Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Posts Tagged ‘fort worth’

The Fort Worth City Council unanimously approved a $2 million settlement Tuesday with the family of a mentally ill man who died after police used a Taser to subdue him. His death was ruled a homicide.

The officer was not disciplined by the department or indicted, and the city admits no wrongdoing in the settlement deal with relatives of Michael Patrick Jacobs Jr.

“From the onset of the tragedy, so many lives have, been impacted … but not any more so than this young man and his still grieving family,” Councilwoman Kathleen Hicks said.. “Hopefully with this settlement, which will avoid a long. trial, we as a city can begin the prbcess of reconciliation and dialogue.”

Jacobs’ family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, which doesn’t limit the amount a city could be forced to pay, unlike cases filed in state court.
Police Chief Jeff Halstead declined to comment Tuesday.

Last fall, he said his officers still used Tasers and would receive more training on use-of-force and handling situations with mentally ill or emotionally disturbed suspects. Police Lt. Paul Henderson said officers have already begun that training.

On that day about a year ago, Jacobs’ family called police to report a disturbance and said the 24-year-old had not taken his medication for bipolar disorder.

Although a Taser is designed to deliver a five-second charge of up to 50,000 volts of electricity, Jacobs was shocked for 49 seconds and then for five seconds, according to the autopsy report.

An autopsy concluded that the primary cause of death was “sudden death during neuromuscular incapacitation due to application of a conducted energy device.”

A death row inmate freed after an appeals court overturned his capital murder conviction has died in an East Texas pickup wreck.

Michael Roy Toney, 43, died at 11 a.m. Saturday in Cherokee County when his truck veered off FM 347 and overturned. He was ejected and crushed, the Department of Public Safety said.

Toney had spent nearly 10 years on death row in the 1985 bombing deaths of three people in a Lake Worth trailer. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in December that the prosecutor withheld evidence that might have helped Toney at his 1999 trial.