Vermont Taser Death Investigation Stalls

September 13, 2012
By William Boardman, IVN

Vermont Taser Death Investigation Stalls

None of the officials involved in Vermont’s first taser death can explain why it’s almost three months since a Vermont State trooper tasered Macadam Mason, a 39-year-old epileptic artist who died almost immediately, and there’s still no completed autopsy report.

The same officials in two states, Vermont and New Hampshire, also failed to reveal last June that Taser International, the taser manufacturer, almost immediately intervened in the investigation, submitting guidance and background information for the Vermont State Police and the NH medical examiner’s office that was in the midst of performing Mason’s autopsy. That was June 21 and Taser’s involvement remained unknown to the public until reported September 9 by the Burlington Free Press.

Taser’s covert intervention into Mason’s taser-related death is part of apparently long-standing policy on the company’s part to intervene as early as possible to protect the Taser brand from bad publicity.

With some 500 taser-related American deaths since 2001, Taser has already changed its characterization of its 50,000 volt stun gun from “non-lethal” to “less lethal.”

Taser’s approach to taser deaths is to challenge anyone suggesting that taser was in any way to blame. Last July when OpEdNews.com ran a story headlined, “Taser Death In Vermont: Trooper Zaps Unarmed Epileptic Artist,” Stacey Todd of Taser International posted a comment asserting that: “It’s premature to describe Mr. Mason’s death as a ‘Taser death.’ To simply infer that the use of one police tool may be to be to blame for this man’s death is irresponsible as there are no facts to support that causal relationship.”

All reports of the event of June 20 are consistent, relating that when trooper David Schaeffer shot his taser at Macadam Mason, Mason dropped to the ground and never regained consciousness. He was taken to a hospital in NH where he was pronounced dead.

When asked, “do you think Mason would be dead even if no taser was used,” the Taser International spokesperson did not answer the question. Instead, Stacey Todd wrote that: “Until a medical expert, coroner or medical examiner, determines a cause of death it’s speculation to state that the Taser device caused Mr. Mason’s death.”

In fact, in three different cases in Ohio in 2005-06, when the Chief Medical examiner’s office in Summit County, Ohio, made exactly that determination, Taser International took the county to court. After a four-day trial in 2008, Ohio Judge Ted Schneiderman found for Taser on every item in the company’s complaint, as well as some items it had not requested, and ordered the medical examiner to re-write three separate death certificates.

The judge’s 13-page decision in May 2008 described three events that unambiguously included tasers and fatalities, as well other factors like extreme drug use, a badly slashed wrist, serious mental impairment, and obesity. These descriptions alone raise doubts about the taser use directly causing any of the three deaths, but tasers were indeed deployed just a matter of minutes before each of three men died, belying the judge’s conclusion that: “The Taser device had nothing to do with their deaths.” [emphasis added]

In Arizona, where Taser International is based in Scottsdale, the Arizona Republic newspaper of Phoenix covered the decision in a story that starts: “Taser International has fired a warning shot at medical examiners across the country. The Scottsdale-based stun gun manufacturer increasingly is targeting state and county medical examiners with lawsuits and lobbying efforts to reverse and prevent medical rulings that Tasers contributed to someone’s death.”

The medical examiner appealed the decision on seven separate issues, getting upheld on one and denied on the rest. In April 2009, the three-judge appeals court denied the medical examiner’s constitutional due process argument on the ground that it had not been raised in the original trial. The appeals court also reversed the trial judge for granting Taser items it had not requested.

In a pointed dissent, Judge Donna J. Carr argued that Taser International had no basis for bringing the suit in the first place “because it has not suffered an actual injury and because the interests it seeks to protect do not fall within the zone of interest to be protected by the statute.” The statute in question is concerned with preserving the integrity and finality of cause-of-death determinations.

Judge Carr went on to say that the cases the majority cited to support its position “involved persons with direct interests in the cause of death of the decedent, such as persons accused in the death, not corporations seeking to make a preemptive strike to preclude lawsuits from being filed against it.”

In Ohio, at least, “the controversy of medical examiners and Taser-related deaths” continued to make news in 2012 when WCPO-TV in Cincinnati looked into the taser-related death of a teenager that was ruled “unknown/undetermined” after he was tasered by a police officer. That ruling was challenged by the family’s attorney who said, “He’s a very clean and upstanding kid, very healthy kid…and the only thing that happened that night is he was tased and then he died and she’s saying this doesn’t matter, the Taser doesn’t matter…I don’t think so.”

WCPO also reported on a 2003 study by the Dept. of Defense that discussed the difficulty of assessing tasers as a cause-of-death, since electric shock leaves no tracks. Without direct evidence, medical examiners must rely on inference to assess the elements of a death, the same inferences that seemed so obvious to the Summit County medical examiner until Taser took her to court.

Asked if she had an opinion of the courts’ rulings, medical examiner Dr. Lisa J. Kohler said, “Yes.” She did not elaborate except to say, “I respectfully disagree with the original ruling. The death certificates reflect that disagreement in that they are unsigned.”

Whether any of these events have anything to do with the delay in Vermont getting Macadam Mason’s autopsy report from NH is anyone’s guess. Taser International has contacted at least some of the officials involved. The Vermont Attorney General’s office and the Vermont State Police won’t comment. The NH Medical Examiner’s office says that Taser hasn’t influenced them. The NH Attorney General’s office refers inquiries to the Vermont Attorney General and other NH officials refers autopsy questions to the Vermont State Police. The Vermont State Police won’t comment beyond saying that, when it gets the autopsy report, it will forward copies to the Attorney General and to the Orange County State’s Attorney Office, which has primary jurisdiction, since Mason died in Thetford in Orange County.

Is excited delirium killing coked-up, stun-gunned Miamians?

July 13, 2010
By Gus Garcia-Roberts, Miami New Times News

"And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on like a madman." — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

It was as if he were two people. Most of the time, Xavia Jones was a mellow, caring father to his daughter, Catherine. He was an ex-con determined to self-improve, a CNN junkie who studied after work at the Miami Beach Convention Center to earn union certification.

But more and more often, something terrible was taking hold of the lanky Opa-locka native whose skin was inked with "Immortal," "Outlaw," and "Thug Life." Xavia's live-in girlfriend, Carrie, would find him hiding behind the couch, a sweating, convulsing fugitive from invisible corrections officers or other unknown enemies. And he'd burst into evil spells, slapping Carrie and pulling her hair, threatening to kill her for cheating on him, his face a dark slate. "He could be a very good friend," Carrie says, "or the next moment he could be scared and paranoid, thinking everybody in the world was after him."

And then one Friday night after work in January 2008, Xavia permanently entered his own private horror show. Sitting on a couch among friends in a Coral Gables condo, sweating, twitching, and blasted on lines of coke and a half-dozen beers, he hugged himself and pleaded, "Oh, please, Jesus, give me the strength not to do this."

Then he began growling, screaming, and running in and out of the apartment like a man on fire.

At 2 a.m., Coral Gables cops found him lying in the middle of traffic-clogged U.S. 1, screaming, "God is coming to take me!" As an officer edged toward him with gun drawn, Xavia's eyes gleamed as he dared him: "Kill me, kill me, shoot me, shoot me."

One of the four cops present would later say Xavia's threatening posture made it "unsafe to approach." So Sgt. Jesus Garcia unloaded his Taser four times into the writhing man. It "seemed to have no effect." So another officer, Scott Selent, hit him with five more electrical bolts. This time, Xavia "kind of locked up, almost like he was a board," the police would later recall.

As the electricity coursed through Xavia's muscles, the cops slapped cuffs on his wrists, dragged him to the sidewalk, and set him facedown on the pavement. "What the heck is going on?" one officer asked.

"Fuck you, motherfucker," was the answer. As soon as Xavia said it, his body went limp and a white liquid trickled from his mouth.

Xavia Jones was the fifth person to die after being hit with a police stun gun in Miami-Dade, according to a December 2008 study by Amnesty International, ranking it seventh of all counties in the United States. Fifty-two people died in Florida after being hit by the 50,000-volt department-issued Tasers, second only to California's 55.

But the electricity didn't kill Xavia, according to Miami-Dade County associate medical examiner Erik Mont. The official cause: "excited delirium syndrome, associated with cocaine use."

The symptoms were all there, wrote Mont: "agitation, excitability, paranoia, aggression, great strength, numbness to pain, and sudden death."

In fact, in all five county cases of death following tasing, the medical examiner's office named excited delirium as the cause of death. According to the 2008 Amnesty International study, 111 of the nation's 334 post-Taser deaths were blamed on excited delirium.

The bizarre syndrome, first diagnosed in Miami, transforms its typically sane victim into a slobbering, raging, supernaturally strong menace hell-bent on self-destruction. It could be ripped straight from the pages of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Scottish scribe Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 archetypal tale of split personality. In the novella, the gentle Dr. Jekyll drinks a potion to become the murderous, hideous Mr. Hyde. In this real-life affliction, the spark is cocaine.

Excited delirium appears to be inflicting Miamians at an especially alarming rate. Since 1989, the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office has declared 38 people dead of the syndrome. In the past decade alone, that number is 28, compared to five during that time in Broward County.

The Miami victims were predominantly male. Twenty were white or Hispanic; 18 were black. They included a hairdresser, a truck driver, and an attorney. Thirty-six of them had cocaine in their system. The other two were diagnosed schizophrenics.

Among the cases: the crack-addicted former lawyer who ran around Liberty City, screaming that somebody was trying to kill him. He broke into an abandoned house and began beating the walls, and himself, with a stick when he was tased. He died in handcuffs soon after.

Then there was the 35-year-old Northwest Miami-Dade father who for a full day had been "acting paranoid" and was unable to recognize his children, his wife later told cops. Police showed up after he ran into noontime traffic, and he stopped breathing one to two minutes after being handcuffed.

Perhaps the strangest rampage was that of the Key Largo vacationer from Homestead who jumped on the hood of a moving vehicle and rode it for a mile, ransacked a toll booth after chasing away the collector, and climbed in and out of an unlocked van before bursting into an occupied houseboat and hiding in the bathroom. When cops showed up, he swam to a small island, where he was finally apprehended and expired in plastic cuffs and leg restraints.

While Miami-Dade seems to be far outpacing more populated counties throughout the nation in the number of excited delirium cases, critics from the American Civil Liberties Union and the families of victims believe there's a reason the syndrome resembles overwrought fiction: because it is.

The syndrome is not listed in textbooks or recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychiatric Association. It has been met with skepticism as it has spread to the United Kingdom and Canada: A police psychologist in Canada recently made headlines when he testified that excited delirium is a "mythical... dubious disorder" used to justify the use of stun guns, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal has termed it a "pop culture phenomenon."

It is police, not excited delirium, causing at least some of the deaths, critics charge. Of 35 excited delirium death reports the Miami-Dade medical examiner's office made available to New Times, 23 of the subjects died after struggling with police officers. Besides the five tasing incidents, they were hogtied, headlocked, and pepper-sprayed. All were unarmed.

"It's overused by medical examiners across the country to hide brutal murders by law enforcement," says Ronald J. Kurpiers, an attorney who recently challenged the diagnosis in a U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit against West Palm Beach Police officers. "It's bullshit."

As for Xavia Jones's bereaved girlfriend, Carrie, she tells their 5-year-old daughter, Catherine, that Daddy died of a heart attack. "When she gets older," Carrie explains, "I'll tell her the whole story."

Asked if she thinks the police killed Xavia, Carrie scoffs. "I can tell you that he wouldn't have died if they weren't there."

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Four decades before Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have scrawled his nightmare-inspired tale of rampage in a three-day cocaine-fueled writing spell, a horse and carriage pulled on to the manicured grounds of the McLean Asylum for the Insane in Somerville, Massachusetts. The coach had traveled 40 miles, and the 31-year-old woman whom orderlies struggled to extricate had "contended violently" the entire way.

She would be immortalized in scientific literature only as "E.A.P.," and she "attack[ed] wildly and discriminately all who approached her."

Her condition that day in July 1847 was a mystery. She was an Army wife, and her husband was away fighting the Mexican-American war. She didn't drink, so the asylum director, Luther V. Bell, ruled out she was suffering from the withdrawal mania delirium tremens. The normally reasonable woman had simply blown a fuse, it appeared, during tea with friends.

McLean Asylum was an opulent place, later home to the notably unstable such as Sylvia Plath, Rick James, and Ricky Williams. The patients ate lobster, and the psychiatric methods were relatively modern. But director Bell broke his own rule and tied E.A.P. to her hospital bed. For the next 16 days, she remained "highly excited" even as she was leeched and administered opium. She rarely slept and "recognize[d] no one."

Then E.A.P. contracted diarrhea. The next day, she simply died.

Bell observed 40 such befuddling cases of unexplained sudden mania from 1836 to 1849, with 30 of them ending in death. The "exhaustive mania" spurned him to publish an October 1849 study in the American Journal of Insanity.

He described the typical afflicted patient as uncomprehending and "suspicious," with dilated eyes and a "pinched-up... florid and greasy" face. "Oftentimes [the] sensation of danger will exhibit itself in the patient attacking any one who approaches him with a blind fury,'' Bell wrote. "If held, he will struggle with the utmost desperation, irrespective of the number or strength of those who may be endeavoring to restrain him... At the expiration of two or three weeks, your patient will sink in death."

The minority that weren't killed by exhaustive mania, wrote Bell, "emerge[d] in a state of absolute recovery at once."

While he noted that "almost every one" of those with the mysterious affliction was strapped to his bed, the doctor was clearly perplexed as to treatment options. He could only cautiously recommend small doses of opium and wine.

The affliction would become known as Bell's mania. Other early 20th-century scientists performed their own studies on similar lethal spells they called "psychotic furors" and "restraint psychosis." And more than a century after the mystery at the gilded asylum, director Bell's findings were revisited in a place he likely could not have imagined: the cocaine-flooded streets of 1980s-era Dade County.

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As the Victorian upper crust had treasured its cure-all opium, Miamians doted on their chic white powder at the height of the disco era. "Cocaine was thought to be an open secret, a wonder drug that nobody ever died from," says Dr. Charles A. Wetli, who took his post as Dade County's second-in-command coroner in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, his office processed two overdoses a week.

So Wetli, also a University of Miami pathology professor, co-authored a scientific paper about "death caused by recreational cocaine use" — a revolutionary concept at the time. But it was more difficult to explain an influx of strange cases that began showing up on his gurney: subjects who had raged wildly before sudden death. Cocaine was found in their systems, but not enough to cause overdose.

Wetli noted a profile. "It only happened in chronic users of cocaine, and predominantly in males," he says. "It's as if they're impervious to pain — to pepper spray, to batons, to numchucks. You spray them with pepper spray and they just sort of look at you."

Wetli and UM colleague David A. Fishbain found seven such cases — six in Miami-Dade and one in Palm Beach County — that had occurred during a 13-month period in 1983 and 1984. The resulting study pioneered excited delirium.

The death cases read like classics of the syndrome: The female drug trafficker, the only woman in the study, who suddenly jumped out of a moving car. "You're trying to kill me. Please don't kill me. I have children," she begged of her boyfriend, who was driving, as she dove out the passenger-side door. She died after several police officers "subdued" her with handcuffs and ankle restraints.

Or the 26-year-old man who fought with his boyfriend, stripped naked, and "ran about the apartment smashing a variety of objects," lacerating himself, before expiring in restraints at the hospital.

And the cocaine freebaser who "began running down the street yelling and screaming unintelligibly." He stole and fired a police officer's gun after being tackled. Cops struck him twice on the head with a heavy flashlight, but the medical examiner didn't find lethal injuries.

In five of the seven cases, the subjects died in police custody. Wetli and Fishbain didn't know why excited delirium caused death, but they posited it might have had something to do with the increasing purity of street cocaine. Their only recommendation was that cops and paramedics "be aware of the potential for sudden death" in crazed subjects.

But if Wetli was treading on shaky ground, his biggest case would call into question whether he was stretching the evidence to fit his theory.

For a decade, the bodies turned up in flop motels, parking lots, and alleyways throughout inner-city Miami. They were often naked from the waist down and all showed signs of recently having had sex. They were all black women. Most were prostitutes and chronic cocaine users.

Cops and medical examiners were stumped by the 32 corpses found from 1980 to the turn of the next decade. But it wasn't the work of a subtropical Jack the Ripper, declared Dr. Wetli. Autopsies "have conclusively showed that these women were not murdered," he told the now-defunct Miami News in 1988. Instead, he hatched a brazen theory that would come to provide ammunition for modern-day debunkers of excited delirium.

Wetli posited that a female offshoot of the syndrome, involving the combination of sex and years of cocaine use, had caused the serial deaths. "My gut feeling," Wetli told New Times in 1989, "is that this is a terminal event that follows chronic use of crack cocaine affecting the nerve receptors in the brain."

"For some reason," he expounded to the Miami News, "the male of the species becomes psychotic [after chronic cocaine use] and the female of the species dies in relation to sex."

But in 1992, police announced they had found a serial killer responsible for the deaths: 36-year-old Charles Henry Williams. Wetli's boss, chief examiner Joseph Davis, exhumed the bodies for re-examination and found evidence of asphyxia. Williams died of an AIDS-related illness before he could face the mounting evidence against him, which included physical links, accounts from escaped victims, and a pattern that showed that when he was in prison, the deaths ceased.

Wetli's apparent missed call 20 years ago casts doubt on excited delirium today, says Nashville attorney and National Police Accountability Project member Andrew Clark. "He's one of the guys who coined excited delirium, and he misapplied it to the work of a serial killer," Clark says. "How do we know his colleagues aren't making a similar mistake?"

Today, Wetli, who is in private practice in New Jersey, initially downplays his theory. He had to make a diagnosis so that the bodies could be buried, he says. But then it becomes clear he still believes that death-by-sex might have killed those women 20 years ago. "It's certainly a possibility," he says. "The guy never went to trial, so we'll never know. The police had a commendable theory in suspecting him. But believing in something, and proving it, is another story."

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University of Miami's brain bank, located on the fourth floor of a drab building in downtown Miami, is all cramped quarters, depressing lighting, and towering filing cabinets. It has about as much evil-lair feng shui as a small-town library.

But this — if you believe critics — is where neurology professor Deborah Mash, Dr. Wetli's heir as the world's leading expert on excited delirium, bends over brain samples, presumably with a hunchbacked assistant by her side, and concocts the science fiction that is gaining acceptance throughout the world.

"She's just a charlatan," California attorney John Burton, who has turned taking on Taser into his career, says of Mash. "She's not a medical doctor, and she has no business opining on cause of death."

But the 56-year-old, dark-eyed neurologist, who wears pantsuits and a skeptical smile, doesn't act the villain when she meets with New Times. She calls a reporter "silly boy" in a chirpy drawl and commiserates with the anger she attracts. "Everybody's pointing fingers. Nobody's happy," she says of excited delirium deaths. "And the problem for medical examiners is that they have no anatomic cause of death. You're running around manic one minute, and the next minute you're dead."

It's not the first time Mash has been called a junk scientist. She made headlines in the 1990s when she championed the use of an organic African hallucinogen called ibogaine as a "vaccine" for cocaine dependence. Stonewalled from government funds, she opened an ibogaine clinic on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, and she says she's still continuing her research on the drug through private funding.

Mash has met similar resistance with excited delirium. The ACLU says it's used to "whitewash clear cases of police abuse," as spokesperson Eric Balaban puts it.

Founder of UM's groundbreaking Excited Delirium Education, Research and Information Center, Mash probably hasn't helped matters by providing paid expert testimony to Arizona-based Taser, International. The $2 billion company, which distributes stun guns to 40 countries, has successfully fended off dozens of wrongful death and product liability lawsuits.

Taser, which insists its guns are nonlethal, has become an enthusiastic lobbyist for excited delirium. Its reps distribute books about the subject at conferences for medical examiners and police chiefs, send information to medical examiners processing in-custody deaths, and even recently circulated a ready-made statement for police departments to use when somebody dies after being tased: "We regret the unfortunate loss of life. There are many cases where excited delirium caused by various mental disorders or medical conditions, that may or may not include drug use, can lead to a fatal conclusion."

The company has gone so far as to successfully sue medical examiner's offices, such as the one in Akron, Ohio, for listing Taser as a cause of death.

As stun guns have proven virtually unassailable in court, governments across the nation have adopted them en masse. In 2005, a Miami-Dade County grand jury recommended Taser use even in non-life-threatening situations. The finding cited excited delirium repeatedly, endorsing the use of Tasers "as a nonlethal method to incapacitate individuals" believed to be in the throes of the mania.

You could say the company appreciates Mash's work. "She's doing really cutting-edge research all on her own," says Taser spokesperson Steven Tuttle, "and it's very fascinating stuff."

In a 2009 deposition for a civil case against Taser, Mash admitted to earning $16,000 from Taser for excited delirium testimony the year before. In the court interview, she claimed to have forgotten how much the company paid her in previous years, and she recently refused to tell New Times how much Taser has paid her since. "I haven't done my taxes," says Mash, co-owner of an $868,000 North Bay Village house with ex-husband, former Miami-Dade Democratic Party chair, and mayor of the village, Joe Geller. The neurologist adds that Taser has never funded her research.

Mash insists she has testified only as an expert on excited delirium and has no opinion on the safety of stun guns. "Who cares about the Taser?" she squawks. "I don't care about the Taser, and I'll tell you why. Excited delirium was happening before the Taser. Excited delirium was happening in the 1800s, in Bell's institutionalized psych patients. If it happened with pepper spray, you'd say, 'Oh, it's the pepper spray that's killing them.'"

The same goes for restraints, hog ties, and baton strikes, Mash says. But the bottom line: "We have some cases where there were no police involved, and they still died."

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London native Matthew Kahn came to South Beach, along with his boyfriend and three other friends, seeking to celebrate the turning of the millennium in debaucherous fashion. The 28-year-old got his hands on a bag of crystal meth and snorted it away. And then, his partner Dale later told cops, he simply went "mad."

In the early morning of January 3, 2000, Matthew ripped apart the bathroom in a guest room at the Clay Hotel on Española Way, slicing and bruising himself in the process. Just before 10 a.m., paramedics found him in the throes of continuous seizures. He died in the South Shore Hospital emergency room, with only about a tenth of the amount of cocaine or meth in his system needed to cause overdose.

The English tourist's death is one of about five in Miami-Dade's recent history that Dr. Mash has reason to tout. There were no cops involved, no struggle, and no blunt trauma. Matthew, like those Massachusetts asylum patients of scientific lore, simply expired.

The same is true for a 36-year-old bail bondsman named Nathaniel Blash, married father to two teenagers, who was found dead, wearing only boxer shorts and jewelry, lying face-up under an SUV on NE 53rd Street, with cocaine in his system and no signs of injury.

And 29-year-old Marlon Sankar, a clean-living truck driver who apparently turned to cocaine in his distress over a breakup. Authorities found him lying nude and bleeding in his Miami Springs front yard after he tore apart his bathroom with his bare hands. (One simple theory for all of the destroyed bathrooms: that's the most common place to use drugs.) Marlon claimed he had been robbed and beaten — which was later determined to be untrue — and he died suddenly at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

And 41-year-old Roosevelt Baker, who on a hot July afternoon was sprinting in and out of a South Miami RaceTrac gas station and yelling incoherently when he collapsed dead before police arrived.

In this handful of cases, neither family members nor lawyers contested Dr. Mash's cocaine-induced syndrome. It seems there was nothing else there to cause death.

As a police report put it in the case of 29-year-old Stephen Daugharty, who collapsed after running through his Homestead neighborhood while screaming that someone was trying to kill him: "His father said that he had a good heart, but he loved drugs more than life."

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Even as the controversy has raged, Mash has spent the past decade studying patterns in the dissected brains of cadavers diagnosed with excited delirium. And she claims she is close to solving the mystery of why the disputed syndrome causes death.

Mash now believes certain people are genetically predisposed to excited delirium. Cocaine, methamphetamine, or in some cases, unmedicated mental illness is the spark that causes the "electrical event" transmitted from the brain to the heart.

"It's almost like a jack-in-the-box," Mash says of those prone to excited delirium. "The springs are fully wound. You can walk around your whole life like this and you're not going to pop your cork. But if you start smoking crack, and you've been hitting the crack pipe for a number of years, and then one day — dun-dun-dun — you have full-blown excited delirium."

The brain goes into hyperthermia, sizzling like bacon at temperatures of 105 degrees or higher, causing extremely sudden cardiac arrest, which is why many sufferers tend to rip off their clothes or seek shade under vehicles. "Medical examiners have described cases," Mash says, "where paramedics get to the scene and the room is trashed, there are ice cubes everywhere, and the subject is dead. That tells me that person was trying to cool down."

Mash believes some people might suffer "flicker episodes" — nonfatal spells — of excited delirium. If true, that could explain the flashes of strange behavior Xavia Jones exhibited months before being tased in Coral Gables, and it might even solve the mystery of those briefly afflicted patients at the 19th-century McLean Hospital who snapped out of their madness as quickly as they had been smitten by it.

However, there's still no way to identify those cursed with excited delirium until it's too late, Mash says. She responds it's "not [her] job" to give advice to cops or paramedics who encounter somebody in the throes of excited delirium. And she becomes glib when asked how people can protect themselves from dying of the syndrome: "Yeah, don't do drugs. If you're at risk for excited delirium — of course, we don't know who you are — no methamphetamine or cocaine for you. Start with that. And if you're a psychiatric patient, please keep your medicine compliant."

But Miami-Dade Fire Rescue paramedics have taken an unprecedented step in battling the body count: They are now equipped with excited delirium survival kits, designed to stop brains from hitting the griddle.

The new protocol was dreamed up by Miami-Dade chief medical examiner Dr. Bruce A. Hyma — an unabashed excited delirium bible-thumper and member of the Mash-founded UM research center — and fire-rescue officials. "We discussed how we can maybe abort this cycle and somehow save some lives," Hyma says. "The long and short of it is, if we can minimize the amount of physical exertion when this whole process starts, we can mitigate the amount of overheating that leads to death."

The plan, which has been in effect since 2007: First, a police officer tases the manic subject. Next, rescue workers quickly administer a nasal hit of Versed, a knockout drug commonly used on patients before surgery. Last, the subject is injected with iced saline to keep his or her temperature down. "The key is that when one of these events occurs," Hyma says, "it [should] be recognized as a medical emergency, not as a domestic altercation or a civil disturbance."

Hyma believes Miami-Dade is the only county to have such an approach in action, although "maybe others have copied it now and are using it." Hyma offers the unverified claim that 19 of 20 manic subjects hit with the Versed-and-saline cocktail have survived. One hitch: Because they lived, there's no way to prove those survivors were suffering from excited delirium in the first place.

Hyma hopes counties across the nation soon follow Miami-Dade's lead. Then comes the day, naturally, when paramedics are equipped with Tasers. Which is further gloom and doom for the civil rights set. Amnesty International's Jared Feuer sounds fatigued when told of the innovative approach: "So, wait, they tase them and then drug them?"

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"Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and still twitching." —Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

It's apparent Linda Lewis misses being a mother. She attempts to gorge a reporter on soda, offers to make him lunch, and sternly advises him against speeding on his way back to Miami. Her Lantana home is a shrine with photos of her son, Donald Lewis, who lost his life at the age of 38 on the side of a road in October 2005. Every so often, she picks one up and shakes it. "Does this look like a drug addict to you?" she demands. "He could have been a model!"

The pictures display a John Mellencamp song come to life: shirtless and handsome, with an American flag tattoo on his bicep and a big, beef-eating smile.

It's clear there were two Donalds. There was the one Mom knew, the hard-working screen installer who made $40,000 a year, doted on his teenage son, and grew husky on her home-cooking.

Then there's the one police officers knew: arrested upward of 60 times on drug-possession and petty charges, one of those crackheads who swear to go clean but never do.

On October 19, 2005, Mugshot Donald won the battle for good. That's the day West Palm Beach cops found him writhing and incoherent along 45th Street, wrestled him to the ground, hogtied him, and then struggled in vain to revive him when he suddenly went limp.

A Cops TV crew captured some of his grunted final words: "The cops are killing me... Mother, I love you. Father, I love you. Jesus, I love you."

The Palm Beach medical examiner's ascribed cause of death: "sudden respiratory arrest following physical struggling restraint due to cocaine-induced excited delirium."

What's really happening in the unaired footage depends upon whom you ask. To Dr. Mash, Donald's paranoia and imperviousness to pain — he withstood chokeholds and hard knees to the back and neck from four large male police officers — would appear to be classic excited delirium. But to Linda Lewis, who forced herself to watch the video only once, those same methods used on an unarmed, handcuffed man mean something altogether different. "Excited delirium didn't kill my son," she says. "The police killed my son."

Lewis filed an excessive force suit against the City of West Palm Beach and the five officers on the scene. Dr. Michael Baden, former New York City chief medical examiner, testified that Donald had in fact died of "asphyxia caused by neck compression."

A federal judge ruled the police were protected from the lawsuit by "qualified immunity," and an Atlanta appeals court upheld the decision. This past February, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the suit without explanation.

But if excited delirium has become legal Kevlar for police departments and Taser International in wrongful death suits, a few bullets have recently pierced the vest.

In June 2008, a California jury ordered Taser to pay $6.2 million to the family of Robert Heston, who died after being stunned by Salinas Police, despite the company's defense that he had died of excited delirium. Attorney John Burton argued that the company should have known its guns could cause cardiac arrest, and issued a proper warning to police. Though the penalty was later reduced to $1 million, it was the first time Taser had lost in court.

And this May, the City of Fort Worth, Texas, paid a $2 million settlement to the family of 24-year-old Michael Patrick Jacobs, who died after being tased by cops last year. The settlement came with no admission of guilt, but an unprecedented step by Taser spoke volumes. The company issued a bulletin to police departments advising officers to avoid tasing people in the chest.

Taser spokesperson Tuttle, who maintains that his stun guns have still never been proven to be lethal, downplays that development. "The one thing we've always recommended is that the back would be a great shot because there's more nervous tissues and more muscles back there. We're going to have more problems if people aren't using it where we recommend it for maximum effectiveness."

The courtroom batterings of Taser and excited delirium do nothing for Linda Lewis, who has begged for "just an apology" from the officers involved in her son's death. There is no further recourse in her lawsuit against the City of West Palm Beach. Says her attorney, Ronald Kurpiers: "The police literally got away with murder."

British Columbia government wants Taser legal challenge of inquiry results tossed

April 11, 2010
By James Keller, The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Taser International's fight to quash a public inquiry report that concluded the controversial weapons can kill lands in a Vancouver courtroom on Monday.

The British Columbia government will ask the court to toss the weapon manufacturer's legal challenge of the findings from commissioner Thomas Braidwood's report from the first phase of a public inquiry prompted by the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport.

The 550-page report released last year found that a jolt from a Taser could be fatal, and the weapons' use should be restricted.

Arizona-based Taser, which has a long history of litigation against any suggestion the stun guns are unsafe, responded with a blistering legal challenge alleging bias on the part of Braidwood, the inquiry's lead lawyer and a medical expert involved with the proceedings.

The province has now filed its own equally biting reply, calling Taser's petition "offensive and abusive."

"The only evidence of any bias is that the petitioner (Taser) says the conclusion is wrong," the province said in a document filed with the B.C. court.

"That is, the petitioner believes that the case that the Taser is harmless is so overwhelming that the commissioner's contrary findings themselves give rise 'to a reasonable apprehension of bias.' This is an extraordinary attempt to use judicial review to conduct a collateral attack."

Monday's hearing will deal with the government's motion to dismiss the legal challenge.

The B.C. government ordered a two-part public inquiry after Dziekanski's death in October 2007.

RCMP were summoned after the would-be immigrant became agitated and began throwing furniture in the arrivals area of the airport. He was confronted by four officers and stunned multiple times with a Taser.

The first phase of the inquiry was held in 2008, when Braidwood examined Taser use in general by law enforcement agencies in British Columbia.

While his report from that phase raised concerns about Tasers and recommended changes to how they're used, Braidwood also said they are a necessary tool for police.

The commissioner then undertook months of hearings last year examining Dziekanski's death specifically, and a final report from that phase is expected to be made public by the summer.

Last August, Taser filed a petition with the B.C. Supreme Court asking that Braidwood's first report be thrown out and that he be prevented from using any of his findings - which include that Tasers can kill - in his report into Dziekanski's death.

The petition alleged Braidwood made conclusions that weren't supported by the evidence, and that Taser was denied the right to fully participate.

"Was the process by which that conclusion was reached a fair one? We say it was not," Taser's lawyer, David Neave, said in an interview.

"The company is concerned that the principles of fairness were not followed."

The B.C. government contends Taser had no legal right to participate, but was nonetheless given "extraordinary" involvement as a courtesy.

Furthermore, the province argues Braidwood's report can't be subject to judicial review because the first phase of the inquiry was a "study commission" the role of which was to make policy recommendations to the government, not to determine facts or assign blame.

"Taser was afforded every opportunity to make submissions to the study commission," the province's said in a court filings for the pending case.

"What Taser cannot do is control the way the submissions are weighted and assessed."

It's not clear how much difference the case will make to how the weapons are used in Canada, regardless of whether the report's conclusions are thrown out or allowed to stand.

The RCMP has already significantly restricted its policies on how the weapons should be used, and the B.C. government has adopted all of Braidwood's recommendations.

But Taser has a long history of aggressively defending its weapons in court.

Last year, the company sent out a news release boasting it had successfully won its 100th dismissal of a liability lawsuit, however, the company cannot claim a perfect legal record. In 2008 a California jury ruled the weapon was at least partially responsible for the death of a man who died in police custody.

The company is quick to contact media organizations about stories on deaths that may be linked to use of their weapons, and when a state medical examiner in Ohio ruled that three men's deaths were in part caused by the effects of Tasers, the company sued.

Taser eventually won, and in May 2008 a judge ordered the medical examiner to delete any references in the autopsy findings that suggested the stun guns were to blame.

Appeals court finds judge errors - Ruling says wrong to remove parts of inmate's autopsy report

April 2, 2009
By Ed Meyer
Beacon Journal staff writer

A retired Summit County judge erred in ordering the medical examiner to remove four specific factors from its findings that asphyxiation caused the 2006 death of jail inmate Mark D. McCullaugh Jr., an appellate court has ruled.

In a lengthy written decision released Wednesday, a three-judge panel of Akron's 9th District Court of Appeals found that visiting Common Pleas Judge Ted Schneiderman overstepped his bounds by ordering the medical examiner to remove specific language from McCullaugh's autopsy and death certificate ''that pertained to chemical and mechanical restraint, beating and anal penetration.''

The medical examiner, Lisa J. Kohler, ruled in October 2006 that McCullaugh's death was a homicide caused by asphyxia from multiple blunt-force blows and the ''combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint,'' including an unspecified anal injury.

Kohler said she read the 34-page appellate decision but declined to comment about what impact it might have. She said she intended to discuss the findings with legal counsel before making any additional comments.

McCullaugh's family members could not be reached for comment.

Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman, who handled the 9th District appeal on behalf of the Summit County Prosecutor's Office, said he was unsure of the impact it might have on future litigation.

McCullaugh's mother and father — the administrators of his estate — filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court in Akron on Aug. 1, 2007. It named numerous sheriff's deputies and many other personnel allegedly involved in the care and treatment of McCullaugh at the county jail, court records show.

Meanwhile, the 9th District decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., because the court ruled that Schneiderman was not wrong in ordering Kohler to remove specific Taser references from McCullaugh's autopsy and death certificate.

McCullaugh, 28, died Aug. 20, 2006, after what Summit County sheriff's records described as a ''violent struggle'' with deputies in his cell in the jail's mental-health unit.

Deputies used a Taser stun gun, shackles and a full can of pepper spray during the struggle, and a jail nurse injected McCullaugh with drugs in a further effort to calm him, according to sheriff's records.

But after a four-day civil trial last spring, Schneiderman ordered Kohler to change the autopsy and death certificate, saying there was ''simply no medical, scientific, or electrical evidence to support the conclusion that the Taser . . . had anything to do with the death'' of McCullaugh or with two other unrelated deaths involving confrontations with area police.

Kohler's findings had been challenged in a lawsuit brought by lawyers from Taser International and the city of Akron. Schneiderman, who was appointed to handle the case after retiring from the Common Pleas bench, heard the evidence without a jury.

Later, in a criminal trial last year, another visiting judge found a sheriff's deputy not guilty of murder in connection with McCullaugh's death.

Special prosecutors from Cuyahoga County then moved for dismissal of charges against four other deputies indicted for the death, and the motion was granted by visiting Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr.

Inderlied, a retired judge from Geauga County, heard the criminal case without a jury.

The appellate decision was written by former 9th District presiding Judge Lynn C. Slaby, who has retired. Judge Beth Whitmore concurred with Slaby's opinion. Judge Donna Carr dissented.

In finding that Schneiderman did not err in his decision regarding the Taser, Slaby wrote that he considered ''the voluminous record'' in the civil trial as well as testimony from a variety of expert witnesses who said the stun gun ''did not contribute in any way'' to the deaths of McCullaugh and the others.

Kohler, Slaby stressed, was unable to testify, with ''a reasonable degree of scientific certainty,'' about how the Taser contributed to the three deaths.

TASER International dismissed from two product liability lawsuits

September 8, 2008

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- TASER International, Inc. (TASR 6.57, -0.08, -1.2%), the market leader in advanced electronic control devices, announced that the United States District Court for the District of Nevada issued an order in the product liability wrongful death lawsuit entitled Neal-Lomax, et al. v. TASER International, et al. The order granted TASER International's Daubert motions limiting the testimony of plaintiffs' causation experts and granted TASER International's motion for summary judgment.

In addition, the plaintiffs in the case of Robert Earl Williams, Jr., et al. v. TASER International, et al. filed a Plaintiff Notice of Nonsuit with the District Court of Mclennan County (TX), 74th Judicial District, which effectively dismissed this product liability wrongful death litigation against all defendants.

"In granting TASER's motion for summary judgment in the Neal-Lomax litigation, the United States District Court ruled as follows: 'Plaintiffs have failed to produce any admissible evidence stating to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the (TASER electronic control device) caused or contributed to Lomax's death. Plaintiffs therefore have not raised a genuine issue of material fact as to causation, and the Court will grant Defendant's (TASER International) motion for summary judgment'," said Doug Klint, Vice President and General Counsel of TASER International.

"The Court also ruled to exclude Plaintiff's principle causation experts, Brett H. Woodard, M.D. and Jared Strote, M.D. The Court excluded Woodard's opinions by finding that his opinions are not based on reliable medical or scientific methodology. The Court excluded Strote's opinion because it lacks any objective medical source linking the eyewitness testimony and his opinions as to what caused Lomax's death. Absent any medical or scientific basis to support his opinions, Strote's opinions are not based on reliable medical or scientific methodology. It should also be noted that the Court granted the Las Vegas (NV) Metropolitan Police Department's (LVMPD) motion for summary judgment and ruled that the LVMPD Officer used objectively reasonable force in his use of the TASER(r) X26(tm) on Mr. Lomax," said Klint.

"We are also pleased to announce that as a result of TASER International's successful litigation against the Summit County Ohio Medical Examiner, which corrected the autopsy report in the 2006 Mark McCullaugh, Jr. death, one Summit County deputy sheriff was recently acquitted of a murder charge and criminal charges were dismissed against two other deputies," concluded Klint.

Judge doubts cause of death in Summit jail case

August 8, 2008
By Ed Meyer, Beacon Journal

Prosecutors failed to prove that Mark D. McCullaugh Jr. died from asphyxiation after his 2006 struggle with Summit County sheriff's deputies at the county jail, a judge said. Deputy Stephen Krendick, 35, was found not guilty of one count of murder by visiting Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr., who heard the case in Summit County Common Pleas Court without a jury.

Inderlied announced the verdict at 4 p.m. Wednesday after a three-hour recess following closing arguments. He left the bench immediately afterward. The judge made public the reasoning behind his decision in a two-page court entry filed in the county clerk's office at 10:51 a.m. Thursday.

It stated: ''The state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any conduct of the defendant, Stephen Krendick, caused the death of Mark D. McCullaugh, knowingly or otherwise. More specifically, the state failed to prove that Mark D. McCullaugh died from asphyxia as opined by Dr. Sterbenz and Dr. Levy.''

Ryan Miday, a spokesman for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, said Inderlied did not inform the two assistant county prosecutors who handled the case — John R. Kosko and Brian M. McDonough — that lesser charges were considered. But Kosko and McDonough both interpreted the decision's reference to ''any conduct'' as an indication that Inderlied did consider lesser charges, Miday said. In pretrial records, Kosko wrote that ''the facts may support the consideration of involuntary manslaughter or reckless homicide as lesser included offenses of murder.''

Inderlied's decision went on to say: ''It is more likely that Mark D. McCullaugh died from sudden cardiac death following his struggle with Summit County deputies and due to the adverse impact of that struggle on his pre-existing severe arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease prior to the use of drugs or the use of [pepper] spray by the defendant.''

Arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease is a medical term for hardening and thickening of the walls of the coronary arteries.

Defense's argument

Defense attorney James M. Kersey, in his closing argument, said McCullaugh's bad heart resulted in a fatal ''haywire heartbeat'' from the stress of the struggle. There was no evidence McCullaugh's airways were obstructed and, therefore, he could not have died from asphyxiation, Kersey argued.

But George C. Sterbenz, the county's chief deputy medical examiner, testified during the eight-day trial that McCullaugh died of asphyxiation from the combined effects of chemical, electrical and mechanical restraints on his airways. McCullaugh, 28, was pronounced dead at Akron General Medical Center at 7:46 p.m. Aug. 20, 2006 — one hour and 15 minutes after the beginning of the struggle in his 11-by-7-foot cell in the jail's mental health unit, prosecutors contended.

According to testimony, McCullaugh's hands were cuffed behind his back, his legs were shackled and he was injected by jail nurses with a drug cocktail in a further effort to calm him. One of those nurses, Denise Walsh, testified that McCullaugh's leg shackles were attached, in turn, to a bull ring in the cell floor.

With the cell door closed, Krendick then shot McCullaugh through a flap in the door with a 16-ounce can of pepper spray. Moments before, deputy Adam Crolley testified that he heard Krendick saying he was ''going to let him cook.''

Sterbenz testified that the fatal injury — severe burns to the windpipe from inhaling the pepper spray — caused McCullaugh to choke to death within minutes.

Those findings were corroborated by testimony from a second forensic pathologist, Dr. Bruce Levy, chief medical examiner of the state of Tennessee. Levy reviewed Sterbenz's findings and agreed with asphyxiation as the principal factor in the death.

The defense, however, presented two forensic pathology experts of its own — Werner U. Spitz, a former chief medical examiner in Wayne County in Michigan, and Michael Graham, chief medical examiner for the city of St. Louis.

Spitz and Graham both testified that McCullaugh, who was 6-foot-2 and 290 pounds, according to the autopsy, had severe heart disease and died of a rapidly accelerated heartbeat from the stress of his violent struggle with the deputies.

Spitz, 81, who testified in the congressional investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., concluded from his review of the Sterbenz autopsy that McCullaugh's death was from ''natural causes.''

Spitz testified that he found no obstruction in McCullaugh's windpipe, nor any evidence of swelling — a sign of restricted airflow — in that area.

Graham testified that he, too, reviewed Sterbenz's autopsy and found the evidence showed McCullaugh died from a condition he called ''schizophrenia-induced excited delirium,'' with heart disease as a contributing factor.

Excited delirium is a legal term for sudden death from an accelerated heartbeat in cases of suspects who resist being taken into custody.

Mental illness cited

Inderlied also said in his decision that the struggle ''was precipitated by Mark D. McCullaugh due to his well-documented mental illness.''

Krendick did not testify, but on Wednesday morning when the defense wrapped up its case, five Akron police officers testified that they were involved in bizarre incidents with McCullaugh in the weeks leading up to his death.

In one incident, McCullaugh head-butted an officer. In the other, he kicked a paramedic in the chest, the officers said.

Inderlied also said in his decision that he made ''no findings with regard to the conduct of any person(s) other than the defendant, Stephen Krendick.''

Four other sheriff's deputies were indicted in the case. They are scheduled to go to trial before Inderlied later this year.

After the verdict, Jennifer L. Fox, McCullaugh's mother, left the courtroom in tears. Jonathan Stock, of Medina, said his mother was too distraught to comment on the verdict.

Sheriff Drew Alexander, meanwhile, said Krendick will be back on the job ''when he's ready.''

Alexander extended his condolences to McCullaugh's family, but also said he was ''happy for the sheriff's office.''

''The agency's been under a lot of scrutiny for the last two years, and I felt two years ago as I do now,'' he said. ''My deputies acted appropriately.

''They did not go into that cell to kill that man. They went in to that cell to subdue him and stop him from hurting himself, and this is the end result.''

Inderlied handled the case under appointment by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Ohio deputy Stephen Krendick on trial in inmate death

July 29, 2008
Karen Farkas, Plain Dealer Reporter

Akron- A Summit County sheriff's deputy, charged with murder in the death of a mentally ill jail inmate, went on trial Monday.

Prosecutors maintain Stephen Krendick stomped five or six times on Mark McCullaugh's head and sprayed his naked body with a can of pepper spray while McCullaugh was hog-tied, which contributed to his death. Kendrick also stunned McCullaugh several times with a Taser.

A forensic pathologist is expected to testify that McCullaugh died of asphyxia. The theory is that the pepper spray made his airway swell, the hog-tie restraint put pressure on his heart, and the stun gun's electrical charges caused muscle contractions that made it hard for him to breathe, prosecutors said.

Krendick's attorneys maintain that their client used the force necessary to restrain McCullaugh during a violent struggle. They said the 6-foot-2, 290-pound inmate died of heart failure from excited delirium due to his untreated psychiatric illness.

Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler had ruled McCullaugh's death a homicide caused by asphyxiation but was ordered to change the ruling to "undetermined" by a judge in another case involving the death of McCullaugh and two other men who were shot by stun guns.

Krendick, one of five deputies charged in McCullaugh's death, faces the most serious charge. His case is being heard by visiting Judge H.F. Inderlied. Cuyahoga County prosecutors are handling the case.

McCullaugh, 28, was jailed Aug. 8, 2006, after assaulting an Akron police officer. On Aug. 20, deputies were called to restrain him so he could be given medication after he got naked, defecated and wrote on his cell walls with blood, according to court documents. The deputies were charged after a year-long investigation.

Prosecutors will ask Inderlied to consider an involuntary-manslaughter or reckless-homicide conviction if he thinks the evidence does not prove murder, according to court documents.

Inderlied viewed the jail cell Monday and began hearing testimony. The case in Summit County Common Pleas Court is expected to take as long as two weeks because each side is prepared to call numerous medical experts.

Deputies trial to resume after delay, as defense sought to remove Beacon reporter

July 28, 2008
By Phil Trexler, Akron Beacon Journal

Opening statements in the trial of a Summit County Jail deputy charged with murder in the death an inmate were delayed this morning after a Beacon Journal reporter resisted efforts to be subpoenaed as a defense witness.

Attorneys will begin their cases at 1:15 this afternoon after an agreement was reached that allows Beacon Journal reporter Ed Meyer to remain in the courtroom until a Tennessee medical examiner testifies later this week.

Jailer Stephen Krendick is on trial before visiting Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr. of Geauga County. He is accused with five other deputies in the 2006 death of inmate Mark D. McCullaugh. McCullaugh Jr., 28.

Krendick, who waived his right to a jury trial, faces the most serious charge.

The other deputies who were indicted — Brett Hadley, Brian Polinger, Dominic Martucci and Mark Mayer — are scheduled to go to trial before Inderlied later this year.

This morning, legal arguments between the newspaper's attorney and Krendick's defense lawyers delayed the trial for more than an hour.

Meyer, who is reporting on the trial for the newspaper, was named a witness by the defense and is being asked to testify about his phone interview in May with Dr. Bruce Levy, Tennessee's chief medical examiner.

The interview came after a judge overruled Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler's finding that the use of a Taser contributed to McCullaugh's death.

Levy told Meyer by telephone from his office that he was shocked and disagreed with Judge Ted Schneiderman's decision.

Krendick's lawyers, Robert C. Baker of Akron and James M. Kersey of Cleveland, wanted Meyer removed from the courtroom in an effort to bar him from listening to other testimony.

Witnesses are generally precluded from watching the trial.

Brouse McDowell attorney Karen Lefton, representing the newspaper, reached a compromise with the attorneys that allows Meyer to stay in the courtroom and cover the trial for the paper.

Meyer agreed to leave the courtroom only in the event Levy testifies later this week.

McCullaugh, 6-foot-2 and 306 pounds, according to autopsy evidence, died from sudden heart failure brought on by excited delirium from a psychotic condition for which he was no longer being treated, the defense contends.

Opening statements in the trial of a Summit County Jail deputy charged with murder in the death an inmate were delayed this morning after a Beacon Journal reporter resisted efforts to be subpoenaed as a defense witness.

Attorneys will begin their cases at 1:15 this afternoon after an agreement was reached that allows Beacon Journal reporter Ed Meyer to remain in the courtroom until a Tennessee medical examiner testifies later this week.

Jailer Stephen Krendick is on trial before visiting Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr. of Geauga County. He is accused with five other deputies in the 2006 death of inmate Mark D. McCullaugh. McCullaugh Jr., 28.

Krendick, who waived his right to a jury trial, faces the most serious charge.

The other deputies who were indicted — Brett Hadley, Brian Polinger, Dominic Martucci and Mark Mayer — are scheduled to go to trial before Inderlied later this year.

This morning, legal arguments between the newspaper's attorney and Krendick's defense lawyers delayed the trial for more than an hour.

Meyer, who is reporting on the trial for the newspaper, was named a witness by the defense and is being asked to testify about his phone interview in May with Dr. Bruce Levy, Tennessee's chief medical examiner.

The interview came after a judge overruled Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler's finding that the use of a Taser contributed to McCullaugh's death.

Levy told Meyer by telephone from his office that he was shocked and disagreed with Judge Ted Schneiderman's decision.

Krendick's lawyers, Robert C. Baker of Akron and James M. Kersey of Cleveland, wanted Meyer removed from the courtroom in an effort to bar him from listening to other testimony.

Witnesses are generally precluded from watching the trial.

Brouse McDowell attorney Karen Lefton, representing the newspaper, reached a compromise with the attorneys that allows Meyer to stay in the courtroom and cover the trial for the paper.

Meyer agreed to leave the courtroom only in the event Levy testifies later this week.

McCullaugh, 6-foot-2 and 306 pounds, according to autopsy evidence, died from sudden heart failure brought on by excited delirium from a psychotic condition for which he was no longer being treated, the defense contends.

Special prosecutor to review ruling in Summit jail death

May 15, 2008
By Ed Meyer, Beacon Journal staff writer

Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman was appointed today to investigate a possible appeal of a recent judge's ruling that changed the autopsy findings in the 2006 death of an inmate at the Summit County Jail.

On May 2, visiting Summit County Judge Ted Schneiderman ordered a change in the manner of death in the autopsy report on inmate Mark D. McCullaugh Jr., 28, from "homicide" to "undetermined."

Schneiderman's ruling followed a four-day trial over a civil lawsuit filed against the county medical examiner, Dr. Lisa J. Kohler, by Taser International Inc. and the city of Akron.

That suit challenged Kohler's findings that the use of a Taser stun gun was a contributing factor in the death of McCullaugh and two other unrelated deaths involving confrontations with Summit County law enforcement officers.

Five Summit sheriff's deputies are facing criminal trials in the McCullaugh case, and last week their lawyers filed a motion to dismiss all charges, directly citing Schneiderman's decision in their arguments to visiting Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr.

A decision by Inderlied -- a retired judge from Geauga County who was appointed by the Ohio Supreme Court to handle the McCullaugh case -- is pending.

Deputy Stephen Krendick, 34, is facing the most serious charge, a single count of murder, in McCullaugh's death.

Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh asked for the appointment of Holman as special prosecutor, saying in court papers that it was being done to "avoid the appearance of impropriety or a conflict of interest."

Walsh argued that the conflict stems from Schneiderman's decision, "which goes well beyond the narrow scope" of Taser's civil suit.

The only issue in that trial, Walsh said, was whether the Taser contributed in any way to cause the three deaths.

But the broad scope of Schneiderman's ruling "orders removal of a variety of other findings, and thus ...any appeal would necessarily implicate the conduct of the involved law enforcement officers," Walsh wrote in her motion.

A spokeswoman for Walsh did not return messages seeking further comment on the possible appeal of Schneiderman's ruling.

Schneiderman, who retired from the Common Pleas bench in 2003, handles various civil and criminal cases as a visiting judge.

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer, the court's administrative judge, approved Walsh's request for the special prosecutor and named Holman to handle the investigation.

Medina County Prosecutor Dean Holman was appointed today to investigate a possible appeal of a recent judge's ruling that changed the autopsy findings in the 2006 death of an inmate at the Summit County Jail.

Legal power of Taser International is cause for concern at Canadian inquests

May 11, 2008
The Canadian Press

VANCOUVER — An Ohio court decision ordering a state coroner to remove all reference to Tasers from autopsy results is an "appalling interference," says British Columbia's chief medical officer.

The top medical examiner in the U.S. called the court ruling last week "dangerously close to intimidation."

But officials at a public inquiry currently underway in B.C. into the use of Tasers say their investigation will continue and their conclusions will not be swayed.

Art Vertlieb, commission counsel with the inquiry, said there will be no adverse findings made in the first phase of the inquiry, which is looking at Taser use in general.

But a second phase that will look specifically at the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport last fall is another matter.

"Once we get into the deal with the airport, that's going to be different. That's going to be a real inquiry in a more confrontational sense," he said.

"Under the rules in an inquiry in B.C. you can't say there's civil or criminal wrongdoing, but you can make adverse findings about people. It's right in the act."

The maker of Taser shock weapons sued the medical examiner of one Ohio county after she named the use of their stun guns as a contributing factor in three deaths in her jurisdiction.

Taser, which has an impressive line-up of lawyers on staff and a stunning legal winning streak of 68 and 0, asked the court to force the chief medical examiner to remove any reference to the use of a stun gun as a contributing factor in the deaths.

While the chief coroner of B.C. declined comment, the province's chief medical officer was blunt.

"I think this is appalling interference in transparency, in trying to find out what actually is going on," said Dr. Perry Kendall.

He could not recall similar legal cases involving Taser in Canada, but Kendall said he hoped the Ohio ruling is appealed.

"I doubt that it will stand. At least I hope it wouldn't stand."

Steve Tuttle, spokesman for Taser International, defended the company's record and vigorous defence of its product - and said the company is watching the public inquiry now underway in Vancouver.

"You can't miss it. It's getting quite a bit of coverage in Canada," he said.

The second phase of the inquiry will specifically examine the circumstances of Dziekanski's death and will be followed by a coroner's inquest.

Kent Stewart, chief coroner of Saskatchewan and chairman of the Chief Coroners and Chief Medical Examiners of Canada, says the U.S. ruling is cause for concern.

But he said coroners and medical examiners in Canada have a job to do and won't be swayed by Taser International's legal juggernaut.

"Certainly, every chief coroner and every medical examiner in Canada would be concerned," Stewart said from Regina.

"But we have to recognize that coroners and medical examiners in Canada have a legal responsibility to investigate deaths and make findings including establishing the cause of death.

"More importantly, those decisions must be fair and impartial and made without fear and bias. So that (ruling) does concern us."

The judge in the Ohio ruling was clear: "There is simply no medical, scientific, or electrical evidence to support the conclusion that the Taser X26 had anything to do with the death of (the three men)."

The judge ordered the Ohio medical examiner to change her official autopsy reports and death certificates for each of the three men.

John Manley, chief prosecutor in the case, told The Canadian Press from his Akron, Ohio, office that Taser is a formidable force in court.

"They are undefeated in terms of litigation," he said, referring to the cases, which involved wrongful death, product liability and failure-to-warn issues.

Only two of them involved findings by medical examiners, he said.

"They have plenty of money and they've got quite a large stable of expert witnesses. They are a formidable force as their record would suggest."

Taser brought in nine expert witnesses for the Ohio case, including the company CEO, cardiologists, doctors, electrophysiologists, and forensic pathologists.

Most of their experts witnesses have testified for the company in other legal challenges, said Manley.

Tuttle said Thomas Smith, the chairman of the board for Taser, will testify Monday at the Taser inquiry in Vancouver.

He was reluctant to comment on what action Taser might take in Canada if an inquiry or inquest was to make any "adverse finding" against the weapon.

"I couldn't even guess. This has only occurred twice and we've been around as a company for 14 years," he said.

The company is also awaiting a coroner's inquest into Dziekanski's death at the Vancouver airport, which will take place after the inquiry. RCMP are also investigating the incident.

"This is way too soon to be speculating on anything that we would do. (There is) an investigation (into Dziekanski) that's ongoing and we want to co-operate as much as possible," Tuttle said.

He said that there have been more than one million "applications" of Tasers on volunteers and in "field applications" and only twice have medical examiner's reports cited Tasers.

"Look at our 14-year track history and this has occurred twice... and that includes more than a million exposures to the Taser system in the field and with volunteers."

More on: U.S. judge orders references to tasers removed from autopsies

This despicable and scandalous development in an Ohio court last week has barely registered on the radar screen south of the border (notwithstanding Robert Anglen's excellent report on the weekend). My hat is off to the CANADIAN MEDIA who see this for the travesty of justice that it is.


May 7, 2008
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Ohio judge orders stun gun references removed from autopsies

AKRON, Ohio — An Ohio medical examiner must change her autopsy findings to delete any reference that stun guns contributed to the deaths of three people involved in confrontations with law enforcement officers, a judge has ruled.

The decision was a victory for Taser International Inc., which had challenged rulings by Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler, including a case in which five sheriff's deputies are charged in the death of a jail inmate who was restrained by the wrists and ankles and hit with pepper spray and a stun gun.

Kohler ruled that the 2006 death of Mark McCullaugh Jr., 28, was a homicide and that he died from asphyxiation due to the "combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint."

Visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman said in his ruling last week that there was no expert evidence to indicate that Taser devices impaired McCullaugh's respiration. "More likely, the death was due to a fatal cardiac arrhythmia brought on by severe heart disease," the judge wrote.

Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh's death undetermined and to delete any references to homicide.

The judge also said references to stun guns contributing to the deaths of two other men must be deleted from autopsy findings. Dennis Hyde, 30, died in 2005 after a confrontation with Akron police, and Richard Holcomb, 18, died the same year after being hit with a stun by a police officer in suburban Springfield Township.

It was unclear what affect Schneiderman's ruling may have on the upcoming criminal trial of the five sheriff's deputies. One of them, Deputy Stephen Krendick, is charged with murder. Other deputies face charges of reckless homicide or felonious assault. All have pleaded not guilty.

Krendick's trial is scheduled to begin June 16. A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office, which is handling the case, said its lawyers are prepared to go forward.

Steve Tuttle, vice-president of communications for Arizona-based Taser International, said the company was pleased with the Schneiderman's ruling, which came down Friday.

"Taser International believed from the beginning that these determinations of cause of death must be supported by facts, medical research and scientific evidence," Tuttle said.

John Manley, a Summit County prosecutor who represented Kohler, said the judge's order went too far. The county is considering an appeal, he said after the decision came down.

"Taser is quite a force to be reckoned with and does everything to protect their golden egg, which is the Model X26," Manley said.


May 7, 2008
CBC News

U.S. court ruling on Tasers worries Canadian doctors

A court ruling in the United States about Tasers is causing concern in Canada's medical community. The U.S.-based manufacturer of the controversial stun guns, Taser International, has won a court order in Ohio that forces a medical examiner to change autopsy reports.

Dr. Lisa Kohler had found that electrical shocks from Tasers were partially to blame for the deaths of three men in separate confrontations with police.

Taser International launched and won a civil suit, forcing Kohler to delete any reference to the deaths being related to electric shocks, and to term them "accidental deaths."

Dr. Matthew Stanbrook of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) says the decision doesn't take into account the difficult of determining an exact cause of death in almost every case.

"If we were required to have at the level of scientific and medical certainty that something was the cause of death, before we were permitted to declare it, most of the people who died in North America would have died of unknown causes," Stanbrook said.

"It is a physician making their best judgment given all the facts available."

Stanbrook is deputy editor of the CMA Journal, which last week carried an editorial that expressed discontent with the current research into the effects of Taser use on suspects. The editorial said most of that work was done at the behest of Taser International and needed to be verified by independent researchers.

"New and independent research, both epidemiologic and biological, into whether Tasers can kill is essential to settle this issue," the editorial said.

Doctors and medical examiners in the United States have also expressed unease over the Ohio court decision.

Dr. Jeff Jentzen of the National Association of Medical Examiners said the case could affect other autopsy results.

"The physician shouldn't be threatened by individual companies attempting to preserve the reputation of their project," Jentzen said.

Taser International CEO Rick Smith told CBC News in January that medical examiners had to be sure of their facts because if they made what he called a careless opinion, they will be held accountable in court.

In submissions to the court in Ohio, Taser International said 68 wrongful-death or injury lawsuits involving Taser use have been dismissed or found in favour of the company.


May 6, 2008
Adrian Humphreys, NATIONAL POST

Taser win in court puts chill on doctors

“It is dangerously close to intimidation,” says group representing medical examiners

Taser won a court case in Ohio which forces medical examiners in that state to expunge any mention of the device as contributing to deaths of people in police custody.

A lawsuit by the makers of Taser stun guns has prompted an Ohio court to order a chief medical examiner to delete any reference to the use of a stun gun as a contributing factor in the deaths of three men, a move rebuked as "dangerously close to intimidation" by the National Association of Medical Examiners.

The outcome of the U.S. civil trial comes as the device is under scrutiny in Canada at an inquiry in British Columbia following the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport in October after he was stunned by a Taser.

Taser, which has a reputation for vigorous legal defence of its popular law-enforcement products, filed a lawsuit against Dr. Lisa Kohler, chief medical examiner in Summit County, Ohio, after she named the use of a stun gun as a contributing factor in three deaths in her jurisdiction.

The case went to trial last month and on Friday, Judge Ted Schneiderman ruled in Taser's favour. Judge Schneiderman was explicit: "There is simply no medical, scientific, or electrical evidence to support the conclusion that the Taser X26 had anything to do with the death of Dennis S. Hyde, Richard Holcomb, or Mark D. McCullaugh."

"The multiple number of experts offered by [Taser International] in the area of sudden and unexpected death while law enforcement attempted to obtain custody, provided overwhelming credible medical and scientific evidence to support their positions."

Judge Schneiderman then ordered Dr. Kohler to change her official autopsy reports and death certificates for each of the three men.

John Manley, chief counsel of civil litigation in the Summit County Prosecutor's Office, said he is disappointed with the judgment. He is considering filing an appeal. He said defending against Taser was a daunting task.

"They are very vigilant, as you would expect a corporation to be who is making a product that makes so much money for you. "They have a record of 68 and 0 -- they've never lost and are quite a force to be reckoned with," he said.

Jeffrey Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, an organization that represents the majority of medical examiners in the United States, said the court's ruling and Taser's legal propensity is sending an unwelcome message to medical examiners. "Our membership is very concerned about these cases and the reaction of Taser to these cases," he said last night.

"Our membership is looking into the area and although Taser has developed its own opinion, there are certainly opposing opinions as to their involvement in causing sudden death in individuals.

"Our organization feels that it violates the physician's ability to make a medical decision. Ordering a professional physician to change or alter their records is in violation of their right to practise medicine.

"Taser has sued a number of medical examiners for making informed medical opinions in an attempt, I think, to both protect their product and send a threatening message to medical examiners.

"It is dangerously close to intimidation," he said. "They are attempting to send a message to medical examiners that if they elect to make that determination they may face a civil suit."

Steve Tuttle, Taser's vice-president of communications, said he was surprised by Dr. Jentzen's comments, disagrees with them and defended the company's decision to seek redress appropriately through the courts.

"I would disagree with that premise completely. At the end of the day, the judge's ruling is very, very crystal clear," Mr. Tuttle said.

In a previous statement, Mr. Tuttle said: "Taser International remains adamant in our position of not settling suspect injury or death lawsuits.

"Taser International's products have been demonstrated by numerous medical studies to be safe and effective. Taser International therefore aggressively defends our products in all litigation brought against the company with the best legal, scientific and medical expertise available."

Taser has faced more than 100 product liability suits, according to the company's filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. stock market regulator. The company's report lists wrongful deaths, training-related injuries to officers and injuries during arrests as being among the claims alleged.

There have been at least 10 training-injury lawsuits filed against Taser since 2003, according to the company. They include one by an RCMP officer who suffered a back injury after a voluntary Taser strike, he claims. Officers are encouraged to experience a Taser shot as part of their training, the lawsuit says.

A majority of lawsuits against it have been dismissed and several have brought judgments in Taser's favour.

U.S. court ruling on Tasers worries Canadian doctors

May 7, 2008
CBC News

A court ruling in the United States about Tasers is causing concern in Canada's medical community. The U.S.-based manufacturer of the controversial stun guns, Taser International, has won a court order in Ohio that forces a medical examiner to change autopsy reports.

Dr. Lisa Kohler had found that electrical shocks from Tasers were partially to blame for the deaths of three men in separate confrontations with police.

Taser International launched and won a civil suit, forcing Kohler to delete any reference to the deaths being related to electric shocks, and to term them "accidental deaths."

Dr. Matthew Stanbrook of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) says the decision doesn't take into account the difficult of determining an exact cause of death in almost every case. "If we were required to have at the level of scientific and medical certainty that something was the cause of death, before we were permitted to declare it, most of the people who died in North America would have died of unknown causes," Stanbrook said. "It is a physician making their best judgment given all the facts available."

Stanbrook is deputy editor of the CMA Journal, which last week carried an editorial that expressed discontent with the current research into the effects of Taser use on suspects. The editorial said most of that work was done at the behest of Taser International and needed to be verified by independent researchers.

"New and independent research, both epidemiologic and biological, into whether Tasers can kill is essential to settle this issue," the editorial said.

Doctors and medical examiners in the United States have also expressed unease over the Ohio court decision. Dr. Jeff Jentzen of the National Association of Medical Examiners said the case could affect other autopsy results. "The physician shouldn't be threatened by individual companies attempting to preserve the reputation of their project," Jentzen said.

Taser International CEO Rick Smith told CBC News in January that medical examiners had to be sure of their facts because if they made what he called a careless opinion, they will be held accountable in court.

In submissions to the court in Ohio, Taser International said 68 wrongful-death or injury lawsuits involving Taser use have been dismissed or found in favour of the company.

Judge rules for taser in cause-of-death decisions

May 3, 2008

ROBERT ANGLEN, THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC

Taser International has fired a warning shot at medical examiners across the country.

The Scottsdale-based stun gun manufacturer increasingly is targeting state and county medical examiners with lawsuits and lobbying efforts to reverse and prevent medical rulings that Tasers contributed to someone's death.

That effort on Friday helped lead an Ohio judge's order to remove Taser's name from three Summit County Medical Examiner autopsies that had ruled the stun gun contributed to three men's deaths.

"We will hold people accountable and responsible for untrue statements," Taser spokesman Steve Tuttle said earlier this week. "If that includes medical examiners, it includes medical examiners."Many medical examiners, who are charged with determining the official causes of death, view the Scottsdale-based company's efforts as disturbing, the spokesman for the National Association of Medical Examiners says.

"It is dangerously close to intimidation," says Jeff Jentzen, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. "At this point, we adamantly reject the fact that people can be sued for medical opinions that they make."

In the Ohio case, the judge said the county offered no medical, scientific or electrical evidence to justify finding the stun gun was a factor in the deaths of two men in 2005 and another in 2006. Taser and the City of Akron sued the medical examiner, saying examiners in the case lacked the proper training to evaluate Tasers.

Chief Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler said that her examiners rightly concluded Taser contributed to the deaths and said county lawyers will appeal the judge's ruling.

"I would not be going forward with this if I did not believe in the rulings," she said.

The judge's order could have an immediate impact on criminal cases against five Summit County sheriff's deputies who were charged in the 2006 "homicide" of a jail inmate. Instead of homicide, the judge ordered the cause of death changed to "undetermined."

Laying a foundation

Before Friday's verdict, legal experts said Taser's victory could lay the foundation for other cases against dozens of medical examiners who have ruled that shocks from the 50,000-volt stun gun can be fatal.

Medical examiners say they're concerned that Taser's aggressive moves could have a chilling effect on doctors, preventing them from blaming Tasers for deaths even when evidence exists.

Taser still faces lawsuits from family members of victims who claim the stun gun is deadly and the company has not done proper medical research. They allege police officers are using the weapon as a compliance tool against people who do not pose significant threats.

But the company has won an impressive number of legal victories and said it has only paid out settlements in a few cases involving police officer injuries. To date, the company says more than 60 cases have been dismissed.

Taser stun guns are a fixture among police. It is used by more than 12,000 police agencies across the country, and by every major law enforcement agency in the Valley. Many police agencies credit the gun with preventing deaths and injuries to officers and suspects.

Taser maintains they are safe

Taser maintains that its guns have not caused a death or serious injury. Officials say company-funded and independent medical studies show the stun guns are safe.

More than two dozen medical examiners across the country have found the stun gun at least partly responsible in the deaths of suspects.

Since 1999, more than 300 people have died in North America following police Taser shocks. The vast majority of those deaths have not been linked to the stun gun. But medical examiners have cited the gun directly or could not rule it out as a factor in nearly 10 percent of the cases, an The Arizona Republic investigation found.

Medical examiners, who typically work for the county or state, are supposed to provide independent scientific analysis about the cause of someone's death. Their rulings are recognized by courts and the police as the official cause of death.

Taser officials have repeatedly said that medical examiners who rule against the stun gun are not qualified to judge whether a Taser was a factor in someone's death. In court disputes, it often presents opposing testimony from company representatives, doctors and medical examiners paid by the firm.

"The qualifications of a medical examiner depend on their professional and educational background as well as their level of understanding of Taser technology and the underlying effects of electricity upon the human body," Tuttle said.

The company's tactics worry Jentzen, a former medical examiner and current director of autopsy and forensics at the University of Michigan.

"I am concerned any time there is a person who is an advocate who may have a conflict of interest," he says.

Jentzen says there are few cases where companies have taken the position that coroners can't be trusted to evaluate their product's involvement in someone's death, and none so aggressively as Taser.

Taser targets rulings

In addition to Ohio, Taser sued a coroner in Indiana who had ruled that Taser caused the death of a man in 2004.

Several coroners have also reported being challenged by Taser, says Jentzen. Among them was a Cook County, Ill., medical examiner who ruled Taser shocks contributed to the death of a 54-year-old man in 2005. Taser dismissed the autopsy report as not credible and said the medical examiner was unqualified. The company demanded a judicial review.

Taser also has asked coroners to reverse opinions. An Anderson, S.C., deputy coroner said Taser representatives showed up in his office on the same day that he ruled Taser shocks contributed to a man's death in 2004.

Charlie Boseman said Taser wanted him to remove any reference to the stun gun from his report. He refused.

Coroners told to bone up

Taser officials have provided coroners reams of medical research in support of the stun gun following a death.

Tuttle says it is up to medical examiners to do the proper research, read the papers and perform tests before making a ruling on a death involving a Taser.The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in 2007 that a county medical examiner based half of his testimony at a coroner's inquest on information supplied by Taser. The medical examiner did not disclose to a jury that he met with Taser officials and reviewed the company's literature before testifying that the stun gun's role in a death was debatable.

In Summit County, Kohler said she has received volumes of medical studies and literature from Taser, all suggesting that the rulings in her cases are wrong.

In Maricopa County, at least 10 people have died following police Taser strikes since 2002. In a 2004 case, the medical examiner's office ruled that Taser shocks contributed to a Mesa man's death. Autopsy reports were unavailable for review this week by The Republic.

Neither Chief Medical Examiner Mark Fischione nor Taser would discuss what, if any, involvement the company had with medical examiners performing autopsies in the cases.

Fischione did not respond to repeated interview requests.

Taser for years touted autopsy reports as proof of the stun gun's safety. Company officials told police departments and shareholders that no medical examiner had cited the stun gun in an autopsy report. But The Republic's investigation found that 27 medical examiners concluded that the gun caused, contributed to or could not be ruled out in deaths.

'Excited delirium' blamed in Taser-related deaths

Taser advocates an alternative cause-of-death scenario called excited delirium. The condition, which is not recognized as a diagnosis in official medical manuals, is used to describe deaths of suspects who become so agitated by drugs, psychosis or poor health that their bodies shut down during struggles with police.

Excited delirium has been cited in police custody-death cases for decades. It is now being blamed more and more by medical examiners for deaths that occur following a police Taser strike, including at least one in Maricopa County in recent years.

Taser has funded excited delirium studies and has been involved in promoting its research. The company maintains that excited delirium is a valid syndrome, and some doctors say it will gain acceptance as more research is conducted.

Mark Schlosberg, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who has worked on several Taser cases, argued that excited delirium has become a convenient way to explain away deaths that occur at the hands of police.

"There are plenty of medical examiners who are very skeptical of excited delirium," he added. "But that is not what Taser is promoting . . . They attribute almost all of the deaths following a Taser strike to excited delirium."

Reach the reporter at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8694.

Ohio judge orders taser removed from autopsies

May 2, 2008
By Ed Meyer, Beacon Journal staff writer

A judge ruled today that the Summit County Medical Examiner must change her autopsy findings to remove all references to the Taser stun gun as a contributing cause of death in the cases of three men who died during encounters with law enforcement officers.

The decision by visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman, released late this morning after a four-day trial in Common Pleas Court last week, stated that there is "simply no medical, scientific or electrical evidence to support the conclusion that the Taser . . . had anything to do with the death of Dennis S. Hyde, Richard Holcomb, or Mark D. McCullaugh."

In his findings of fact and conclusions of law, Schneiderman further explained that Taser International, which joined the City of Akron in filing the lawsuit against the medical examiner, "proved their claims for changing the reports of autopsy and death certificates on the three individuals by more than a preponderance of evidence."

Lawyers for Taser, relying on a "multiple number of experts . . . in the area of sudden and unexpected death while law enforcement attempted to obtain custody provided overwhelming credible medical and scientific evidence to support their positions," Schneiderman's ruling stated.

The medical examiner, Dr. Lisa J. Kohler, who was named as the defendant in the suit, said this afternoon that she was declining to comment because she had not read the judge's 15-page decision.

Kohler said she would have something to say after reviewing it.

Schneiderman's decision could have an effect on the criminal cases against five Summit County sheriff's deputies charged in the August 2006 death of 28-year-old jail inmate Mark D. McCullaugh Jr., because the ruling orders Kohler to change the manner of death from homicide to "undetermined."

Schneiderman, quoting passages from Kohler's autopsy report on McCullaugh, stated that his death "shall be ruled undetermined and any reference to death by 'asphyxia due to the combined effects of chemical, mechanical and electrical restraint,' as well as any reference to 'homicide' due to 'multiple restraint mechanisms with beating and anal penetration' shall be deleted from both the death certificate and the Report of Autopsy."

Inspector Keith Thornton, head of the sheriff's investigative division, said Sheriff Drew Alexander would have a comment on Schneiderman's decision after reviewing it.

Schneiderman, a retired Common Pleas judge, presided over the trial as a visiting judge.

Read the full text of the decision here.