A former inmate has hit Bexar County with a class-action lawsuit claiming the sheriff’s office is wrongfully keeping people in jail longer than allowed.
The plaintiff, Michael A. Miller, says he was kept in Bexar County jail for 72 hours after he posted bail.
The suit knocks the sheriff’s office — which runs the jail — for not fixing the longstanding problem, saying it is a violating the civil rights of any person who has been kept in jail longer than necessary. The suit accuses the county of false imprisonment.
“Every day, friends, family members, and bail bondsmen post bonds for presumptively innocent persons who are in the Bexar County jail,” Miller’s lawyer, Abasi Major, said in the lawsuit. “And every day, those defendants wait hours — sometimes days — before they are actually released from custody despite having their bail posted and no justification for their prolonged detention existing.”
Filed in San Antonio federal court, the suit seeks unspecified damages. A judge will eventually decide whether to certify it as a class-action lawsuit.
“Once the sheriff’s office accepts bail, the defendant should be released within a few hours, as soon as the criminal defendant can be checked for outstanding holds and warrants,” the suit said.
Part of the problem, the lawsuit states, is that the sheriff’s office uses a “batch system” in which a group of detainees is released, followed later by another group and so on.
A captain or lieutenant in the jail’s booking operations must sign off on each detainee’s release. However, jailers wait until there is a “batch” of bailed-out detainees; once the group is deemed large enough, a captain then approves the entire group for release.
“This can force a detainee who has already posted bail to wait hours until there are enough other detainees who have posted bails to be released at once,” the lawsuit said.
“While awaiting release, detainees who have been bailed out are moved from holding cells and held in a special cell or holding area designated specially for inmates whose bails have been posted,” the suit said. “Only when this area fills up are all of the detainees present processed for release at once.”
Miller was taken into custody on unspecified charges at 7:24 a.m. on Oct. 28, 2022. His bail was set by a magistrate judge at $3,500 the same day. Miller posted bond at 3:11 p.m., and he had no warrants or holds from any other agencies. The clerks recorded that Miller was “REL’D (released) ON BOND,” the suit said.
But Miller was not released. He was in jail, and transferred to the general population and then to a holding cell with other inmates who had posted bail. He spent three more days in custody, the suit said.
“There was no justification or excuse for Plaintiff’s overdetention,” the suit said.
The lawsuit also cites the case of Cody Demond Flenoury, who was kept in jail for five months after he had been sentenced to time served. In other words, he should have been released after his conviction, when a judge ruled that the days he’d already spent in jail counted as his sentence.
Texas Public Radio chronicled Flenoury’s case in 2021. Flenoury had tried to shoplift three cans of sardines and honey buns, and was arrested after he punched a shop employee who tried to stop him, TPR reported.
Flenoury, then 32, was booked into the jail on Jan. 10, 2019. Before his trial, his lawyers reached a plea deal with prosecutors — the sentence of time served — on Feb. 3, 2021. At that time, he already had spent 563 days in custody.
The court sent his release order to the detention center. But instead of releasing Flenoury, his case slipped through the cracks and jailers kept him there for another five months.
After the TPR report, Sheriff Javier Salazar announced that his office had hired an outside consultant to review the jail’s operations. In September, Detain Inc. reported that problems at the jail might be due to the sheriff’s office’s reliance on forced overtime as a result of constant turnover of employees.
The report said staff turnover in 2021 was 33 percent, and overtime shot up 115 percent between 2018 and 2021. The report recommended going to 12-hour shifts to reduce the total number of days jailers work per week.
Miller’s suit said the county already knew it had problems, and that it should have fixed them.
The sheriff’s office and the county did not respond to requests for comment. The Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, which represents the county in lawsuits, said it does not comment on pending litigation.
guillermo.contreras@express-news.net| Twitter: @gmaninfedland