what happened to my mom in jail,” said Bailey’s daughter, Reba Bailey. “Don’t let them erase her name, her existence.”

The loophole entices sheriffs to release incarcerated people before they die, even using measures that are not legal, said Krish Gundu, executive director of Texas Jail Project. 

In the same month Bailey died, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office released Julie Buelna, 48, without a judge’s approval hours after she suffered a severe head injury in the jail. Because the Feb. 25 release was unsanctioned, state regulators required Buelna to be counted as an in-custody death – but only after The Dallas Morning News learned about the lack of judicial action and began asking questions.

Brown did not respond to calls or emails for this story.

Since 2023, Texas Jail Project has identified 25 unreported jail deaths across Texas, prompting most to be counted by state officials. Some, like Buelna, were taken out of custody improperly: Gundu found two instances where sheriffs released people on no-cost bonds when they weren’t healthy enough to sign the document.

“When they figure they can do this and get away with it, it becomes a pattern of practice until they get caught,” Gundu said.

A written opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton in February said state law only requires investigations for deaths that occur within jail walls. But he confirmed the Texas Commission on Jail Standards is authorized to go further and investigate all in-custody fatalities, even when the incarcerated person died in a hospital or ambulance.

Still, commission director Ricky Armstrong said the law does not allow regulators to compel an investigation if the death occurs after a person is legally released from custody. Because Bailey was properly let go through a judge’s order – unlike Buelna – Armstrong said his hands are tied. 

Both women had medical emergencies in the jail, both were found bloodied on the floor, both were let out of custody before dying in a hospital – but it was the validity of their releases that determined whether their case would count as a jail death.  

It means Bailey will not count among the four official Dallas County jail deaths so far in 2026. This comes after 71 Dallas County jail deaths were reported between 2018 and 2025, Brown’s first eight years as sheriff — a 50% increase from the previous eight years, according to an analysis by The News.

County jails should conduct voluntary internal reviews of medical protocols, observation logs and other actions taken before all jail-related deaths to determine if policies were followed, said Ray Scifres, assistant professor of criminal justice at Lubbock Christian University and a former sheriff.

“We have to be transparent, we have to hold ourselves accountable and also give a level of compassion to the parties involved,” Scifres said. 

It’s not clear whether such analysis is happening for Bailey. Officers first took Bailey to a clinic inside the jail after finding her in her cell, and a nurse referred her to Parkland Hospital, according to an incident report. In response to The News’ request for Bailey’s jail records, the sheriff’s office provided limited intake documents and the incident report but asked the attorney general to determine the release of housing and classification records. The letter cited confidentiality but did not state the case was under investigation. 

The office withheld The News’ separate request for surveillance and officer body camera footage for Bailey’s incident and did not provide a legally required letter explaining its reasons for withholding them.

Reba Bailey said the sheriff’s office never explained what happened to her mother behind bars, and unanswered questions around her fatal stroke have devastated her family.

Diane Bailey was at a bus stop Dec. 29 when she was arrested by Dallas Area Rapid Transit police for misdemeanor failure to ID. At the jail, she was charged with felony cocaine possession when officers discovered what appeared to be drugs, according to arrest affidavits. 

Reba Bailey said a jail official called her Feb. 2 saying a Lew Sterrett Justice Center psychiatrist would contact her regarding her mother. 

She said that call never came.

It was a Parkland Hospital employee, Reba Bailey said, who notified her two days later her mother was in the hospital. The delay by the sheriff’s office is concerning because doctors rely on family to make critical life-sustaining treatment decisions, said Dr. William Weber, an emergency physician and co-founder of the nonprofit Medical Justice Alliance focused on care in jails.

When Reba Bailey arrived at Parkland, she said her mother was comatose.

According to her autopsy, Diane Bailey died Feb. 23 from the stroke and had cardiovascular disease, emphysema and a kidney infection but no toxicology report was conducted. 

Reba Bailey has questions, saying her mother had no history of strokes and was quite active before she went into jail. Was she asking for help before her stroke and did she receive any treatment, her daughter wonders?

Such questions will be probed in Buelna’s case, underscoring the thin line between which jail-related deaths receive scrutiny. State regulators assigned the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office to investigate. 

Reba Bailey wants the same accountability. She shared an apartment with her mother, and said she was evicted because she couldn’t afford to pay rent alone. She said she lost her job while grief overwhelmed her. 

For three months, she was unable to pay to cremate her mother. After hearing about what happened from The News, Golden Gate Funeral Home owner John Beckwith said he would do it for free. 

“I wouldn’t trade her for the world, she is a good mother,” Reba Bailey said. “She deserves a little bit more than what they’re giving her now.”

Keeping an incarcerated person in custody in a hospital has tremendous costs to the public, but advocates say it is the only way to hold county jails accountable. 

In a hospital, deputies must stand guard 24/7 and counties are on the hook for medical costs. Agencies may choose to release those who pose no danger to the public as long as they obtain judicial approval, but it should not be done to avoid a death on their books, said Jay Coons, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University and a former Harris County sheriff’s captain.

“Requiring that deputy sheriff there is quite frankly a burden to the taxpayer,” Coons said. 

Many sheriffs cite security concerns when barring family contact with an incarcerated person in a hospital. But they have discretion to allow visits, leaving little room to blame compassion for taking people out of custody, advocates say.

After a seizure in the Kaufman County jail in 2023, 32-year-old Jonathan Taylor Ngumbi was brain dead when he arrived at a hospital. His mother, Deborah Winters, said four deputies guarded his room, but they allowed her to hug her son goodbye in private. 

Despite the deputies’ presence, Winters said she is grateful her son remained in custody because that allowed the state jail commission to assign the Texas Rangers to investigate what happened during Ngumbi’s six days in jail.

The Rangers’ investigation found no wrongdoing by Kaufman County, records show. But their interviews with jail guards and nursing staff shed light on how Ngumbi did not receive medication during a psychotic episode.

“I cannot explain to you how many mothers stand before the Texas Commission on Jail Standards begging for answers, begging, and they should have had investigations,” Winters said. “If my son had not been considered a custody death, I still wouldn’t know what happened.”