(CNN) – A Texas grand jury has decided not to indict anyone relating to the death of Sandra Bland, a case that raised questions of excessive police force and the role of race after she was found dead in a jail cell last summer.
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The case is not over, howevrer.
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Bland died on July 13 in the Waller County Jail near Houston, three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop that turned confrontational. Authorities say she killed herself – but her family and supporters have strongly refuted the claims, insisting she was in an optimistic state of mind at the time of her arrest, and looking forward to a new job.
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The grand jury will reconvene again sometime in January.
“Right now, three days before Christmas, they still stand in a place where they have no clue what it is that happened to their loved one”.
FILE – In this undated file frame from video provided by the Waller County Sheriff’s Department, Sandra Bland stands before a desk at Waller County Jail in Hempstead, Texas.
“When I see them on the news stating they have been left out of the process that’s not because of us”, Jordan told the Sun-Times on Tuesday, noting that he could not contact the family directly due to their pending wrongful death lawsuit against Waller County. “We know what we’ve been listening to in the media… but we don’t have any real evidence”.
On Monday, the family’s attorney, Cannon Lambert, said the grand jury’s decision not to indict was consistent with a cover up by authorities.
The goal 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.
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.
Bland’s family challenges the suicide ruling. A judge set a January 2017 trial date in that case.
Bland, who is black, was pulled over July 10 for failing to signal a lane change and was arrested in a confrontation with the officers. They also believe that the assault allegation by Encinia, which was used to take Bland into custody, was falsified.
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He explained that the federal lawsuit filed by the Bland family alleges that the county and their employees were negligent in their evaluation of Bland when at the jail; it does not assert there was a homicide. The stop itself was seemingly legal-although there are certainly very convincing concerns about whether or not she would have been stopped in the first place had she been white-but Encinia’s actions after that point are questionable. But the news that grand jurors had decided not to return any indictments five months after the fact underscores just how hard it is to hold anyone accountable when encounters with the police turn deadly.
