Status: Open
Location: Texas
Co-counsel: Lee Thweatt (Thweatt Law Firm PLLC)
Case Summary:
On July 6, 2025, Mr. Cardenas was arrested on a decade-old municipal warrant for unpaid traffic tickets. Although his charges were dismissed shortly after being booked, he was not released until after midnight on July 8. In damning video footage released by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), Mr. Cardenas is shown trying to explain to two detention officers that he cannot leave the Jail in the middle of the night without a working cellphone or a plan for getting home safely. In response, the two officers assault Mr. Cardenas and are joined by four more, who are shown throwing him and pinning him face down to the floor, where they restrained him for over seven minutes – long after he had stopped breathing.
Several more HCSO officers, including supervising sergeants, looked on as Mr. Cardenas struggled for his life and took his final breaths. Throughout the repeated assaults he suffered from HCSO officers, Mr. Cardenas was unarmed and non-threatening, having been deemed safe for release from the Jail for minor, non-violent traffic violations which were dismissed in their entirety seventeen hours before his death.
Mr. Cardenas’s killing was not an isolated tragedy. Harris County Jail has a long, documented history of beating inmates to death or until they are seriously injured, a culture of violence so pervasive and notorious that it prompted two separate federal investigations—one in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Justice and one in 2023 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The situation has only worsened since Sheriff Ed Gonzalez took office in 2017, growing from 628 use-of-force incidents between 2018 and 2020 to 653 incidents in 2022 alone. The number grew to 739 incidents in 2023, many under similar circumstances to the assault and death of Mr. Cardenas.
This case seeks justice for the family of Alexis Jovany Cardenas and accountability of Harris County, Harris County Jail, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, and the involved officers who together have engaged in a pattern of violent abuse and neglect that no one should have to suffer again.
In the News:
- Houston Public Media | Alexis Cardenas’ family seeks medical records, unedited video footage of his death inside Harris County Jail
Case Filing: