No Indictments In Sandra Bland Death, Rules Texas Grand Jury

Bland’s family said the setback begs the question of what evidence was presented to the grand jury.

Bland was pulled over on July 10 for changing lanes improperly. Dashboard video of the subsequent encounter between Bland and Texas state trooper Brian Encina showed an initially normal encounter quickly turn acrimonious after Mr. Encina asked Bland to put out her cigarette and she refused.

Last month, attorneys representing Waller County filed a motion seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Bland took her life because she was distraught that her family members didn’t bail her out of jail. Her death three days later in the county jail was ruled a suicide.

Nearly immediately after her reported death, Bland’s friends and family began publicly challenging the official police narrative that she’d taken her own life. The 28-year-old Chicago-area woman died in her Waller County jail cell in what the medical examiner determined was a suicide. Sanders said Bland “would be alive today if she were a white woman”.

“We would like very much to know what in the heck they’re doing, who they’re targeting and if it has anything to do with Sandy and her circumstances”, Mr. Lambert said. Lambert talks to reporters as Bland’s sisters, standing from left, Shante Needham, Sharon Bland, and Sierra Cole join mother Geneva Reed-Veal, center, and sister Sharon Cooper, left.

A Texas grand jury declined to indict anyone in Bland’s death on Monday, after hearing eight hours of evidence and testimony. “It’s the secrecy of it all”, said Geneva Reed-Veal, Bland’s mother, at a press conference after the grand jury’s decision.

The family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court against Texas officials and have been given a trial date of January 2017. The courtroom was packed with roughly 100 people, with the hallways outside the courtroom filled with about 50 more supporters who could not get in.

Another family attorney, Larry Rogers Jr., said Encinia should have faced charges “within days or weeks” of the incident and that he doesn’t understand why the grand jury would need more time to consider whether to indict the trooper.

Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis, who appointed five special prosecutors to handle the Bland case, has said there is nothing in that investigation “that shows anything happened but she killed herself”. Her relatives acknowledged that she struggled with depression, but said they didn’t believe she was suicidal, and none of her recent behavior had raised any alarms.

The objective is to act as a buffer between prosecutors and the public and grand juries are meant to act as independent investigators with the power to seek additional evidence. “And more than that, we still don’t have answers”, Reed-Veal said.