CT- Questionable Medical Examiner's findings after a man died being Tasered 34 times by the police.
A Waterbury man died earlier this month after being hit with a police stun gun. In Middletown, a state investigation recently exonerated police in the May 2010 death of a man who died following 34 shocks by a Taser weapon.
State lawmakers had been considering legislation to require standardized police training in the use of stun guns and restrictions on when and how they should be used. Opposed by the Connecticut Chiefs of Police Association (pdf), the bill has been watered down to a study of police use of Tasers by a state law enforcement training panel. The study legislation is awaiting General Assembly action.
“We were disappointed,” David McGuire, a lawyer with the Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says of the much weakened legislation. “But this is a step in the right direction, and we believe a study will show the need for comprehensive Taser regulation, including training and public accountability.”
McGuire spoke Monday about the Taser issue during an appearance at a Hamden rally by activists protesting what they say is police brutality in their community.
Taser International, maker of the electronic weapon that has become a police mainstay, is ferociously opposed to any suggestion that these stun guns can be lethal. Their spokesmen insist that when someone dies after being Tased, the actual cause of death is some other condition such as drug use, psychiatric- or obesity-related diseases.
"According to the Connecticut Medical Examiner's office, the cause of death for Efrain Carrion (the Middletown guy who died after being hit 34 times by police Tasers) was “excited delirium.” (The examiner's office has ruled at least three times in recent years that excited delirium was the cause of death in cases involving police use of Tasers.)
That's a controversial ruling because excited delirium isn't recognized as a medical condition by authorities such as the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association. Taser International spokesman Steve Tuttle points out that other medical authorities, including the American College of Emergency Physicians and the National Association of Medical Examiners, consider it a legitimate cause of death.
Those who see excited delirium as a specific medical condition say it often occurs when the victim has been high on cocaine or other drugs, has a history of mental illness, is obese and sweating heavily, or is the subject of a combination of those problems. Taser critics charge that excited delirium is nothing more than a cover for police misuse of stun guns."
Link:
http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/news/ht-a-man-dies-after-being-tasered-34-times-but-the-state-rules-police-officers-involved-arent-responsible-for-his-death-20110510,0,3953807.story
Excited Delirium.org had this to say...
When reading the following excerpt, keep in mind where the information is coming from.
" Our colleagues in Miami-Dade County, Florida, first described the syndrome of excited delirium associated with cocaine abuse. The symptoms of excited delirium include bizarre and/or aggressive behavior, shouting, paranoia, panic, violence towards other people, unexpected physical strength, and hyperthermia. Throughout the United States and Canada, these cases are frequently associated with psychostimulant abuse, representing the extreme end of a psychiatric continuum of drug abuse effects. However, reports of acute exhaustive mania, physical restraint, Pepper Spray or TASER and sudden death also have been reported that are not related to abused drugs, suggesting further that an underlying central nervous system disorder was the precipitating cause of lethality. Such victims of excited delirium have provoked allegations of police misconduct, unnecessary force and improper TASER deployment.
Medical examiners often have extreme difficulty in identifying the cause of death, but frequently drug intoxication is considered as a contributing factor or cause of death. While the precise cause and mechanism of these deaths remain controversial, we have demonstrated abnormalities in brain that define and confirm the occurrence of the excited delirium syndrome."
http://www.exciteddelirium.org/