The family of an inmate who died as he was being restrained in the Harris County Jail in 2014 will get their wrongful-death case heard during a trial, a judge decided this week.

U.S. District Court Judge Sim Lake stated in a comprehensive opinion filed Friday that the family of 38-year-old Kenneth Christopher Lucas provided sufficient evidence to move to trial.

Lucas had been at the Harris County Jail for less than a week on a child custody charge when several sheriff's deputies entered his cell on Feb. 17, 2014 after he refused to hand over a piece of metal he had sharpened after breaking a smoke detector. Lucas was handcuffed and placed face-down on a gurney while an officer sat on his back, restraining him.

He could be heard in a 30-minute video of the ordeal warning deputies that he was going to pass out and pleading to be released. Lucas' death was caused by "sudden cardiac death due to hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease during physical restraint," according to a ruling by the Harris County medical examiner.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed by Lucas' relatives, seeks damages under federal civil rights laws and under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The complaint names Harris County and seven of the officers involved in the incident and alleges the officers used excessive force against Lucas and failed to take into account his "serious medical conditions."

Lake's memorandum stated that there was not enough evidence to show Lucas was a qualified individual with a disability, or that the county discriminated against him because of his disability.

In addition, the complaint alleges that former Sheriff Adrian Garcia did not discourage officers from employing excessive force when restraining inmates, citing a 2009 memorandum from the Department of Justice outlining the findings of an investigation into the Harris County Jail. The memorandum states, "We have serious concerns about the use of force at the Jail ... Indeed, we found a significant number of incidents where staff used inappropriate force techniques."

In the opinion filed on Friday, Lake wrote that in order to sue the county for excessive force, there has to be proof of actual policies that train officers with such conduct. For that, he wrote, the plaintiffs have raised genuine issues on the violation of Lucas' constitutional rights as a result of county policy.

"Plaintiffs cite the deposition testimony of Sheriff Garcia that the DCCT members followed their training and carried it out as instructed, not just by placing Lucas face down on the gurney in a basic hogtie position, but also by ignoring Lucas's pleas for help until he was "entirely incapacitated," and that he knew restraining detainees in a basic hogtie position was dangerous due to the risk of positional asphyxia, which could result in death," Lake wrote.

In 2015, A Harris County grand jury declined to indict the five deputies, a supervisor, a lieutenant and a videographer involved in the incident. An internal investigation by the sheriff's office also cleared employees of any wrongdoing.

Then-sheriff Adrian Garcia said Lucas' death prompted changes in jail procedures, including that medical staff is now stationed outside a cell when an inmate is being forcefully removed.

"When life is lost, I think there's a whole lot of things that go wrong," Garcia said at a news conference at the time. "We don't get to pick the inmates that come to us and the medical condition they're in."