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Saturday, April 30, 2005
Inmate dies after being tasered in chest five times.
Inmate dies after being tasered in chest five times.
More news out of Georgia this morning, as Gwinnett investigators released a tape of a subdued inmate, Frederick Williams, being tasered in the chest five times at a county jail outside of Atlanta last year.
Williams had been arrested on domestic violence charges, as his wife said he didn't take his medicine for epilpsy and had gotten violent. They took him to Gwinnett County Jail with shackles on his feet and handcuffed. At the beginning of the video, you can hear him yelling, " Don't kill me man!" as he was being led into what would be the last room he'd live in. Once he was there, eleven officers tried to force Williams into a restraining chair. When he resisted, he was tasered in the chest not once, but five times. In between taser shots, you can hear the officer say, " You want it again?" After the fifth shock, Williams fell unconscious and eventually died.
Take a look at the video, courtesy of 11 Alive News in Atlanta.
I don't have a problem with the use of the taser, in and of itself. But when you have eleven cops in a room restraining one man, yet they still feel the need to taser a man that's already overpowered, I have a serious problem with that. Tasers and other devices are to be used when the officers are undermanned, and having trouble subduing the assailant. Show me eleven cops that can't restrain one man, and I'll show you eleven cops that should be fired, because they can't do their job effectively.
In spite of this, a Gwinnett County grand jury declined to press charges (they never looked at the video), the sheriff's department stated the officers acted appropriately and a police investigation cleared them of criminal wrongdoing. I find this very hard to believe. If this isn't considered excessive force, then what would? 41 shots?
(via Wizbang's Kevin Aylward)
UPDATE: A former friend of the family and lawyer Melvin Johnson gives a full account of the events of that night on Wizbang's comments section:
(5) At the jail, while still hog-tied and securely bound, Mr. Williams is tasered at least 5 times according to the autopsy reports. I say at least 5 time because not every taser attack results in an identifiable burn mark. There are mounted cameras at the jail and an officer reportedly had a hand held camcorded to record the entire ordeal. Of course, at this point, Gwinnett has refused to provide either of these recordings. Gwinnett County justifies the tasering under these conditions because according to another written report by a senior officer at the jail, Mr. Williams was reportedly thrashing and jerking his body upon arrival at the jail. Nowhere in this second report does the senior officer indicate that Mr. Williams attacks any of the officers, throws a punch, kick, bite, or anything; nonetheless, Gwinnett County officials, in the media, justifies the MURDER of this young father, husband, only child, deacon, friend, etc., because his apparent thrashing and jerking was "combative" while he is still hog-tied and securely bound. In fact, the senior officer records in his report that Mr. Williams is conscious at least for a moment, and utters his last and only words "PLEASE DON'T KILL ME." Upon arrival of Mr. Williams' body at the hospital, Doctors record that there were plastic instruments that were apparently used to hog-tied Mr. Williams at his house. Doctors' examinations revealed acute with suspicion of chronic renal failure, negligible brain activity, negligible pulse, and negligible blood pressure. His hands and feet were cold and capillary refill was poor. He had no eye movements, no muscular movements and his entire body was flaccid. His pupils were dilated 6 mm and fixed. Doctors' impression were that there was cardiac arrest, brain hemorrhage, pulmonary embolus and/or seizure. Mr. Williams reportedly lost all pulses at about 1948 hours. He had no gag response. As you can tell by the numerial at the top of the quote, there is much more to this story, including what happened at the home, an alleged quote by one of the officers, and Williams's family telling both the dispatchers and the officers several times that Williams is a epilepsy patient.
There is a Yahoo group created by the Ed Kramer Legal Defense Fund, where they are collecting funds for a man who is in jail in Gwinnett County. They are monitoring the Williams case as well.
Posted at 10:56 am by Expertise
 | Posted by More Info @ 05/12/2005 07:23 AM PDT | | Withheld videotape lets DA buck justice
Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter has a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor. Some even accuse him of being too zealous, and recent cases demonstrate why.
In April, Porter charged a single mother with felony murder after her 3-year-old son was killed in a house fire. Why? Because she had left the boy alone with his 4-year-old brother to go to work, a case other prosecutors might have handled as negligent homicide.
In February, when a 16-year-old driver was indicted on charges of racing and causing a fatal car wreck, Porter charged the girl's father as well, accusing him of providing her a car with bad brakes and bald tires. That decision earned him air time on both CNN and "Good Morning America."
And these days, of course, Porter's face once again adorns national TV as he contemplates whether to file criminal charges in the case of Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride.
In the case of Frederick Williams, though, that trademark Porter aggressiveness has been nowhere in sight.
Williams, who had suffered epilepsy since a toddler, suffered a psychotic breakdown a year ago, was arrested after a struggle and taken to the Gwinnett County Jail. In a bizarre chain of events, Williams died of a heart attack after he was hit with a Taser stun gun five times in 43 seconds, even though at the time he was handcuffed behind his back, his legs were bound to a chair restraint and he was pinned down by a half-dozen officers.
Initially, Porter promised Williams' family a grand jury inquiry, a pledge he proved reluctant to keep. Almost a year later, when Porter finally did convene a grand jury, he did not seek indictments, nor did he bother to show the grand jury a videotape of the deadly incident taken by a sheriff's deputy. Instead, he says, he asked jurors whether they wanted to open an inquiry into the jail's policy regarding Taser use, and they declined.
That decision not to show jurors the videotape has drawn considerable criticism. However, documents obtained through the state Open Records Act suggest there's a lot of other interesting evidence they never saw either.
For example, grand jurors apparently never saw the videotaped questioning of Sgt. Michael Mustachio, the jail officer who made the decision to "hit" Williams with five blasts from a hand-held Taser stun gun. In an interview conducted by detectives with the Gwinnett County Police Department, Mustachio explained why he chose to use the Taser on a fully restrained Williams.
At the time, officers were trying to wrestle Williams into a restraining chair. According to Mustachio, "He was arching his back up, kinda like a kid who you're trying to put in a car seat — you know how they arch their back up? Lt. Cook was giving him commands to stop resisting, so . . . I went over and point-contacted him with the Taser."
The videotape seems to tell a different story, though. It's a little unclear, but it appears that Mustachio applies the Taser first, and that Williams starts bucking only in reaction.
That interpretation is bolstered by yet another videotape that the grand jury probably never saw. (Porter refused to comment when I called him Wednesday.)
As part of their investigation, two officers with the Gwinnett police department, Cpl. Damon Cavender and Lt. William Walsh, volunteered to help recreate the Williams tragedy. Both men were physically restrained by other officers and were then hit with the Taser.
Their physical responses, caught on tape, were almost identical to the response of Williams. All three men arched their backs in a desperate bucking motion.
"While being shocked I felt an extreme amount of physical pain in the area where I was being shocked," Cavender wrote in his official report. "The pain was so intense that I would have done anything to get away from it."
Walsh had a similar response, telling investigators "that although he was bucking and rearing back into the chair, his natural instinct was to get away from the Taser."
It seems pretty clear, given that evidence, that much if not all of the bucking that Mustachio and other deputies interpreted as resistance from Williams was instead just a natural human reaction. Every time Mustachio applied the Taser, Williams bucked in pain. Every time Williams bucked in pain, Mustachio interpreted the action as continued resistance, requiring another Tasing.
Before the fifth and final Tasing, Williams suffered the heart attack that would kill him. He lost consciousness and was never revived.
"After the fifth tap [with the Taser], why did you stop?" Mustachio was asked. "Why wasn't there a sixth?"
"He had stopped bucking," Mustachio said.
In interviews with detectives, Mustachio and other officers on the scene expressed astonishment that Williams kept fighting through the Taser hits, attributing it to almost superhuman strength. However, a later report by the sheriff's Professional Standards Unit suggested another explanation. It noted that the Taser can be used two ways. It can fire a prong up to 20 feet that delivers an electrical charge that incapacitates its human target. It can also be used in "drive-stun" mode, in which the weapon is held against a subject's body and then fired.
Used in drive-stun mode, as it was in the Williams case, the weapon causes intense pain but does not incapacitate.
And even though Mustachio had been certified for Taser use, he told detectives he didn't know the two modes would have different impacts.
As is often the case, Mustachio's character and credibility are important in assessing his description of events. Had they seen his testimony, grand jurors also would have wanted to learn that last January, Mustachio was fired by Sheriff Butch Conway for shooting a neighbor's dog while off duty.
A copy of Mustachio's dismissal letter, released as part of the Open Records request, tells Mustachio that "you shot and killed a dog that was 30-40 yards from your parents' residence because it was barking and causing a disturbance. At no time did you state that you felt the dog was vicious or acting in a threatening manner."
Mustachio fired six or seven shots at the dog, using both a rifle and a .45 caliber pistol, then tried to hide the dog's body from authorities. He cut off the dog's tracking collar and damaged its antenna, so it could not be traced. "Only after a White County deputy was called back to the scene by the dog owner, because the tracking device continued to indicate that the dog was in the area, did you confess to what you had done," the letter stated.
In reading the report by Gwinnett County police and a later report by the sheriff's Professional Standards Unit, it becomes clear that both agencies did a thorough job. The willingness of officers to volunteer for an excruciatingly painful re-enactment, for example, speaks well for their professionalism and bravery.
In both reports, however, investigating officers repeatedly interpret facts and situations in ways that cast their fellow law enforcement officials as positively as possible. There's nothing necessarily corrupt in that phenomenon. It's just human nature, a natural sympathy for colleagues.
That's why an honest, thorough grand jury investigation might have been useful in casting light on what happened, and on ways to avoid such tragedy in the future.
Instead — speaking figuratively — Danny Porter got cold feet and caught the first Greyhound to Albuquerque.
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