Abuses aside, taser guns save lives

November 27, 2006
Rosie DiManno, The Toronto Star

"Dr. Jim Cairns, the province's deputy coroner, gave evidence in support of Taser use at the inquest. It was Cairns who, as consultant to the province and the Toronto Police Services Board, reviewed Taser incidents, concluding that the 14 Canadian deaths — four of them in Ontario — had been caused by drug overdoses, with excited delirium implicated, and not the electric jolt administered. Tasers were not even a contributing factor, the veteran coroner determined. "If you die from electric shock, from a Taser, you die within seconds," Cairns told the Toronto Star yesterday. "You don't die five minutes later or 10 minutes later." The Toronto Police Services Board reversed its original opposition to Tasers, largely because of the persuasive findings presented to them by Cairns."

My brother died about two minutes after being tasered - does that count, Dr. Cairns?

Peter Rosenthal, lawyer for the Vass family, was quoted in another article in the Toronto Star as saying that, at the Vass inquest, "excited delirium was pushed on the jurors who couldn’t quite resist all that pressure.”