Font ResizeBrian Cardall's body was lying on the side of the road -- naked and still warm -- when the Hurricane Police Department started working on what a sharp attorney could call a defense.
"Did he come after you?" a cop asked officer Ken Thompson.
"Does he have any drugs? Let's find out. Any narcs, anything like that?"
"He was foaming at the mouth when we got here," Thompson says.
No, Cardall's wife says. No other drugs. Just 400 mg of Seroquel, the medicine he takes for bipolar disorder.
"He went right at you?" someone asks Thompson.
"Huh?" he asks.
"He went right at you?"
"Yeah," Thompson says.
Someone calls for a defibrilator.
"He went down, and now he's not breathing," Thompson says.
"Excited delirium, huh?" his colleagues ask. It's the catchall, street-side diagnosis for those who inexplicably die in police custody.
They fiddle with the Taser's prongs. Why aren't they closer to where Thompson is pointing?
"The wind is blowing them?" one suggests. "I'm just trying to find somethin' for you."
Hurricane police wouldn't need to find something if Tasers really were non-lethal. If the officers who responded to Anna Cardall's hysterical 911 call had stopped traffic and used their hands. If Thompson had waited a minute --- just a minute --- before zapping Cardall full of 50,000 volts. Or if the officer had left well enough alone and not electrified the
But they aren't. And they didn't. And he didn't. And Brian Cardall, a 32-year-old father of two and doctoral student, died June 9 on the windswept side of Highway 59.
Almost from the beginning, the city has been trying to head off the wrongful death lawsuit. Attorney Peter Stirba initially released a heavily edited summary of the calls and concluded the officers' actions were "reasonable and appropriate." The Washington County Critical Incident Task Force is reviewing the case.
"The officer involved in this case was properly and extensively trained to use the deployment of his Taser," Stirba says. "Officers are trained to use reasonable amounts of force necessary to address a perceived threat, and they are trained that deploying a Taser is a non-lethal use of force."
That, of course, is debatable. Amnesty International reports 334 deaths-after-Tasering since 2001.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah has logged several Taser-related complaints. Too often, Staff Attorney Marina Lowe says, Tasers are used on the elderly, the mentally ill, even pregnant women.
"It hasn't been shown that they are safe, that they are not lethal, but they're being used as if that is the case," Lowe says.
A Salt Lake City attorney who represented a driver shot with a Taser by a highway patrol trooper says there was no reason for police to shock Cardall.
"The officer has a guy standing on the side of the road who's naked, holding his clothes for heaven's sake, who's not fleeing, who has no weapon," says Bob Sykes. "This officer made a huge mistake. He deployed substantial force before it was necessary."
Hurricane's attorneys probably will move on to an "excited delirium" defense. The controversial syndrome has been pushed in court by Taser manufacturers to explain death after electrocution with their devices.
Supposedly an overdose of adrenalin that raises body temperatures to a level where organs fail, excited delirium doesn't show up in an autopsy. Diagnosis is based on a review of a subject's behavior. Still, more and more medical examiners are using it on autopsy reports, including as a way to explain 69 Taser fatalities.
Promoted by a retired Texas medical examiner, excited delirium is not accepted by either the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association. Even the International Association of Chiefs of Police hasn't adopted the diagnosis.
Besides the problems of questionable science, this case doesn't quite fit the diagnosis. Brian Cardall is missing key symptoms of excited delirium: He had no cocaine in his system. He was not massive nor obese.
According to Mother Jones magazine, Taser has been sued for wrongful death 33 times since 2001; dozens of suits still are pending.
The company has lost just one time -- a case where a California man was zapped 25 times.
