He was arrested for assault. 3 days later, he was dead. What happened is still secret.
In December, a 57-year-old Greensboro man died in a hospital three days after being booked into the Forsyth County jail. The sheriff made no announcement about the death, and an assistant county attorney told a reporter in March the inmate had become infirm in jail — cause unknown — and had been released from custody.
But all during that time, the State Bureau of Investigation was looking into the death of John Elliott Neville, at the request of Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough Jr.’s office, an SBI spokesman confirmed. Agents finished the probe in April, but the details remain secret.
“I can’t give details about what happened,” said Scott Williams, the Triad-based spokesman for the SBI. “I can tell you that he was in medical distress when detention officers responded to his cell.”
What happened at the Forsyth County jail remains a mystery.
Neville died on Dec. 4, 2019. His journey to the Forsyth County jail began more than a month earlier.
Guilford County Chief Assistant District Attorney Steve Cole said a woman went to a Guilford County magistrate on Nov. 1, 2019, to take out charges for assault on a female. The woman accused Neville of pushing her off a front porch and punching her in the face and the back of the head, court records said.
It wasn’t until 3:05 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2019, that the Kernersville Police Department arrested Neville on those charges during a traffic stop. Kernersville straddles the Forsyth and Guilford county lines and he was brought to the Forsyth County jail.
Less than a day later he was hospitalized.
The News & Observer began asking questions about Neville’s death in March after he was listed as an out-of-custody death in records by the state Department of Health and Human Services. Forsyth County officials said he was not in custody when he died.
“The death did happen several days later at a hospital,” Williams said. “That’s probably why they’re telling you that.”
Cole said that Guilford County was not made aware of Neville’s death. In fact, he was charged with failure to appear on Jan. 7 after he missed his court appearance on his misdemeanor assault charge. That order is still pending.
Cole said Forsyth County officials notified an assistant district attorney on Dec. 2 that Neville was in medical distress and asked for his secured $2,000 bond to be reduced to an unsecured bond, effectively releasing him from the jail’s custody.
Video evidence
Williams said the SBI investigated the case at the request of the sheriff’s office from Dec. 2 until turning over its findings to Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill on April 16. Williams said investigators’ findings include video evidence but he did not remember if it came from body-worn cameras or surveillance footage.
On June 18, the N&O filed a petition with a judge in Forsyth County for release of those videos. A judge has scheduled a hearing on the request for July 13.
O’Neill did not respond to voicemails seeking comment about the case.
No sheriff’s employees have been disciplined regarding the death, a sheriff’s office spokesperson said.
Williams said there is one piece of information missing that is preventing O’Neill from acting on their findings: the autopsy report.
Williams said the N.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner completed a preliminary autopsy but the cause of death remained undetermined. Williams said everyone is still waiting on a completed report.
Neville’s estate is being represented by Grace, Tisdale and Clifton in Winston-Salem, Guilford County Clerk of Court Lisa Tonkins-Johnson said. Family members also directed News & Observer to contact the law firm about the case. Attorneys Chris Clifton and Michael Grace both confirmed their involvement but said they could not provide any further information because of the ongoing investigation. Grace added that he is not privy to the medical examiner’s findings or any internal review by the sheriff’s department.
Grace said his law firm will ask the judge not to release the jail footage for the sake of the family.
News & Observer attorney Mike Tadych said getting video released is about letting the public see how suspects are behaving with police and how police behave with suspects.
Tadych said he has argued cases in which police were accused of acting wrongly toward someone and snippets of video filmed by the public seem to back up those claims, only to have body-camera footage show the opposite. He’s also dealt with cases where police were found innocent of any wrongdoing and video proved otherwise.
“These videos can be hard to look at but we as citizens can use them to see how hard a job police have and how decisions are made quickly,” Tadych said. “That can be difficult to look at.”
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Jail deaths and supervision
State records show that 2019 was a record year for jail deaths and suicides. The records showed that more than 40% of deaths involved supervision failures, including two deaths in which investigators say inmates assaulted other inmates. Jails are required to file a report of an inmate death to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services within five days.
Department officials noted in a spreadsheet of jail deaths that they received the report on Neville’s death on Dec. 17, which is 13 days after he died. The spreadsheet lists the death as being out of custody.
That’s an important distinction, because under state law such deaths are not required to be reported to the DHHS.
That loophole used to be wider, and allowed jails not to disclose any inmate deaths that happened outside of the jail, whether they remained in custody or had been released from charges.
In 2017, the N&O exposed that loophole in a five-part series about jail deaths, and lawmakers subsequently required all in-custody deaths to be reported, whether the inmates were in jail or at a hospital.
But the new law did not require reporting of out-of-custody deaths.
That means the deaths of inmates who become infirm behind bars, but are released from custody and aren’t declared dead before leaving the jail don’t have to be reported.
Many sheriff’s offices file reports of out-of-custody deaths as a courtesy to the DHHS.
Forsyth did in this case, but left key details out.
The report doesn’t disclose when Neville was last seen appearing to be OK and when he went into distress.
It also doesn’t disclose who the jailer was during those checks. That information helps DHHS investigators learn how often inmates are checked and who checked on them.
State regulations require them to be checked at minimum twice an hour, and up to four times an hour if they are considered a suicide risk or mentally ill, abusive or violent, intoxicated or displaying erratic behavior.
The death report for Neville said in handwriting at the top: “subject not in custody at the time of death.”
It said that he died at 9:22 a.m. at a hospital. The cause of death was listed as “unknown.”
DHHS officials confirmed this month that they did not investigate the jail after Neville’s death.
Asked if Neville died from natural causes, Lonnie Albright, an assistant county attorney who handles sheriff’s matters, said: “(W)e’re still waiting on the Medical Examiner’s report. It can take weeks to months sometimes.
The N&O requested those reports from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. They have yet to be produced.
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Legislation on jail deaths
The issues with jail deaths have prompted little response from state lawmakers.
New DHHS rules are intended to increase supervision and screening of inmates, but the state sheriff’s association put the rules on hold by calling for legislative review. This year, two lawmakers filed legislation that would have halted the rules.
One of the lawmakers is a former Pender County sheriff, the other a former chief deputy for Randolph County.
That bill was supposed to be heard in the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, but it was pulled just before the meeting began.
