Now, McDowell is being awarded a $100,000 settlement from Dallas County for being kept in jail longer than he should have been. The Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to pay the settlement on April 2.
“We don’t think there’s any excuse for what happened to Mr. McDowell,” his attorney Dean Malone said. “The problem here is systemic.”
The county didn’t respond to a request for comment about the suit.
McDowell was placed on six months community supervision on May 9, 2022, after being charged with theft of property valued under $100 in Dallas County.
On June 30, 2023, McDowell admitted to violating certain terms of his community supervision for the theft offense in Dallas County. He was unable to report to his probation officer in Dallas County during June, July and August of 2022 to complete community service hours and pay delinquent supervision fees because he was incarcerated in Ellis County at the time on separate drug charges. As a result, he was sentenced to five days confinement in the Dallas County jail. But because he was supposed to receive 10 days credit for time served, he should have been released immediately, no later than June 30, 2023. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he was held until Aug. 21, 2023, nearly two months later.“The problem here is systemic.” – Dean Malone, attorney
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“Plaintiff was illegally and unconstitutionally held past the terms of his sentence even though he notified officers and jail staffers of the error and asked to be released,” the lawsuit says.
McDowell’s brother also made attempts to get him released by contacting Ellis County, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and Dallas County to no avail. McDowell filed a number of grievances in the Dallas County jail explaining his situation and referencing documents that supported his claims but to no avail.
“They just ignored the complaints based on what we know and that’s just insufficient,” Malone said. “They need to have a policy and a procedure in place such that when somebody is saying they shouldn’t be incarcerated any longer that it can easily be checked out.”
McDowell’s brother made phone calls daily and continued visiting the jail. His brother was eventually able to convince a jail supervisor to call Ellis County or the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which led to McDowell's release a few days later.
The suit claims that the county has struggled for years to release inmates in a timely fashion. The process has long been flawed and was exacerbated by technological issues when the county began migrating case files to a new jail management system called Odyssey from the old system called Forvus. “Compounding these issues, the county retired Forvus before Odyssey was fully operational,” the lawsuit says. “This led to more time in jail for inmates after they had already served their sentences.”
This all resulted in the “significant deprivation of inmates’ constitutional right to liberty,” according to the suit. It also led the jail's population to swell to at least 88% capacity. The jail population had been trending down before the implementation of Odyssey, the suit says.
The transition to the new software also prevented some from accessing the Adult Information System, which made it difficult for county clerks to get information from the county sheriffs regarding the amount of backtime detainees had served. This information is required to accurately calculate an inmate's release date.
“The county knew all of this information and it likewise knew to a certainty that these occurrences would result in people being incarcerated with no legal authority to incarcerate them,” the lawsuit says. The suit mentions other inmates who were also held past their sentences at the county jail.
“Any wrongful incarceration, whether it’s a day or two or longer, is too long,” Malone said. “We should not be incarcerating people if we don’t have any legal authority to do so.”
Malone said he hopes the settlement will encourage the county to resolve these issues so no one else is held longer in jail than they should be.
“One can imagine how frustrating it is, or was, rather, for Mr. McDowell to know that he shouldn't be there, wanting to get out and work,” Malone said. “I mean, he was gainfully employed and had done fairly well in his occupation and nobody would listen to him, so it was beyond frustration.”
