Enough with the cover-up: Tarrant County owes taxpayers answers about inmate’s death | Opinion

Once law enforcement takes someone to the Tarrant County jail, that person is the county’s responsibility. Regardless of the reason he or she is there, or if he or she has a criminal record, every human being deserves to be treated with dignity.

From the moment Robert Miller arrived at the jail, this was not the case. And an increasingly discreditable cover-up of his death leaves taxpayers to parse through layers of half-truths, obfuscations and easily disprovable medical excuses.

Miller, 38, died after sheriff’s officers pepper-sprayed him several times directly in the face. He had asthma and informed a nurse he couldn’t breathe. He died the next morning at JPS Hospital.

A 2020 autopsy report by the Medical Examiner’s Office found his cause of death was “natural” — from sickle-cell crisis. A Star-Telegram investigation found evidence that suggested he died from the pepper spray, with experts saying the sickle-cell diagnosis couldn’t be the reason.

County officials hired an independent forensic pathologist to review Miller’s case and a select few others. After weeks passed with no new news, KERA reported that the pathologist never received any materials to review. On Monday, a county spokesman said the review was no longer necessary because the Mayo Clinic had confirmed the Medical Examiner’s original cause of death: sickle cell crisis. And conveniently, no further questions can be answered, officials say, because of ongoing litigation.

County officials have shattered any trust left on this matter. The expert independent review should have gone through, whatever the Mayo Clinic’s finding, because Miller’s death seemed nonsensical. Pushing that off because one facility that happened to agree with the Medical Examiner’s findings also, fortuitously, let the jail off the hook is a little too convenient.

It’s not a Hollywood drama. It’s a man’s real life, and his family deserves better.

Medical experts consulted by the Star-Telegram found the pat declaration that sickle-cell crisis caused Miller’s death impossible. Dr. Rakhi Naik, an associate professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that someone with just the sickle cell trait, and not sickle cell disease, could not die of a sickle cell crisis.

It’s the difference between carrying the gene for a disease and having the disease itself. The underlying genetic condition can’t cause the crisis, and no one contends that Miller had sickle-cell disease.

We don’t know a lot of things yet, but we know this much is true: If it seems like Tarrant County leaders and the Sheriff’s Office are hiding something, they probably are. If it seems like an inmate died of his treatment, but those responsible suggest an inherited trait that doesn’t kill people is responsible, it’s possible — probable even — that those responsible are involved in a cover-up.

We can understand that in the heat of the moment apprehending a criminal fighting an officer might need to get pepper-sprayed.

Why has Tarrant County gone to such lengths to obfuscate the truth and suppress justice for Miller’s family? Miller wasn’t hauled off to jail wholly innocent; however, he wasn’t there for murder or even assaulting an officer. Officers had originally approached Miller in July 2019 at his homeless camp after complaints of panhandling. They planned to take him to city jail due to unpaid court fines. That escalated and Miller wound up in the county jail on a higher misdemeanor charge after, officers said, he damaged a cop car during their encounter at the camp.

None of that means we can let him die in our care without any public review or accountability. And It shouldn’t take our dogged reporting to reveal the truth — the county must be open and honest about what happened to Miller. Now, other deaths or abuse allegations there will come with doubts about credibility and questions about a possible cover-up, even without controversial stories behind them. According to records, at least 45 other people have died in this jail since 2019.

It’s time for the county to own up to its cover-ups and explain exactly what happened to Miller and how to prevent it from happening again. Taxpayers who will bear the responsibility of the cost deserve at least that much.