Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits' readers' attention:
Federal judge debunks anti-bail reform arguments from Harris DA
Federal District Judge Lee Rosenthal, a George W. Bush appointee, approved the bail-reform settlement in Harris County over objections from District Attorney Kim Ogg. See coverage from The Appeal and Houston Public Media. The judge's order address the DA's objections specifically, and IMO decisively.
Bail-reform injunction issued in Galveston
Another federal judge issued an injunction against Galveston County requiring reform of their bail system. The judge would require the county to provide counsel for indigent felony defendants at their initial bail hearing. By contrast, the Harris County case only involved misdemeanor cases. See the Texas Tribune's coverage.
Speaking for the defense: The only time prosecution theories are excluded from crime stories is when police officers are accused
I have never seen a major newspaper run an article promoting ONLY defense-attorney theories prior to the trial of a murder defendant, except when the defendant is a police officer. Then, we get stories like this one from the Dallas Morning News explaining why a jury should acquit former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger for killing Botham Jean in his home.
'Excited delirium' is still not a real thing
Speaking of Big D cops, Dallas DA John Creuzot told an audience last week that his office chose not to indict the cops who killed Tony Timpa because one of them patted him on the back and tried to comfort him after kneeing him in the back and mocking him as he lay dying. Creuzot said Timpa died of "excited delirium," which he apparently thinks is a real condition that can be treated with Xanax. But regular readers know that's a fake diagnosis that is only ever assigned to people who die in police custody. The Washington Post has reported that the diagnosis appears in no medical textbooks outside of training materials for medical examiners.
Gap in TX jailhouse snitch reporting system cited
Texas' 2017 statute requiring Texas prosecutors to keep records on their use of jailhouse snitches and report snitch's history to the defense made an appearance in this Washington Post story on jailhouse informants. However, the article noted, "Although Texas and other states are now tracking the use of informants, county prosecutors are keeping the records and only Connecticut will be keeping a statewide system, Innocence Project lawyers said. One problem, they said, is prosecutors in one county may not know about an informant’s testimony in other counties." In addition to the 2017 statute, Texas in 2009 required corroboration to secure a conviction based on jailhouse informant testimony, and in 201 the Lege required corroboration for informants in drug cases.
Reminder: Lying snitches need prosecutor collaborators to do harm
Speaking of informants, prosecutors failing to disclose a deal with a snitch in George Powell's prosecution for armed robbery - along with flawed and unproven forensic evidence - contributed to his conviction being recently overturned. The informant lied on the stand and prosecutors failed to correct the misstatements, the courts found. Now, the Bell County DA wants to retry Powell, and defense attorneys want his office removed from the case because of the alleged misconduct.
Lessons on policing, poverty, and racial discrimination
This analysis of policing, poverty and racial discrimination at the Tulsa (OK) PD includes lessons applicable in virtually every American police department.
Showing posts with label excited delirium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label excited delirium. Show all posts
Monday, September 16, 2019
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Excited delirium: Cause or excuse for deaths in custody?
This NY Times piece on a Georgia death-in-custody didn't use the phrase "excited delirium," but it's precisely the type of circumstance from which that diagnosis can arise.
Grits' contributing writer Amanda Woog asked me recently about "excited delirium," having seen the term come up in death in custody reports she's curating as part of her Texas database project. (Look for a big announcement soon as she releases new datasets beyond just recent police shootings.) I first heard the term when I directed the ACLU of Texas' Police Accountability Project around the turn of the century and it represents one of the most curious and bizarre distortions of medical terminology in service to a political agenda I've ever personally run across. Really, excited delirium is not a diagnosis at all so much as an acknowledgement of the lack of other diagnoses. It's what authorities say when someone dies after being restrained or Tazed by police, they don't want to blame the officer(s), but there are no other explanations for the outcome. One often sees the term suggested in the press by unions before medical examiners ever release their findings.
Excited delirium is a medical condition which seemingly only manifests itself when the patient is being beaten, Tazed, or otherwise physically restrained by law enforcement, which makes it an atypical diagnosis, to say the least. Cynics contend it's a fake diagnosis created to cover up police misconduct. Among professional associations, those fields more closely associated with law enforcement - medical examiners and emergency physicians - accept the term, while the AMA, APA, the DSM, and the World Health Organization do not. The chairman of Texas' Forensic Science Commission, Vincent Di Maio, wrote the principal, professional text making the case for the diagnosis (though clearly it wasn't enough to convince the AMA, etc.).
Anyway, debates over the diagnosis reignited in the last year - with major pieces in the Washington Post, Slate, and Vice/The Influence - in light of renewed interest in death-in-custody cases inspired by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. If someone as well-read as Amanda was unfamiliar with the term, then perhaps others aren't, either. So I thought it'd be good to compile some key links on the topic.
One of the earliest significant MSM pieces I remember on it was from 60 Minutes in December 2003; that sort of put the debate on the map, for me, anyway. Mother Jones in 2009 attributed the rise of the term to the company Taser International, which reportedly employed Di Maio as an expert witness and handed out free copies of his book at law enforcement trainings.
The website PoliceOne has covered the issue quite a bit over the years. Here are a few key items:
The since-fired Austin officer who shot and killed David Joseph, a black teenager who was buck naked sprinting down the street, said he thought the young man may have suffered from "excited delirium."
Grits is very much a skeptic here. If we had people dying of excited delirium under other circumstances besides being taken into custody by law enforcement, I'd consider the idea to have more merit. But it's awfully convenient to blame some vague "syndrome" that can't be verified while ignoring violent actions immediately preceding a death as the most likely cause. No civilian would ever get such consideration.
OTOH, it almost doesn't matter. The truth is that police wouldn't be held accountable for those deaths even if no one had ever heard of "excited delirium." (Taser is probably the chief beneficiary of such blame shifting; they don't enjoy qualified immunity.) Meanwhile, pretending the syndrome exists may result in training recommendations for de-escalation techniques which are beneficial regardless of the terminology used.
For example, recently the missus ran across a case from 2015 in which Robert Brandon Edwards was restrained by police and died in transit to the hospital. See Statesman coverage from when the officers were no-billed, the APD incident report and autopsy report, which concluded that Edwards "died as a result of the combined effects of methamphetamine and phencyclidine toxicity and physiologic stress associated with restraint procedures." Though the medical examiner didn't cite "excited delirium" as a cause of death, the detective taking a statement from one of officers used the term to describe Mr. Edwards' condition.
If the department were to alter procedures aimed at preventing deaths like Mr. Edwards, the benefits would not be reduced because they adopted a trendy catch phrase.
These situations are arising and people are dying, whatever we call it. If it takes acquiescing to use of a pseudoscientific buzzword to convince police to embrace de-escalation and/or restraint techniques that minimize loss of life, I suppose we shouldn't mind. In the meantime, though, "excited delirium" still strikes me as less a diagnosis than a strained defense.
Grits' contributing writer Amanda Woog asked me recently about "excited delirium," having seen the term come up in death in custody reports she's curating as part of her Texas database project. (Look for a big announcement soon as she releases new datasets beyond just recent police shootings.) I first heard the term when I directed the ACLU of Texas' Police Accountability Project around the turn of the century and it represents one of the most curious and bizarre distortions of medical terminology in service to a political agenda I've ever personally run across. Really, excited delirium is not a diagnosis at all so much as an acknowledgement of the lack of other diagnoses. It's what authorities say when someone dies after being restrained or Tazed by police, they don't want to blame the officer(s), but there are no other explanations for the outcome. One often sees the term suggested in the press by unions before medical examiners ever release their findings.
Excited delirium is a medical condition which seemingly only manifests itself when the patient is being beaten, Tazed, or otherwise physically restrained by law enforcement, which makes it an atypical diagnosis, to say the least. Cynics contend it's a fake diagnosis created to cover up police misconduct. Among professional associations, those fields more closely associated with law enforcement - medical examiners and emergency physicians - accept the term, while the AMA, APA, the DSM, and the World Health Organization do not. The chairman of Texas' Forensic Science Commission, Vincent Di Maio, wrote the principal, professional text making the case for the diagnosis (though clearly it wasn't enough to convince the AMA, etc.).
Anyway, debates over the diagnosis reignited in the last year - with major pieces in the Washington Post, Slate, and Vice/The Influence - in light of renewed interest in death-in-custody cases inspired by the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. If someone as well-read as Amanda was unfamiliar with the term, then perhaps others aren't, either. So I thought it'd be good to compile some key links on the topic.
One of the earliest significant MSM pieces I remember on it was from 60 Minutes in December 2003; that sort of put the debate on the map, for me, anyway. Mother Jones in 2009 attributed the rise of the term to the company Taser International, which reportedly employed Di Maio as an expert witness and handed out free copies of his book at law enforcement trainings.
The website PoliceOne has covered the issue quite a bit over the years. Here are a few key items:
- Excited Delirium and its medical status (good summation)
- Is excited delirium a fake condition invented to whitewash abusive force? (response to critics)
- New study: Fast effective option for excited delirium cases (sedation)
The since-fired Austin officer who shot and killed David Joseph, a black teenager who was buck naked sprinting down the street, said he thought the young man may have suffered from "excited delirium."
Grits is very much a skeptic here. If we had people dying of excited delirium under other circumstances besides being taken into custody by law enforcement, I'd consider the idea to have more merit. But it's awfully convenient to blame some vague "syndrome" that can't be verified while ignoring violent actions immediately preceding a death as the most likely cause. No civilian would ever get such consideration.
OTOH, it almost doesn't matter. The truth is that police wouldn't be held accountable for those deaths even if no one had ever heard of "excited delirium." (Taser is probably the chief beneficiary of such blame shifting; they don't enjoy qualified immunity.) Meanwhile, pretending the syndrome exists may result in training recommendations for de-escalation techniques which are beneficial regardless of the terminology used.
For example, recently the missus ran across a case from 2015 in which Robert Brandon Edwards was restrained by police and died in transit to the hospital. See Statesman coverage from when the officers were no-billed, the APD incident report and autopsy report, which concluded that Edwards "died as a result of the combined effects of methamphetamine and phencyclidine toxicity and physiologic stress associated with restraint procedures." Though the medical examiner didn't cite "excited delirium" as a cause of death, the detective taking a statement from one of officers used the term to describe Mr. Edwards' condition.
If the department were to alter procedures aimed at preventing deaths like Mr. Edwards, the benefits would not be reduced because they adopted a trendy catch phrase.
These situations are arising and people are dying, whatever we call it. If it takes acquiescing to use of a pseudoscientific buzzword to convince police to embrace de-escalation and/or restraint techniques that minimize loss of life, I suppose we shouldn't mind. In the meantime, though, "excited delirium" still strikes me as less a diagnosis than a strained defense.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
New forensic commission chair a proponent of controversial 'excited delirium syndrome'
Governor Perry continued his musical chairs routine at the Texas Forensic Science Commission, giving the group its fourth chairman in the last three years, reported the Austin Statesman on Tuesday:
That said, Dr. Di Maio may be best known nationally for promoting the notion of "excited delirium syndrome," a diagnosis that hasn't been universally accepted by the medical community but is popular among police and medical examiners. (I first heard the phrase used in response to Taser deaths when I was Police Accountability Project Director for the ACLU of Texas.) The opening sentence of his seminal book on the topic, says Amazon.com, reads "Excited delirium syndrome involves the sudden death of an individual, during or following an episode of excited delirium, in which an autopsy fails to reveal evidence of sufficient trauma or natural disease to explain the death." In other words, it's a default when there's no actual scientific evidence to support any other explanation or sometimes, in the case of officer-involved deaths, when the evidence points to politically unpalatable possibilities. Or at least that's how it's been sometimes used in the field. Di Maio believes that "Of all in-custody deaths [not involving firearms], excited delirium syndrome is the most common form."
According to the Dallas News, "The American Medical Association does not recognize excited delirium as a condition, though the National Association of Medical Examiners does." As Grits wrote on the subject a couple of years ago, "The term always seemed bogus to me: I know of no other medical condition that occurs only while in custody of law enforcement."
Dr. Di Maio also received national notice as a defense expert in the first Phil Spector murder trial and with occasional speculation about forensic evidence from the JFK assassination. He was on the team that autopsied Lee Harvey Oswald's body after its 1981 exhumation and his book on Gunshot Wounds is cited by both sides debating the "single bullet theory" of the assassination, though he has come down on the side of the official story.
The new chairman has a connection to an arson-related complaint that's no longer pending at the FSC but which was never resolved after the Attorney General told them they couldn't hear cases from prior to 2005. Di Maio ran the Bexar medical examiners office when Sonia Cacy was convicted of arson based on allegedly flawed forensics, and has stood by his lab workers despite their apparent incorrect interpretation of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry tests.
Dr. Peerwani, the Tarrant County medical examiner who Di Maio replaces as chair, will remain on the commission, which next meets two weeks from now in Austin, but it remains to be seen if this change in leadership will create similar drama to John Bradley's tumultuous, ill-fated chairmanship. They've got a full plate and there's little doubt the quality and effectiveness of leadership will influence what if anything the FSC can accomplish. The process was finally moving forward under Peerwani and Grits certainly hopes this change doesn't disrupt it.
Dr. Vincent Di Maio, former chief medical examiner for Bexar County, was named chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission today by Gov. Rick Perry.Who is the new chairman? In an interview with Dr. Di Maio on PBS Frontline after his 2006 retirement, he told PBS he favors separating medical examiners administratively from law enforcement. Of course, one of the ironies of his appointment, and Peerwani's, is that medical examiners and autopsies are specifically carved out of the Commission's jurisdiction as its governing statute is currently written, but at least his comments show an appreciation of the need for high scientific standards in forensic settings. He also critiqued the professionalism of some law-enforcement death investigations: "Medical-legal investigation is mediocre, and the reason is that there are large areas of the country where medical-legal investigation is very poor and doesn't even involve physicians."
Di Maio replaces Dr. Nizam Peerwani, chief medical examiner for Tarrant County, as chairman of the agency that investigates allegations of misconduct or negligence involving forensic labs and facilities. Peerwani will remain on the commission, said general counsel Lynn Robitaille.
The governor appoints four members of the nine-member commission and names the chairman. Di Maio, a private forensic pathology consultant, joined the commission in October.
That said, Dr. Di Maio may be best known nationally for promoting the notion of "excited delirium syndrome," a diagnosis that hasn't been universally accepted by the medical community but is popular among police and medical examiners. (I first heard the phrase used in response to Taser deaths when I was Police Accountability Project Director for the ACLU of Texas.) The opening sentence of his seminal book on the topic, says Amazon.com, reads "Excited delirium syndrome involves the sudden death of an individual, during or following an episode of excited delirium, in which an autopsy fails to reveal evidence of sufficient trauma or natural disease to explain the death." In other words, it's a default when there's no actual scientific evidence to support any other explanation or sometimes, in the case of officer-involved deaths, when the evidence points to politically unpalatable possibilities. Or at least that's how it's been sometimes used in the field. Di Maio believes that "Of all in-custody deaths [not involving firearms], excited delirium syndrome is the most common form."
According to the Dallas News, "The American Medical Association does not recognize excited delirium as a condition, though the National Association of Medical Examiners does." As Grits wrote on the subject a couple of years ago, "The term always seemed bogus to me: I know of no other medical condition that occurs only while in custody of law enforcement."
Dr. Di Maio also received national notice as a defense expert in the first Phil Spector murder trial and with occasional speculation about forensic evidence from the JFK assassination. He was on the team that autopsied Lee Harvey Oswald's body after its 1981 exhumation and his book on Gunshot Wounds is cited by both sides debating the "single bullet theory" of the assassination, though he has come down on the side of the official story.
The new chairman has a connection to an arson-related complaint that's no longer pending at the FSC but which was never resolved after the Attorney General told them they couldn't hear cases from prior to 2005. Di Maio ran the Bexar medical examiners office when Sonia Cacy was convicted of arson based on allegedly flawed forensics, and has stood by his lab workers despite their apparent incorrect interpretation of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry tests.
Dr. Peerwani, the Tarrant County medical examiner who Di Maio replaces as chair, will remain on the commission, which next meets two weeks from now in Austin, but it remains to be seen if this change in leadership will create similar drama to John Bradley's tumultuous, ill-fated chairmanship. They've got a full plate and there's little doubt the quality and effectiveness of leadership will influence what if anything the FSC can accomplish. The process was finally moving forward under Peerwani and Grits certainly hopes this change doesn't disrupt it.
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