People Keep Dying At This Memphis Jail — And The Lawsuits Are Piling Up

Deion Byrd would have turned 26 years old on Jan. 31. His father, Marcus Byrd, told HuffPost that Deion usually spent his birthdays with his family, watching television and eating some of his mother’s cooking at their home in Memphis, Tennessee.

“He liked joking and things like that,” Marcus said. “He wanted to rap and made a few mixtapes. He had dreams of doing things he could enjoy.”

Last year, Deion Byrd was involved in a car crash that led to a man’s death. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy alleged that Byrd and another man were evading police in a getaway vehicle linked to organized robberiesat local liquor stores. Byrd was in the passenger seat.

Byrd was indicted on charges of theft, burglary, vehicular homicide and first-degree murder and was sent to the Shelby County jail on June 24.

On Oct. 26, he was set to appear before a judge for an arraignment and was in a holding cell in the Shelby County courthouse with another inmate, Donnie Clay, 21. Byrd and Clay began arguing after Byrd accused Clay of breaking into his home.

Clay allegedly stabbed Byrd in the neck with a shank. Byrd died at a nearby hospital. “How could we not be able to protect another inmate from being killed?” Shelby County Judge Paula Skahan said after the incident . “That’s our job, to make sure everyone is safe in our system, and we couldn’t do it.”

His family also had questions. “Deion was already in a place that was already crumbling,” Marcus Byrd told HuffPost. “There is no structure there, and they don’t have enough people to watch everybody.”

Byrd’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit last month — the third filed against the jail in the past year, all of them ongoing. The Byrd family’s suit alleged that poor staffing and