Tarrant County DA’s Office sought indictment of man who had been dead for a week
A Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office prosecutor recounted to a grand jury a summary of evidence in a child sexual assault case. After the presentation last week, the grand jurors voted to indict on seven counts.
At the time that the foreman signed the indictment, the defendant, Vernon Ramsey, had been dead for a week.
Six days before it sought the indictment, the district attorney’s office was told that Ramsey was dead, a source familiar with the matter said.
Ramsey, who was 51 years old, died on Dec. 2 in the custody of the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office at the John Peter Smith Hospital emergency department, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office, which has not released his cause or manner of death.
Assistant Criminal District Attorney Marina Thomas was among the recipients of a Dec. 3 email sent by the 372nd District Court coordinator that relayed that Ramsey was dead. Thomas made the Dec. 9 grand jury presentation.
Ramsey reported to jail staff that he was not feeling well, according to a sheriff’s office account that was distributed to the press before the medical examiner’s office released his name. Ramsey was examined by medical personnel in the Tarrant County Jail, and an ambulance was dispatched to drive him to JPS.
Ramsey became unresponsive once the ambulance arrived, according to the sheriff’s office. Ramsey was resuscitated, but later died while he being treated by hospital staff.
The Fort Worth Police Department arrested Ramsey on Sept. 10 on multiple sexual assault of a child offenses.
The top offense in the indictment was continuous sexual abuse of a child under the age of 14.
Kevin Rousseau, a criminal defense attorney who is not involved in the case and who has previously worked as an assistant district attorney in Tarrant County, suggested that the grand jury presentation after the defendant died was confounding.
“I can’t think of a legitimate reason to do that,” Rousseau said. “I’ve never heard of anything quite like this before.”
The district attorney’s office dismissed the indictment on Tuesday, Dec. 10, the day after it sought the charging instrument.
The district attorney’s office responded to a reporter’s inquiry on the case with a statement.
“Once it was determined that he was deceased, we dismissed the charges,” an office spokesperson wrote.
Tarrant County Commissioner Alisa Simmons said in a post on X that she plans to request a briefing from the district attorney’s office about what happened and she will add the issue to the agenda for the Commissioners Court’s first meeting in January.
This story was originally published December 13, 2024 at 3:59 PM.
