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Sandra Bland’s mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, wants a federal court in Texas to get to the bottom of what happened to her daughter, whose traffic stop and jail cell death have become a fresh rallying cry for #BlackLivesMatters activists.
This week, Reed-Veal filed a civil-rights lawsuit against Texas and Waller County officials, accusing them of violating Bland’s rights from the moment state trooper Brian Encinia stopped her car last month until she was found hanging in her jail cell a few days later.
Reed-Veal’s lawsuit goes to great lengths to avoid the word suicide. The term appears only once in the 46-page document — an oblique reference to a claim by Waller County Jail officials that Bland told them she had “previously attempted to commit suicide.” But if pending investigations confirm that Bland killed herself, Bland’s mother may amend her lawsuit to allege jail officials failed in their duty to protect her daughter. And if that happens, a little-noticed ruling the Supreme Court issued in June — with facts as grim as those presented in the Bland case — may damage Reed-Veal’s chances.
In Taylor v. Barkes, all nine justices shut down a lawsuit by family members of Christopher Barkes, a Delaware man who took his own life within a day of being arrested for violating probation. Jail officials’ failure to set up safeguards to keep him from hanging himself, the court ruled, was not a violation of his civil rights.
Kudos! What a neat way of thkinnig about it.