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Family members of Alexis Cardenas want witness statements and unedited surveillance footage of a struggle with detention officers that preceded his death inside of the Harris County Jail, according to a pre-lawsuit petition filed Thursday in court.
The legal filing, called a Rule 202 petition, seeks to access certain evidence and medical records about the circumstances surrounding Cardenas’ death, which happened as he was being released from the jail in July, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Narrated video footage released by the sheriff’s office last month shows several officers pinning the 32-year-old Cardenas to the ground after he allegedly refused to exit and walked back toward a secure area of the jail. They noticed he was unresponsive about 5 minutes after the officers gained control of him, according to the sheriff’s office.
Cardenas was pronounced dead after being transported to a nearby hospital. Medical examiners last week ruled that he died by homicide. His primary cause of death was an irregular heartbeat associated with toxic effects of drugs and alcohol “during physical and electrical restraint,” according to the Harris County medical examiner’s office.
Questions have risen about the altercation that led to Cardenas’ death and his arrest by Houston police officers over a decade-old traffic citation.
The legal filing by an attorney for Cardenas’ family members requests all unedited and unnarrated jail surveillance and body-worn camera video footage depicting Cardenas’ detention in the jail and the moments surrounding his fatal altercation with officers. The petition also requests incident reports related to his death, medical records, witness statements and body-worn camera footage from Cardenas’ arrest by the Houston Police Department two days before he died.
His family previously said he was suffering a mental health crisis at the time of his arrest July 6. In response to Houston Public Media’s request for videos of the arrest, the Houston Police Department said it would take 220 business days and more than $215 in fees to produce the footage.
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Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jason Spencer, who declined to comment on Friday, previously told Houston Public Media that the sheriff’s office released all the videos it has of employees’ interactions with Cardenas up until they initiated CPR.
Rule 202 filings are considered investigatory and seek to take depositions before a potential lawsuit is filed. The filings can be used to determine if certain claims exist before litigation.
The petition asserts, however, that the family members and attorneys “anticipate asserting wrongful death and various civil rights claims against the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the officers who were involved in Alexis’s death.” It claims that governmental agencies have stonewalled attorneys’ efforts to obtain information about Cardenas’ death up to seeking a ruling from the Texas Attorney General’s Office to withhold certain information.
The petition was filed by Lee Thweatt, an attorney representing Cardenas’ family, and the National Police Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization. Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the organization, said in a statement that families shouldn’t have to fight hard to learn the truth about how their loved ones died in government custody.
“When jails can hide records after a death in custody, it erodes public trust and denies families the transparency they deserve,” she said. “Harris County must not be allowed to control the narrative while concealing the truth.”