A grand jury has decided not to indict anyone in the case of Sandra Bland, whose death in police custody raised questions of excessive force and the role of race.
The grand jury met for more than eight hours Monday.
“After reviewing all the evidence in the death of Sandra Bland, a Waller grand jury did not return an indictment in the death of Bland, nor were any indictments returned against any employee of the Waller County Jail,” said Darrell Jordan, a special prosecutor handling the case.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she, like too many African-Americans who die in police custody, would be alive today if she were a white woman,” said Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders. “We need to reform a very broken criminal justice system.”
The grand jury will reconvene in January to consider other indictments.
Bland, an African-American woman, was found dead in her cell three days after she was arrested for allegedly failing to use her turn signal on July 10. She was 28.
Officials in Waller County, Texas, have said she hanged herself with a plastic bag. Her family and others have questioned that account.
Those questions continued Monday night.
“We are not going to allow what they have done in a limited, secret capacity to prevent us from doing what we need to do to get answers for the family,” Bland family attorney Cannon Lambert told CNN affiliate KPRC.
Even before the grand jury’s decision, Bland’s family in Chicago called the grand jury system in Texas flawed, saying the testimony should be open to the public.
“Right now, the biggest problem for me is the entire process,” Bland’s mother, Geneva Read-Veal, said. “I simply can’t have faith in a system that’s not inclusive of my family that’s supposed to have the investigation.”
During Min. Louis Farrakhan’s 20th anniversary “Justice or Else” Oct. 10, 2015 rally in Washington, D.C., he called for an economic boycott during the holiday season to highlight the numerous cases of Black people dying at the hands of police in the country. Activists claimed something of a victory when reports came out stating that sales figures were down by one billion dollars during Thanksgiving weekend. The Sandra Bland case was one often quoted by demonstrators who protested outside stores and shopping malls, demanding that people refrain from shopping to use economic withdrawal as a tool against injustice.
In late July, authorities released hours of jail video to refute the claim that Bland was dead before she was brought to jail.
“The reason we’re doing this is because of the misinformation that has been put out—both through social media and even through mainstream media—that has led to the rumors that Sandra Bland was in some way deceased, or harmed, or not well when she was brought into the Waller County Jail,” Waller County Judge Trey Duhon told reporters at the time.
The video, which does not have sound, shows Bland being brought into the jail. Her handcuffs are removed during an initial intake, at which she appears to be coherent and cooperative.
At one point, Bland holds her head in her hands. At another point, she steps into a bathroom to change her clothes. Bland has her mugshot taken, and she can be seen making a phone call.
Footage from the following day shows Bland meeting with a judge. She makes several more phone calls.
Waller County is northwest of Houston.
Amsterdam News Editor Nayaba Arinde and CNN’s Kevin Conlon and Steve Brusk contributed to this report.