By Cody Copeland
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
TARRANT COUNTY, Texas — A lawsuit alleging “drugs run rampant” in the Tarrant County jail failed to prove the county has a “de facto policy” of allowing drugs into the facility, a Fort Worth federal judge ruled Friday.
Brought by Cassandra Johnson, the mother of Trelynn Wormley, who died of a fentanyl overdose in the Green Bay jail in July 2022, the lawsuit attempted to show that Tarrant County has a “widespread pattern and practice of subjecting its prisoners to harm” by allowing drugs into the jail.
Aryanna Stafford, the mother of Wormley’s child, who is a minor, is also listed as a plaintiff. The Keefe Commissary Network and its parent company Keefe Group were defendants alongside Tarrant County.
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Not enough overdose deaths in jail to prove de facto pattern
The plaintiffs did not provide “sufficiently numerous prior incidents” of drug overdoses to establish a pattern proving that an unconstitutional condition of confinement led to Wormley’s death, federal judge Reed O’Connor wrote in his order granting the dismissal.
Johnson’s lawyers detailed three instances of jailers smuggling drugs into the jail between 2019 and 2023, but these failed to indicate the county “allowed the free flow of drugs into the jail,” O’Connor wrote.
“Similarly, ten overdose deaths over the span of eight years (2017 to 2024) does not suggest to the Court that there is a severe and pervasive condition of detainees overdosing due to unfettered access to drugs,” he wrote.
The incidents detailed in the lawsuit also failed to possess the “similarity and specificity” required to establish a de facto policy of letting drugs into the jail, O’Connor wrote.
The lawsuit also alleged that Tarrant County failed to protect detainees with mental health issues, recounting six suicides in the jail.
O’Connor cited case law stating that suicide is “inherently difficult for anyone to predict, particularly in the depressing prison setting,” adding that the plaintiffs did not allege that Wormley died by suicide.
A Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in a statement the department was “not surprised” by the dismissal.
“The complaint had no factual basis and we are happy the court recognized that,” the statement said.
Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment, saying it would defer making a statement until the case is fully resolved, “including any possible appeals the plaintiff may pursue.”
Lawyers for Johnson and Stafford declined to comment.
Commissary company not vicariously liable for drugs smuggled into jail
In its motion for dismissal filed in December, Keefe argued that selling drugs is “outside its employee’s course and scope of employment,” and that the plaintiffs did not argue that the company could have or should have known that hiring its employee would “bear an unreasonable risk of harm.”
The company also argued that “fentanyl is a ‘controlled substance’ but not technically a ‘synthetic’ one,” O’Connor’s ruling states.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Keefe was “vicariously liable” for the actions of its employees, because they had “general authority” to sell things in the jail and used that authority to sell drugs. They also argued that the company should have known their employees would smuggle drugs into the Tarrant County jail because it is common at other jails.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers did not respond to the company’s third argument.
O’Connor ruled that Texas law broadly protects employers from employees’ actions taken outside the scope of their duties, citing a case in which a food company was not found liable for the sexual assault committed by a pizza delivery driver while doing his job.
While the facts of the two cases were very different, O’Connor wrote, he employed the same logic to come to the decision that they were both instances of an employee exploiting the inherent features of their jobs to accomplish their own goals “under the guise of work.”
Neither was Keefe directly liable for its employee’s actions, O’Connor wrote, stating that the general knowledge that drugs are commonly smuggled into jails was “not sufficient to establish a case of negligent hiring, retention, or supervision.”
“Keefe had no reason to know, nor should they have known, the risk of harm its employee created,” he wrote.
‘I’m not going to stop,’ mother says
Reached by telephone after receiving the news from her lawyers Monday, Johnson said it was “terrible” to hear the case was dismissed, but said she plans to continue “fighting the fight to the end of this.”
Johnson has become a regular speaker calling for jail reform at meetings of the Tarrant County Commissioners Court and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
“I’m not going to stop,” she said. “I’m not going to be quiet. I’m not going to be silent over this senseless death he suffered in there. We’re going to find a way where they’re going to stop protecting these jails.”
Wormley, who had undiagnosed mental health issues and suffered a traumatic brain injury from getting shot in the head, was on probation when he was arrested in January 2022. He wore an ankle monitor and never missed a court date, Johnson said. She was about to drive him to Austin to take him to a new treatment facility the day he was arrested.
“My child suffered,” she said. “It hurts that the work that we put in — again, on the day that we finally got him accommodated, they kicked in the dough [with] guns. Oh, my God.”
She mentioned the lawsuit brought by the family of Anthony Johnson Jr., the Marine veteran who was killed in the jail during an altercation with guards in April 2024. O’Connor dismissed Tarrant County from that lawsuit in February.
“They work together to cover their name,” Johnson said. “They don’t hear the voices of the public. They don’t hear the voices of families. They don’t care.”
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