Lawsuit Raises Question: Was the Dead Suspect Loophole Really Closed? Attorney Joseph Larsen Speaks With The Big Bend Sentinel
3/28/25 In November of 2023 Adam Lee Ybarra, 37, of Pecos had a confrontation with his ex-wife, rammed her car, and smashed her car window, according to police reports. Police responded with a visit to a residence where reports of “shots fired” were called in. Ybarra was in the living room, possibly trying to set the house and furniture on fire. Navarette, Ybarra’s brother, was also there, trying to de-escalate the situation inside the living room. Police officers entered the home and tased Ybarra, which caused an axe he was holding to fly out of his hand, according to Navarette. Pecos police reports stated that Ybarra threw the axe at the officers, at which point they shot him, ending his life.
Several months after the 2023 shooting, Briggs submitted a formal public records request to the Pecos Police Department. However, the department denied the request and withheld the information. The Texas Rangers, who had investigated the shooting, also refused to release the footage. In February 2024, the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which reviews law enforcement decisions to withhold information, sided with the police.
The Texas AG’s justification for not releasing the information was a Texas Family Code statute (261.201) allowing documents related to child abuse or neglect investigations to be withheld, despite the incident report not referencing abuse of a child in its summary.
When Pecos Enterprise Publisher Smokey Briggs requested bodycam footage of the police shooting from the Pecos Police Department, his goal was to confirm that the videos aligned with the details in the police reports. Under Texas law he has the right to see the reports and bodycam video and share with his readers what is documented there. After nearly a year and a half of fighting for access to this information, the newspaper has retained attorney Joseph Larsen of Gregor Wynne Arney to file a lawsuit to obtain it.
In the lawsuit, the Pecos Enterprise argues that “because the law enforcement action and reports do not involve (1) a report or investigation of neglect or abuse of a child or (2) an investigation under [Family Code] Chapter 261, section 261.201 is inapplicable to the information responsive to the Requests for Information.”
Larsen said the AG ruling in Brigg’s case could impact numerous “dead suspect” cases in the future. If a police shooting involves a domestic dispute, that might play into investigations about children, which could then trigger the use of the Family Code to withhold information. “So, it seriously undermines the dead suspect loophole [closure],” he said.
Larsen stated in the lawsuit that he did try to get a reason for the exception to release records with calls to the AG’s office inquiring why it “issued a summary letter ruling with no examination of the facts, and no argument on the law.”
“I reminded [an AG official] that interested organizations supporting government transparency had been working for years to plug the ‘dead suspect’ loophole … and now, in the first case where it would be applicable, the AG took it upon itself … to apply Family Code section 261.201,” the lawsuits states. “I told him that, as applied by the AG, this Family Code section is a made-up exception, made up for the benefit of law enforcement to conceal their files. [The AG official] said that he ‘doesn’t necessarily disagree,’ but that the AG ‘would not revisit the letter ruling,’” Larsen recounted in the lawsuit.