By Andrew Kragie
Houston Chronicle
HEMPSTEAD, Texas — Quincy Davis remembers waking up in the ambulance, but he doesn’t know how he got there.
After more than 800 days in the Waller County Jail awaiting trial, Davis said infections had left him incontinent and so debilitated he couldn’t walk across the cell.
He remembers spending days in lock-up, trying to crawl across the rough concrete floor to water 10 feet away. He couldn’t stand and he couldn’t convince anyone there that he needed help.
“Why are you faking?” he said the jail’s nurse asked him.
By the time the Brookshire man arrived at Tomball Regional Medical Center early on July 18, he had a staph infection, bladder obstruction and endocarditis, a potentially deadly infection of the heart’s inner lining, according to a county email obtained by the Chronicle.
Today, as Davis, 39, recuperates at a rehabilitation hospital, family members are demanding answers from Waller County officials about why he was left untreated for so long. Davis’ mother filed a complaint earlier this month with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, and the family is considering filing a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Davis’ sister, Betty Jeffery, of Houston, said the family is outraged his condition was allowed to deteriorate.
“I just feel like somebody should be held accountable for this,” she said recently, as Davis sat close by in a wheelchair, fingering a white hospital blanket and mumbling short phrases.
Brian Cantrell, the Waller County sheriff’s chief deputy who oversees the 110-bed jail, defended inmates’ medical care, saying a nurse is on site most weekdays and a doctor is on call.
“We do our best to care for the inmates the best we can,” Cantrell said. “That’s our top priority.”
Davis’ lawsuit would be the second federal suit in as many years involving medical care at the Waller County Jail, where Sandra Bland died in 2015 after being arrested during a traffic stop. Bland’s death has been ruled a suicide but her family has accused jail officials of failing to give her proper care.
Legal experts say the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment may have been violated if Davis was denied medical attention.
“Not having access to at least the level of a nurse for any period of time is probably unconstitutional care,” said Randall Kallinen, a Houston-area civil rights attorney who served on a committee that reviewed the Waller County Jail’s operations after Bland’s death.
“You cannot depend upon jail staff to assess the medical needs of inmates,” he said.
It wasn’t like Davis to forget his mother’s 77th birthday on July 17.
So when he failed to call home, family members called the jail to check on him.
Other inmates had called recently to tell them Davis seemed seriously ill, and his mother said his hands shook when she visited him earlier in July.
“He just sat there and didn’t say a word,” his mother, Clara Davis, told the Chronicle.
But the nurse and other jailers had been telling family members that Davis was fine - that he was faking or exaggerating when he urinated and defecated on himself.
“The whole time, the jail was saying he was pretending,” Jeffery said. “I blame myself because (I was) listening to the jail staff.”
When Jeffery called to check on Davis that Sunday, however, a jailer who did not give his name told her the nurse was not available; he said she’d wait until the next day for a check on Davis’ condition.
Early the next morning, however, jailers called to report that Davis had been found unresponsive in his cell and was taken by ambulance to Tomball Regional Medical Center.
Doctors later told family members the infections likely started after his legs were bloodied by dragging himself across his cell’s rough concrete floor.
“It doesn’t happen in seven days,” Jeffery said of her brother’s condition.
The medical issues were outlined in an email from Cantrell on July 19 to top county officials including the sheriff, district attorney and county judge. The email also said the county would foot the bill as long as Davis remained in custody.
“Inmate Davis does not have any insurance, so we are currently responsible for the bill,” Cantrell wrote.
Six days later, a judge agreed to lower Davis’ bail and he was released from custody, though he remained in the Tomball hospital until Aug. 2. His family tried to take him home, but he was so sick they took him the same day to Ben Taub Hospital in Harris County, where he was admitted.
He was transferred to a Harris Health rehabilitation hospital a week later, where he still receives physical, occupational and speech therapy each day.
The arrest that landed Davis in the Waller County Jail was not his first.
His criminal record in Waller and Harris counties began when he was 17 and includes misdemeanors and felonies, and some state prison time. Since 1994 he has been convicted of evading police, assaulting police officers, engaging in organized crime, drug possession and home burglary.
On May 2, 2014, Davis was stopped by Brookshire police while walking near a motel where authorities were investigating a possible kidnapping. Police said he ran, then fought with officers after being caught. He escaped again but was quickly detained. Officers found $2,412 in cash and a bag with 78 grams of crack cocaine in his pockets, court records show.
He was later charged with delivering drugs and two counts of assaulting a public servant. He was charged as a habitual felony offender, so a conviction would carry a penalty of 25 years to life in prison.
Bail was set at $150,000 - too much for Davis or his family to post. It’s not clear from court records why he remained in jail so long without going to trial, but repeated delays of trial were recorded and he went through two different attorneys before getting a court-appointed attorney earlier this year.
When the judge lowered bail to $50,000 over objections from prosecutors last month, Davis’ sister was able to gain his release.
Cantrell, the chief deputy, told the Chronicle that “the extended stay in a private medical facility could be a factor in bond reduction. Because at the end of the day we are paying that, and every county has a budget.”
Advocates and legal experts said the Waller County Jail’s medical care raises constitutional concerns.
Michelle Deitch, a University of Texas expert on jail administration, said U.S. Supreme Court rulings since the 1970s have required medical care for inmates’ serious medical needs.
“It really is a very fundamental right that is protected by the courts,” she said. “Many agencies have been held liable for failure to provide that care. ... The staff can’t just dismiss someone’s complaints out of hand.”
Diana Claitor, executive director of the advocacy group Texas Jail Project in Austin, said jailers without medical training are often “gatekeepers” to care.
“If they deem this person a faker, which they do an unimaginable amount of the time, then [the inmates] don’t get medical care,” she said. “I find it extremely disturbing that a jail with this history would be treating an inmate like this.”
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards received 19 complaints about the Waller County Jail in the three years before the Davis family’s complaint. The number of complaints is normal for a county that size according to Shannon Herklotz, the commission’s assistant director for inspections. Only one, regarding laundry, was determined to be founded.
The agency typically asks counties to respond to complaints but rarely sends an employee to investigate.
“We only have one guy for the whole state and we receive about 160 complaints a month,” Herklotz said. “So there’s absolutely no way that I can do every complaint in person.”
Davis, meanwhile, is focused on recovery. He now walks with assistance but still suffers from incontinence.
And his family members still worry; they say he was active and gregarious before his illnesses.
“He wasn’t like this before he went to jail,” his sister said. “Is he going to get normal again?”
His trial is set for Oct. 31 in Waller County.