--- title: "How a Fake Diagnosis \"Legalized\" Police Brutality" description: "Police in the United States are notorious for the amount of leeway they are given under the law. In addition to having qualified immunity, they are legally permitted to engage in behaviours that would be deemed abhorrent by most other countries. American police can lie to suspects about anything, including evidence and potential deals of leniency. They are also trained in coercive and deceptive interrogation tactics that result in a much higher rate of false confessions than other interrogation methods.\n\nThose things are already bad, but perhaps the worst began in the 1980s thanks to the work of Miami-Dade County's deputy chief medical examiner and his creation of a racist, pseudoscientific diagnosis known as excited delirium. Ever since its creation, excited delirium has acted as a shield for police, providing an alternate cause of death for what otherwise might have been identified as cases of police brutality. Excited delirium is not a recognized medical condition or diagnosis, yet it continues to appear in autopsy reports and court records to this day.\n\n## The Origins of Excited Delirium\n\nWhen cocaine was first introduced, it was seen as a wonder drug. In the 1800s, it was considered a safe medication that was available over the counter, including in children's medicine. But scientists weren't completely blind to the risk. As far back as 1895, a paper was published in *The Lancet* titled \"Fatal Acute Poisoning By Cocaine\". An abundance of research showed that excessive use of cocaine had the potential to stop a person's heart and cause sudden death, and eventually it became a controlled substance.\n\nIn 1984, another paper was published by Dr. Charles Welti titled \"Death caused by recreational cocaine use. An update.\" Welti was the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami-Dade County, and Miami was no stranger to cocaine overdoses. This research wasn't groundbreaking, but it predicted an increase in cocaine related deaths because of the drug's growing popularity and the increased purity of street cocaine.\n\nIndeed, Welti did see an uptick in the number of cocaine deaths, and it was one that wasn't easily explained. Men who seemingly died from cocaine use kept showing up at the medical examiner's office, yet toxicology showed that many of these men had only taken one tenth of what would be considered a lethal dose of cocaine. Even taking into account that the lethal dose represents a range and is not an exact quantity needed to kill someone, these men were nowhere near the threshold that should have resulted in death.\n\nBeyond that, the men seemed to exhibit near superhuman strength before their deaths, and acted as if they were impervious to pain. Batons and pepper spray didn't faze them, and they had to be forcibly restrained. The description of their resistance to pain certainly seems to suggest that all of these people had violent altercations with police that resulted in them being restrained, which should have been the first hint as to what might be causing their deaths. But Welti had another idea.\n\nIn 1985, he published a new paper titled \"Cocaine-Induced Psychosis and Sudden Death in Recreational Cocaine Users\". The paper looked at seven recreational cocaine users who seemed to suffer sudden deaths, claiming \"Symptoms began with the acute onset of an intense paranoia, followed by bizarre and violent behavior necessitating forcible restraint.\" Other symptoms included the aforementioned increased strength, hyperthermia, and a sudden and fatal respiratory collapse.\n\nIt was noted that death occurred within minutes to an hour of being restrained, and five of the seven people studied for the paper died while in police custody. Despite those factors being identified, they don't seem to have been given any serious consideration as contributing factors to the deaths of these drug users.\n\nWelti coined the condition that led to these sudden deaths as \"excited delirium\", a condition that seemed to exclusively affect men, particularly black men. This was certainly an interesting theory, and one that started to gain traction. However, it only took a few years for the credibility of Welti's research to come into question.\n\n## Charles Henry Williams\n\nBorn in March of 1956, Charles Henry Williams spent his life in Miami. When he wasn't in prison, that is. He was first convicted of sexual assault in 1977, after which he spent a few years behind bars. Once he was released, however, he got back up to his old tricks. He was also quite good at gaming the system, so he managed to escape charges or plea down to lesser offenses on multiple occasions.\n\nBut he was a repeated sex offender, and would be successfully convicted of sexual assault three more times. And according to Charles, that's all he did to women. His day jobs were working as a mechanic and a cafeteria worker, but at night he dealt drugs. Except he already had money from his day jobs, so Charles's business model was to exchange drugs for sex. He claimed to have made upwards of 300 such deals during the 1980s.\n\nAt the same time this was going on, bodies of sex workers began showing up in cheap motels, parking lots, and back alleys. At first glance, it appeared that all of the women had been sexually assaulted and murdered, something that Welti admitted. But his autopsies showed a different story. According to Welti's autopsies, there was no evidence that the women had been sexually assaulted or murdered. Sure, they had all recently had sex just before they died, but he decided that must have been consensual.\n\nThere were 19 women in total that Welti examined, and he declared that they had all died from excited delirium. His initial theory had only extended to men, but based on this new evidence he decided that the combination of cocaine and sex caused the women to suddenly die. As he put it, \"For some reason, the male of the species becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in relation to sex\" while under the influence of cocaine. Basically, he was claiming that the combination of cocaine plus orgasms somehow overloaded the brain and caused the women to die.\n\nDespite a lack of evidence for Welti's claims of excited delirium causing all these deaths, he continued to double down. He insisted that all of the deaths were related to crack, despite not knowing what mechanism was triggering the delirium, but that it may be triggered by an interaction between cocaine and a certain type of blood that was more common in blacks.\n\nA month after he began publicizing his theory on the female manifestations of excited delirium, another victim appeared. This time it was 14 year old Antoinette Burns. Oh yeah, we forgot to mention that part, but many of the victims who Welti himself admitted had appeared at a glance to have been sexually assaulted and murdered were underage girls.\n\nAnyway, when Antoinette was found dead, Welti declared that she had died from excited delirium resulting from a combination of sex and cocaine. Her family wasn't buying this story though, and eventually the toxicology report came back confirming that there was no cocaine in her system.\n\nIf you recall, though, Welti was only the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami Dade. Once it was discovered that Antoinette's toxicology report was clean (as well as the discovery of other evidence pointing to murder), someone finally had the brilliant idea to ask Welti's boss to check his work.\n\nAs it turned out, all of the women had been sexually assaulted and murdered. Nine of them had clear marks of asphyxiation and strangulation, though the other bodies hadn't been found soon enough for such indicators to have remained. This revelation was disturbing for a multitude of reasons, from racism to victim blaming to the fact that there had apparently been a serial killer on the loose for a decade and nobody had even been investigating his victims' deaths as crimes, thanks to Welti's medical examinations.\n\nYou might think that this would have been enough for Welti to admit his mistake and move on, but he continued to pursue and promote his theory. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1989, three sex workers came forward to the police with reports of their sexual assaults and attempted murders. All three stories were nearly identical.\n\nIn two of the cases, the victim had approached Charles Williams about exchanging sex for drugs. After negotiating a deal, he then grabbed them from behind in a chokehold, forcibly assaulted them, and choked them out, leaving them for dead. The third story was similar, though her attempted murder had been interrupted when another man saw what was happening and confronted Charles.\n\nThat April, Charles was arrested for possession of a crack pipe, but once he was in custody two rape charges were added on as well. He was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison, but that wasn't meant to be the end of his story. At the time Charles was suspected of 19 murders, but over the years that number would grow to at least 32. All of the murders were in the same area with the same modus operandi, and one was even a neighbour of Charles. He denied any involvement in the murders up until his death, though he did make one statement that some people interpreted as an accidental confession.\n\nHowever, he was only charged with a single murder. Although he was and still is believed by many to be a serial killer, there wasn't enough hard evidence to charge him with any of the crimes except the 1984 murder of 19 year old Patricia Johnson. That case was only able to move forward because semen and saliva samples that had been collected at the scene were found after having been misplaced by the police for years.\n\nUnfortunately, ten days before he was going to be put on trial for murder, Charles died in prison from AIDS. His victims who survived the attacks, as well as anyone who engaged in a sex for drugs deal without a murder attempt, may all have been infected as well, though no efforts were made to identify and inform the affected women.\n\nAll of this should have completely discredited Welti's research. After all, the girls and women who he claimed died of excited delirium were proven by a better medical examiner to have been murdered, with the murder suspect even being identified. And it was sort of discredited after this. Females did not suddenly drop dead when combining cocaine and orgasms, but that wasn't the conclusion of Welti's original research anyway.\n\nOriginally he had only talked about excited delirium in men, with regards to the violent psychosis it created before death. This theory about the condition affecting women was added on later to minimize the deaths of murdered black sex workers, and it didn't hold up to even the slightest scrutiny.\n\nBut maybe the original theory would. Maybe black men who used cocaine really did enter a state of excited delirium that resulted in their abrupt deaths. This part hadn't been as adequately disproven, and it rapidly grew in popularity despite the female half of excited delirium being disproven.\n\nUsage of the phrase \"excited delirium\" skyrocketed, and for a very simple reason that should have been painfully obvious. As Welti explained to the media, \"Seventy percent of people dying from coke induced delirium are black, even though most users are white. Why?\" His argument was that it was because of some genetic difference between blacks and whites, harkening back to various forms of scientific racism that emerged in the 1800s.\n\nThere was another factor that he was ignoring though, something that was mentioned in his original research. The majority of people dying of so called excited delirium weren't just black men, they were black men who were in police custody after being violently restrained. So law enforcement had every incentive to bring as much legitimacy to Welti's claims as possible, as did the manufacturers of law enforcement's favourite new toy.\n\n## Tasers\n\nThe original Taser was created in 1974 by former NASA scientist Jack Cover, but it never really caught on. The issue with the design was that the Taser's darts were fired using gunpowder, which meant it had to be classified as a firearm.\n\nIt wasn't until 1993 when Rick Smith and his brother Thomas purchased the rights to Taser and worked with Jack to create a new version, one that wouldn't be considered a firearm. The new model used compressed nitrogen rather than gunpowder to fire the darts, thus freeing it from firearm regulations.\n\nThis was great for the Taser company, who rebranded as Axon in 2017. And since both the product and company having the same name could get confusing, we'll just refer to them as Axon from now on, even though most of this stuff happened long before the name change.\n\nAnyway, not only was their product not being regulated as a firearm, it seemed to fit into some magical grey area that left it free from all regulation. Tasers were marketed as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, and they quickly began being adopted by police departments around the country. Today, over 18,000 law enforcement and military agencies across over 80 countries employ the use of tasers as a less lethal alternative to firearms.\n\nIf you were paying attention, though, you may have noticed a change in language there. Tasers were originally marketed as non-lethal weapons, but are now marketed as less lethal. So what changed?\n\nWell, because tasers weren't regulated, all of the initial testing surrounding their safety and efficacy was conducted internally, with incredibly flawed methodology and a sample size consisting of a handful of animals and a couple of guys. Based on this terrible \"research\", the company concluded that tasers were up to 97% effective and posed absolutely no risk of lasting harm.\n\nThat sounded great on paper, especially because the research Axon used to come up with these numbers didn't accompany their claims. But it was enough for police forces across the country to begin adopting tasers en masse as what they believed was a non-lethal way to subdue violent suspects.\n\nAs taser usage increased and law enforcement agencies were able to create their own data, however, they discovered that the reality didn't line up with the company's claims. To start, data from various police departments concluded that Tasers may only be up to 55% effective at subduing a person. In the event a person was not subdued, they tended to become agitated and aggressive. Almost as if the average person doesn't particularly appreciate suddenly being electrocuted with 50,000 volts.\n\nEven worse, the claims that these weapons were non-lethal seemed to not be accurate. By 2001, nearly 200 people had died after being tased. Of course, Axon denied any wrongdoing. They insisted that the use of a taser was a mere coincidence, and that all of those people would have died anyway.\n\nThe puzzle pieces were all there, it was just a matter of lining them up to find the solution. Suspects who police had difficulty restraining with a taser became agitated, aggressive, and seemed to be impervious to pain. Some might even argue that the fact that they had not been incapacitated by the electrical discharge suggested they were experiencing superhuman strength. And the sudden deaths of people in police custody, particularly people who were black and unarmed? These were the telltale signs of excited delirium, which became Axon's ultimate line of defense against any allegations that their devices were potentially unsafe.\n\nAxon did everything they could to promote excited delirium, including paying Charles Welti and other proponents of his theory to serve as expert witnesses in wrongful death trials. They also monitored the news for any reports of deaths involving a suspect being tased. Whenever that happened, they would reach out to the police department with a prewritten press release that blamed the death on excited delirium, as well as guidelines for how to collect evidence to support that claim. That evidence was then sent to Deborah Mash, a neurologist who was also on Axon's payroll, so that she could confirm the diagnosis of excited delirium.\n\nThat all sounds blatantly corrupt and unscientific, but it was in the police's best interest to play ball with Axon. You see, the concept of the Taser isn't inherently bad. Its unregulated nature certainly is, but the idea of a less lethal means by which a violent suspect can be subdued is a reasonable goal, especially when the alternative would be firing a gun. And if that was exclusively how tasers were used by law enforcement, there probably wouldn't have been any complaints or lawsuits.\n\nThe unfortunate reality of the situation was that police used tasers when they were entirely unnecessary. Instead of being used as an alternative to guns, a weapon that should have been an officer's last resort, tasers were often used as a first resort. People were tased in situations that absolutely did not justify any use of force from the police, simply because it was easy. There are all too many reports of elderly people or children as young as six being tased by police for little to no reason.\n\nOf course, the cops probably wouldn't have been so liberal with their use of tasers had the weapons not been advertised as \"non-lethal\" and completely safe. But since the weapons were supposed to be safe, then sure, why not use them as a matter of convenience rather than necessity?\n\nWith people suddenly dying after being shocked by tasers, however, the diagnosis of excited delirium would free the police from any potential liability for wrongful death. With both Axon and the police pushing the excited delirium narrative in the media and in official death reports, it gained wider acceptance as part of the official narrative, even if the medical and scientific communities were not at all on board with excited delirium.\n\nNot only did the diagnosis protect Axon and the police from liability for deaths involving tasers, it also provided a shield for police to increase violence and brutality while restraining suspects. Axon wasn't happy with just sending out press releases about excited delirium, though. They also threatened lawsuits against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to a person's death, instead demanding that the examiners change the cause of death to excited delirium. It was an effective threat, as a 2011 survey found that 14% of medical examiners had changed their reports for fear of a lawsuit from Axon. Axon has also provided legal defense for police officers who were taken to trial for deaths involving excited delirium.\n\nExcited delirium has continued to be claimed as an official cause of death to this day, with one of the most high profile cases in recent memory being that of George Floyd. Floyd was murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's back and neck for over nine minutes despite Floyd repeatedly claiming he couldn't breathe. The defense obviously didn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be referring to it as a murder, but a rookie cop can be heard in the body cam footage expressing his concern about excited delirium. This highlights that the supposed condition was still being taught during police training in 2020, despite a total and complete lack of scientific evidence to support it.\n\n## Controversial From the Start\n\nGiven the origin story of excited delirium, it's not surprising that this has always been highly controversial. Welti's claims of excited delirium in women caused by the combination of sex and cocaine were completely discredited when his boss examined the bodies and stated that the evidence of asphyxiation should have been painfully obvious from ten feet away.\n\nEarly studies into the condition as it was applied to men called its legitimacy into question as well. In 1998, there was a study of 21 men who had all been diagnosed with excited delirium as their cause of death. According to the investigation, all 21 of these men had died while being restrained in a prone position. Three of them had pressure applied to their necks, similar to the case of George Floyd.\n\nAnother study looking at cocaine related deaths in Florida in the 1980s noted that the vast majority of cases labeled as excited delirium involved black men (especially those being restrained by law enforcement), while white men were typically labeled as dying from \"accidental cocaine toxicity\".\n\nThere was also the matter of diagnosing the condition. This was almost exclusively done postmortem, yet the diagnoses were not based on medical evidence from a postmortem examination. Instead, a declaration of excited delirium was typically based on witness statements from people like police who had no medical or psychiatric training. The syndrome didn't even have a strict definition, with it coming across as a vibe based diagnosis rather than anything scientific.\n\nIndeed, while the term continued to be used by law enforcement and Axon, it was largely rejected by the medical community. The World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, the UK Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the UK Forensic Science Regulator and Royal College of Physicians, and the UK College of Pathologists all refused to recognize the term.\n\nExcited delirium was also never listed as a medical condition in either the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Before 2009, the only group to recognize the term was the National Association of Medical Examiners. This was in no small part due to a 2004 position paper put out by the organization that was coauthored by Welti. Although it did not explicitly endorse excited delirium, it still discussed it as though it was a legitimate diagnosis. For many people, that was effectively the same thing as an endorsement, especially since the organization had for some reason allowed Welti to be one of the paper's coauthors.\n\nThe first shift in terms of legitimacy came in 2009, when the American College of Physicians wrote a white paper claiming that excited delirium should be accepted as a valid syndrome. The white paper was the product of a 19 person task force, and the ACEP adopted the task force's stance, marking the first time that an organization of physicians endorsed excited delirium.\n\nThat was great for several years, until investigative reporters from Reuters decided to look into the 19 members of that task force. As it turned out, three of them were on Axon's payroll. While a conflict of interest like that can certainly call into question the credibility of an author, it's not automatically disqualifying. At least it wouldn't have been had the conflict been listed in the paper, as is standard practice. Failing to list such a glaring conflict of interest was gross misconduct, and it completely destroyed the credibility of the entire paper, for good reason.\n\nDespite that revelation, however, the ACEP didn't officially reverse its position for years. In 2021 they appointed a new task force to investigate the original paper, and they didn't finally retract the 2009 paper until 2023.\n\nOf course, we really can't ignore the bizarre diagnostic criteria, flimsy as it was, that was used to establish excited delirium. The deaths were claimed to be the result of drugs like cocaine and later ketamine, and it was argued that other factors like tasers and excessive use of police force had nothing to do with the deaths; those people were going to die anyway as a result of their syndrome. If that was the case though, where were the other dead bodies?\n\nAs we said, cases of excited delirium were diagnosed almost exclusively post mortem, and they were predominantly black males who died while or after being restrained by police. If excited delirium was a real thing and they were going to die from the condition anyway, where were all the people who died from excited delirium without being restrained by police? And where were the women who died from combining sex with cocaine without being strangled to death by a serial killer?\n\nRemember, these wouldn't have been confused with regular overdose deaths, as the people that were claimed to have died from excited delirium had ten times less than a lethal dose of cocaine in their systems. The fact that these mysterious, allegedly drug-related deaths only happened to people who had been violently restrained and possibly tased multiple times seems to suggest that there may have been another contributing factor to their deaths besides recreational quantities of cocaine.\n\n## The Silver Lining\n\nFrom its conception, excited delirium was a racist, pseudoscientific diagnosis used to disguise the use of excessive force by law enforcement. But there's actually some good news for once. After decades of virtually every medical organization refusing to recognize the diagnosis, if not outright lobbying against it, we are finally seeing action.\n\nIn 2023, California became the first US state to ban excited delirium from being listed as a cause of death. Colorado followed in 2024, with legislation being proposed in Hawaii and New York. The Hawaii bill appears to be dead, but the New York bill is still working its way through the system. In time, it is likely that we will see many more states continuing to ban the diagnosis of excited delirium.\n\nUnfortunately, there's some bad news as well. The latest model of taser, Taser 10, no longer uses compressed nitrogen. Axon wanted to increase their weapons' effective range, so they needed a new propellant. This meant it was back to gunpowder, so the new taser model is once again legally classified as a gun, and thus subject to gun regulations. But as of two days ago at time of writing, H.R. 2189, the Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, passed the House of Representatives.\n\nThis law would exempt tasers from the regulations they should be subject to under the Gun Control Act. The bill still has to make its way through the Senate, but it is expected to pass. With Axon potentially receiving a special legal exemption for their new weapons that will continue to avoid any regulation, they are extremely incentivized to continue to promote the fraudulent diagnosis of excited delirium to law enforcement and the public.\n\nAfter all, it's not like Axon's products could possibly be responsible for anyone's death, because the weapons they sell are advertised as non-lethal. Did we say non-lethal? We meant less lethal. And now the new models are legally guns. But hey, that's probably all fine.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Excited delirium originated in 1985 from Miami-Dade medical examiner Charles Welti to explain deaths of black men in police custody with minimal cocaine in their systems.\n- Welti's theory was discredited when his boss found 19 women he claimed died from excited delirium were actually murdered by serial killer Charles Henry Williams.\n- Taser manufacturer Axon heavily promoted excited delirium, paying expert witnesses and threatening medical examiners to avoid liability for taser-related deaths.\n- Major medical organizations including WHO, AMA, and APA refuse to recognize excited delirium, which was never listed in standard diagnostic manuals.\n- California banned excited delirium as a cause of death in 2023, Colorado in 2024, though Axon continues pushing the narrative amid new regulatory exemptions for tasers.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What is excited delirium and who created it?\n\nExcited delirium is a pseudoscientific diagnosis created in 1985 by Dr. Charles Welti, the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami-Dade County. He coined the term in a paper titled 'Cocaine-Induced Psychosis and Sudden Death in Recreational Cocaine Users' to explain sudden deaths of men, particularly black men, who exhibited violent behavior and superhuman strength before dying, often while in police custody after being forcibly restrained.\n\n### Is excited delirium recognized as a legitimate medical condition?\n\nNo, excited delirium is not a recognized medical condition or diagnosis. The World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, the UK Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the UK Forensic Science Regulator and Royal College of Physicians, and the UK College of Pathologists all refused to recognize the term. It was also never listed in the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.\n\n### How was excited delirium used to protect police and Taser manufacturer Axon from liability?\n\nExcited delirium acted as a shield for police by providing an alternate cause of death for what otherwise might have been identified as police brutality. Axon (formerly Taser) promoted excited delirium aggressively by paying Charles Welti and other proponents to serve as expert witnesses in wrongful death trials, sending prewritten press releases to police departments blaming deaths on excited delirium, and threatening lawsuits against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to deaths. A 2011 survey found that 14% of medical examiners had changed their reports for fear of a lawsuit from Axon.\n\n### What discredited Welti's theory about excited delirium affecting women?\n\nWelti claimed 19 women died from excited delirium caused by combining cocaine and sex, but this was disproven when his boss examined the bodies and found they had all been sexually assaulted and murdered. Nine had clear marks of asphyxiation and strangulation. The case of 14-year-old Antoinette Burns, who had no cocaine in her system according to toxicology reports, was particularly damning. The murderer was identified as Charles Henry Williams, a serial killer suspected of at least 32 murders.\n\n### What role did the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) play in legitimizing excited delirium?\n\nIn 2009, the ACEP became the first physician organization to endorse excited delirium through a white paper produced by a 19-person task force. However, investigative reporters from Reuters later discovered that three task force members were on Axon's payroll, and this conflict of interest was not disclosed in the paper as is standard practice. The ACEP didn't officially retract the 2009 paper until 2023, after appointing a new task force in 2021 to investigate the original paper.\n\n### How were tasers originally marketed, and how did that marketing change?\n\nTasers were originally marketed as 'non-lethal' weapons, but are now marketed as 'less lethal.' The change occurred as data from police departments revealed that tasers were only about 55% effective at subduing people (not the 97% Axon claimed), and that nearly 200 people had died after being tased by 2001. Axon denied responsibility, insisting the taser use was coincidental and those people would have died anyway.\n\n### What evidence suggests excited delirium diagnoses were racially biased?\n\nMultiple studies showed racial disparities in how deaths were labeled. Welti himself stated that 'Seventy percent of people dying from coke induced delirium are black, even though most users are white,' attributing this to supposed genetic differences. A study of cocaine-related deaths in Florida in the 1980s found that black men, especially those restrained by law enforcement, were typically labeled as excited delirium deaths, while white men were labeled as dying from 'accidental cocaine toxicity.' Additionally, all 21 men in a 1998 study diagnosed with excited delirium died while being restrained, with three having pressure applied to their necks.\n\n### What recent legislative actions have been taken regarding excited delirium?\n\nIn 2023, California became the first US state to ban excited delirium from being listed as a cause of death. Colorado followed in 2024. Legislation has been proposed in Hawaii and New York; the Hawaii bill appears to be dead, but the New York bill is still working through the system.\n\n### How was excited delirium involved in the George Floyd case?\n\nGeorge Floyd's murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's back and neck for over nine minutes, became one of the most high-profile cases involving excited delirium. Although the defense did not work and Chauvin was convicted of murder, a rookie officer can be heard in body cam footage expressing concern about excited delirium during the incident. This demonstrates that the supposed condition was still being taught in police training in 2020, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence supporting it.\n\n### What is the current regulatory status of the newest Taser model?\n\nThe Taser 10, Axon's latest model, uses gunpowder rather than compressed nitrogen as a propellant, which means it is legally classified as a firearm and subject to gun regulations. However, H.R. 2189, the Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, recently passed the House of Representatives and would exempt tasers from regulations under the Gun Control Act. The bill is expected to pass the Senate, potentially giving Axon a special legal exemption that would allow their new weapons to avoid regulation.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Into the Shadows video: How a Fake Diagnosis \"Legalized\" Police Brutality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9y8E0kDm9E)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Shadowy_figures_%282016_04_03_shadow_silhouettes_to_at-cc%29.jpg) by P. Horálek/ESO / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/how-a-fake-diagnosis-legalized-police-brutality.md canonical: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/how-a-fake-diagnosis-legalized-police-brutality datePublished: 2026-06-27 dateModified: 2026-06-27 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://intotheshadows.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Into the Shadows image: "https://media.intotheshadows.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/N9y8E0kDm9E/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: ed54ba857ff76991a40b7a7f0bd0222fc48fe1ec0697c4c8907a41ad01ac6098 tokens: 8403 summaryUrl: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/how-a-fake-diagnosis-legalized-police-brutality.md.summary.md --- Police in the United States are notorious for the amount of leeway they are given under the law. In addition to having qualified immunity, they are legally permitted to engage in behaviours that would be deemed abhorrent by most other countries. American police can lie to suspects about anything, including evidence and potential deals of leniency. They are also trained in coercive and deceptive interrogation tactics that result in a much higher rate of false confessions than other interrogation methods. Those things are already bad, but perhaps the worst began in the 1980s thanks to the work of Miami-Dade County's deputy chief medical examiner and his creation of a racist, pseudoscientific diagnosis known as excited delirium. Ever since its creation, excited delirium has acted as a shield for police, providing an alternate cause of death for what otherwise might have been identified as cases of police brutality. Excited delirium is not a recognized medical condition or diagnosis, yet it continues to appear in autopsy reports and court records to this day. ## The Origins of Excited Delirium When cocaine was first introduced, it was seen as a wonder drug. In the 1800s, it was considered a safe medication that was available over the counter, including in children's medicine. But scientists weren't completely blind to the risk. As far back as 1895, a paper was published in *The Lancet* titled "Fatal Acute Poisoning By Cocaine". An abundance of research showed that excessive use of cocaine had the potential to stop a person's heart and cause sudden death, and eventually it became a controlled substance. In 1984, another paper was published by Dr. Charles Welti titled "Death caused by recreational cocaine use. An update." Welti was the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami-Dade County, and Miami was no stranger to cocaine overdoses. This research wasn't groundbreaking, but it predicted an increase in cocaine related deaths because of the drug's growing popularity and the increased purity of street cocaine. Indeed, Welti did see an uptick in the number of cocaine deaths, and it was one that wasn't easily explained. Men who seemingly died from cocaine use kept showing up at the medical examiner's office, yet toxicology showed that many of these men had only taken one tenth of what would be considered a lethal dose of cocaine. Even taking into account that the lethal dose represents a range and is not an exact quantity needed to kill someone, these men were nowhere near the threshold that should have resulted in death. Beyond that, the men seemed to exhibit near superhuman strength before their deaths, and acted as if they were impervious to pain. Batons and pepper spray didn't faze them, and they had to be forcibly restrained. The description of their resistance to pain certainly seems to suggest that all of these people had violent altercations with police that resulted in them being restrained, which should have been the first hint as to what might be causing their deaths. But Welti had another idea. In 1985, he published a new paper titled "Cocaine-Induced Psychosis and Sudden Death in Recreational Cocaine Users". The paper looked at seven recreational cocaine users who seemed to suffer sudden deaths, claiming "Symptoms began with the acute onset of an intense paranoia, followed by bizarre and violent behavior necessitating forcible restraint." Other symptoms included the aforementioned increased strength, hyperthermia, and a sudden and fatal respiratory collapse. It was noted that death occurred within minutes to an hour of being restrained, and five of the seven people studied for the paper died while in police custody. Despite those factors being identified, they don't seem to have been given any serious consideration as contributing factors to the deaths of these drug users. Welti coined the condition that led to these sudden deaths as "excited delirium", a condition that seemed to exclusively affect men, particularly black men. This was certainly an interesting theory, and one that started to gain traction. However, it only took a few years for the credibility of Welti's research to come into question. ## Charles Henry Williams Born in March of 1956, Charles Henry Williams spent his life in Miami. When he wasn't in prison, that is. He was first convicted of sexual assault in 1977, after which he spent a few years behind bars. Once he was released, however, he got back up to his old tricks. He was also quite good at gaming the system, so he managed to escape charges or plea down to lesser offenses on multiple occasions. But he was a repeated sex offender, and would be successfully convicted of sexual assault three more times. And according to Charles, that's all he did to women. His day jobs were working as a mechanic and a cafeteria worker, but at night he dealt drugs. Except he already had money from his day jobs, so Charles's business model was to exchange drugs for sex. He claimed to have made upwards of 300 such deals during the 1980s. At the same time this was going on, bodies of sex workers began showing up in cheap motels, parking lots, and back alleys. At first glance, it appeared that all of the women had been sexually assaulted and murdered, something that Welti admitted. But his autopsies showed a different story. According to Welti's autopsies, there was no evidence that the women had been sexually assaulted or murdered. Sure, they had all recently had sex just before they died, but he decided that must have been consensual. There were 19 women in total that Welti examined, and he declared that they had all died from excited delirium. His initial theory had only extended to men, but based on this new evidence he decided that the combination of cocaine and sex caused the women to suddenly die. As he put it, "For some reason, the male of the species becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in relation to sex" while under the influence of cocaine. Basically, he was claiming that the combination of cocaine plus orgasms somehow overloaded the brain and caused the women to die. Despite a lack of evidence for Welti's claims of excited delirium causing all these deaths, he continued to double down. He insisted that all of the deaths were related to crack, despite not knowing what mechanism was triggering the delirium, but that it may be triggered by an interaction between cocaine and a certain type of blood that was more common in blacks. A month after he began publicizing his theory on the female manifestations of excited delirium, another victim appeared. This time it was 14 year old Antoinette Burns. Oh yeah, we forgot to mention that part, but many of the victims who Welti himself admitted had appeared at a glance to have been sexually assaulted and murdered were underage girls. Anyway, when Antoinette was found dead, Welti declared that she had died from excited delirium resulting from a combination of sex and cocaine. Her family wasn't buying this story though, and eventually the toxicology report came back confirming that there was no cocaine in her system. If you recall, though, Welti was only the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami Dade. Once it was discovered that Antoinette's toxicology report was clean (as well as the discovery of other evidence pointing to murder), someone finally had the brilliant idea to ask Welti's boss to check his work. As it turned out, all of the women had been sexually assaulted and murdered. Nine of them had clear marks of asphyxiation and strangulation, though the other bodies hadn't been found soon enough for such indicators to have remained. This revelation was disturbing for a multitude of reasons, from racism to victim blaming to the fact that there had apparently been a serial killer on the loose for a decade and nobody had even been investigating his victims' deaths as crimes, thanks to Welti's medical examinations. You might think that this would have been enough for Welti to admit his mistake and move on, but he continued to pursue and promote his theory. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1989, three sex workers came forward to the police with reports of their sexual assaults and attempted murders. All three stories were nearly identical. In two of the cases, the victim had approached Charles Williams about exchanging sex for drugs. After negotiating a deal, he then grabbed them from behind in a chokehold, forcibly assaulted them, and choked them out, leaving them for dead. The third story was similar, though her attempted murder had been interrupted when another man saw what was happening and confronted Charles. That April, Charles was arrested for possession of a crack pipe, but once he was in custody two rape charges were added on as well. He was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison, but that wasn't meant to be the end of his story. At the time Charles was suspected of 19 murders, but over the years that number would grow to at least 32. All of the murders were in the same area with the same modus operandi, and one was even a neighbour of Charles. He denied any involvement in the murders up until his death, though he did make one statement that some people interpreted as an accidental confession. However, he was only charged with a single murder. Although he was and still is believed by many to be a serial killer, there wasn't enough hard evidence to charge him with any of the crimes except the 1984 murder of 19 year old Patricia Johnson. That case was only able to move forward because semen and saliva samples that had been collected at the scene were found after having been misplaced by the police for years. Unfortunately, ten days before he was going to be put on trial for murder, Charles died in prison from AIDS. His victims who survived the attacks, as well as anyone who engaged in a sex for drugs deal without a murder attempt, may all have been infected as well, though no efforts were made to identify and inform the affected women. All of this should have completely discredited Welti's research. After all, the girls and women who he claimed died of excited delirium were proven by a better medical examiner to have been murdered, with the murder suspect even being identified. And it was sort of discredited after this. Females did not suddenly drop dead when combining cocaine and orgasms, but that wasn't the conclusion of Welti's original research anyway. Originally he had only talked about excited delirium in men, with regards to the violent psychosis it created before death. This theory about the condition affecting women was added on later to minimize the deaths of murdered black sex workers, and it didn't hold up to even the slightest scrutiny. But maybe the original theory would. Maybe black men who used cocaine really did enter a state of excited delirium that resulted in their abrupt deaths. This part hadn't been as adequately disproven, and it rapidly grew in popularity despite the female half of excited delirium being disproven. Usage of the phrase "excited delirium" skyrocketed, and for a very simple reason that should have been painfully obvious. As Welti explained to the media, "Seventy percent of people dying from coke induced delirium are black, even though most users are white. Why?" His argument was that it was because of some genetic difference between blacks and whites, harkening back to various forms of scientific racism that emerged in the 1800s. There was another factor that he was ignoring though, something that was mentioned in his original research. The majority of people dying of so called excited delirium weren't just black men, they were black men who were in police custody after being violently restrained. So law enforcement had every incentive to bring as much legitimacy to Welti's claims as possible, as did the manufacturers of law enforcement's favourite new toy. ## Tasers The original Taser was created in 1974 by former NASA scientist Jack Cover, but it never really caught on. The issue with the design was that the Taser's darts were fired using gunpowder, which meant it had to be classified as a firearm. It wasn't until 1993 when Rick Smith and his brother Thomas purchased the rights to Taser and worked with Jack to create a new version, one that wouldn't be considered a firearm. The new model used compressed nitrogen rather than gunpowder to fire the darts, thus freeing it from firearm regulations. This was great for the Taser company, who rebranded as Axon in 2017. And since both the product and company having the same name could get confusing, we'll just refer to them as Axon from now on, even though most of this stuff happened long before the name change. Anyway, not only was their product not being regulated as a firearm, it seemed to fit into some magical grey area that left it free from all regulation. Tasers were marketed as a non-lethal alternative to firearms, and they quickly began being adopted by police departments around the country. Today, over 18,000 law enforcement and military agencies across over 80 countries employ the use of tasers as a less lethal alternative to firearms. If you were paying attention, though, you may have noticed a change in language there. Tasers were originally marketed as non-lethal weapons, but are now marketed as less lethal. So what changed? Well, because tasers weren't regulated, all of the initial testing surrounding their safety and efficacy was conducted internally, with incredibly flawed methodology and a sample size consisting of a handful of animals and a couple of guys. Based on this terrible "research", the company concluded that tasers were up to 97% effective and posed absolutely no risk of lasting harm. That sounded great on paper, especially because the research Axon used to come up with these numbers didn't accompany their claims. But it was enough for police forces across the country to begin adopting tasers en masse as what they believed was a non-lethal way to subdue violent suspects. As taser usage increased and law enforcement agencies were able to create their own data, however, they discovered that the reality didn't line up with the company's claims. To start, data from various police departments concluded that Tasers may only be up to 55% effective at subduing a person. In the event a person was not subdued, they tended to become agitated and aggressive. Almost as if the average person doesn't particularly appreciate suddenly being electrocuted with 50,000 volts. Even worse, the claims that these weapons were non-lethal seemed to not be accurate. By 2001, nearly 200 people had died after being tased. Of course, Axon denied any wrongdoing. They insisted that the use of a taser was a mere coincidence, and that all of those people would have died anyway. The puzzle pieces were all there, it was just a matter of lining them up to find the solution. Suspects who police had difficulty restraining with a taser became agitated, aggressive, and seemed to be impervious to pain. Some might even argue that the fact that they had not been incapacitated by the electrical discharge suggested they were experiencing superhuman strength. And the sudden deaths of people in police custody, particularly people who were black and unarmed? These were the telltale signs of excited delirium, which became Axon's ultimate line of defense against any allegations that their devices were potentially unsafe. Axon did everything they could to promote excited delirium, including paying Charles Welti and other proponents of his theory to serve as expert witnesses in wrongful death trials. They also monitored the news for any reports of deaths involving a suspect being tased. Whenever that happened, they would reach out to the police department with a prewritten press release that blamed the death on excited delirium, as well as guidelines for how to collect evidence to support that claim. That evidence was then sent to Deborah Mash, a neurologist who was also on Axon's payroll, so that she could confirm the diagnosis of excited delirium. That all sounds blatantly corrupt and unscientific, but it was in the police's best interest to play ball with Axon. You see, the concept of the Taser isn't inherently bad. Its unregulated nature certainly is, but the idea of a less lethal means by which a violent suspect can be subdued is a reasonable goal, especially when the alternative would be firing a gun. And if that was exclusively how tasers were used by law enforcement, there probably wouldn't have been any complaints or lawsuits. The unfortunate reality of the situation was that police used tasers when they were entirely unnecessary. Instead of being used as an alternative to guns, a weapon that should have been an officer's last resort, tasers were often used as a first resort. People were tased in situations that absolutely did not justify any use of force from the police, simply because it was easy. There are all too many reports of elderly people or children as young as six being tased by police for little to no reason. Of course, the cops probably wouldn't have been so liberal with their use of tasers had the weapons not been advertised as "non-lethal" and completely safe. But since the weapons were supposed to be safe, then sure, why not use them as a matter of convenience rather than necessity? With people suddenly dying after being shocked by tasers, however, the diagnosis of excited delirium would free the police from any potential liability for wrongful death. With both Axon and the police pushing the excited delirium narrative in the media and in official death reports, it gained wider acceptance as part of the official narrative, even if the medical and scientific communities were not at all on board with excited delirium. Not only did the diagnosis protect Axon and the police from liability for deaths involving tasers, it also provided a shield for police to increase violence and brutality while restraining suspects. Axon wasn't happy with just sending out press releases about excited delirium, though. They also threatened lawsuits against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to a person's death, instead demanding that the examiners change the cause of death to excited delirium. It was an effective threat, as a 2011 survey found that 14% of medical examiners had changed their reports for fear of a lawsuit from Axon. Axon has also provided legal defense for police officers who were taken to trial for deaths involving excited delirium. Excited delirium has continued to be claimed as an official cause of death to this day, with one of the most high profile cases in recent memory being that of George Floyd. Floyd was murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's back and neck for over nine minutes despite Floyd repeatedly claiming he couldn't breathe. The defense obviously didn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be referring to it as a murder, but a rookie cop can be heard in the body cam footage expressing his concern about excited delirium. This highlights that the supposed condition was still being taught during police training in 2020, despite a total and complete lack of scientific evidence to support it. ## Controversial From the Start Given the origin story of excited delirium, it's not surprising that this has always been highly controversial. Welti's claims of excited delirium in women caused by the combination of sex and cocaine were completely discredited when his boss examined the bodies and stated that the evidence of asphyxiation should have been painfully obvious from ten feet away. Early studies into the condition as it was applied to men called its legitimacy into question as well. In 1998, there was a study of 21 men who had all been diagnosed with excited delirium as their cause of death. According to the investigation, all 21 of these men had died while being restrained in a prone position. Three of them had pressure applied to their necks, similar to the case of George Floyd. Another study looking at cocaine related deaths in Florida in the 1980s noted that the vast majority of cases labeled as excited delirium involved black men (especially those being restrained by law enforcement), while white men were typically labeled as dying from "accidental cocaine toxicity". There was also the matter of diagnosing the condition. This was almost exclusively done postmortem, yet the diagnoses were not based on medical evidence from a postmortem examination. Instead, a declaration of excited delirium was typically based on witness statements from people like police who had no medical or psychiatric training. The syndrome didn't even have a strict definition, with it coming across as a vibe based diagnosis rather than anything scientific. Indeed, while the term continued to be used by law enforcement and Axon, it was largely rejected by the medical community. The World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, the UK Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the UK Forensic Science Regulator and Royal College of Physicians, and the UK College of Pathologists all refused to recognize the term. Excited delirium was also never listed as a medical condition in either the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Before 2009, the only group to recognize the term was the National Association of Medical Examiners. This was in no small part due to a 2004 position paper put out by the organization that was coauthored by Welti. Although it did not explicitly endorse excited delirium, it still discussed it as though it was a legitimate diagnosis. For many people, that was effectively the same thing as an endorsement, especially since the organization had for some reason allowed Welti to be one of the paper's coauthors. The first shift in terms of legitimacy came in 2009, when the American College of Physicians wrote a white paper claiming that excited delirium should be accepted as a valid syndrome. The white paper was the product of a 19 person task force, and the ACEP adopted the task force's stance, marking the first time that an organization of physicians endorsed excited delirium. That was great for several years, until investigative reporters from Reuters decided to look into the 19 members of that task force. As it turned out, three of them were on Axon's payroll. While a conflict of interest like that can certainly call into question the credibility of an author, it's not automatically disqualifying. At least it wouldn't have been had the conflict been listed in the paper, as is standard practice. Failing to list such a glaring conflict of interest was gross misconduct, and it completely destroyed the credibility of the entire paper, for good reason. Despite that revelation, however, the ACEP didn't officially reverse its position for years. In 2021 they appointed a new task force to investigate the original paper, and they didn't finally retract the 2009 paper until 2023. Of course, we really can't ignore the bizarre diagnostic criteria, flimsy as it was, that was used to establish excited delirium. The deaths were claimed to be the result of drugs like cocaine and later ketamine, and it was argued that other factors like tasers and excessive use of police force had nothing to do with the deaths; those people were going to die anyway as a result of their syndrome. If that was the case though, where were the other dead bodies? As we said, cases of excited delirium were diagnosed almost exclusively post mortem, and they were predominantly black males who died while or after being restrained by police. If excited delirium was a real thing and they were going to die from the condition anyway, where were all the people who died from excited delirium without being restrained by police? And where were the women who died from combining sex with cocaine without being strangled to death by a serial killer? Remember, these wouldn't have been confused with regular overdose deaths, as the people that were claimed to have died from excited delirium had ten times less than a lethal dose of cocaine in their systems. The fact that these mysterious, allegedly drug-related deaths only happened to people who had been violently restrained and possibly tased multiple times seems to suggest that there may have been another contributing factor to their deaths besides recreational quantities of cocaine. ## The Silver Lining From its conception, excited delirium was a racist, pseudoscientific diagnosis used to disguise the use of excessive force by law enforcement. But there's actually some good news for once. After decades of virtually every medical organization refusing to recognize the diagnosis, if not outright lobbying against it, we are finally seeing action. In 2023, California became the first US state to ban excited delirium from being listed as a cause of death. Colorado followed in 2024, with legislation being proposed in Hawaii and New York. The Hawaii bill appears to be dead, but the New York bill is still working its way through the system. In time, it is likely that we will see many more states continuing to ban the diagnosis of excited delirium. Unfortunately, there's some bad news as well. The latest model of taser, Taser 10, no longer uses compressed nitrogen. Axon wanted to increase their weapons' effective range, so they needed a new propellant. This meant it was back to gunpowder, so the new taser model is once again legally classified as a gun, and thus subject to gun regulations. But as of two days ago at time of writing, H.R. 2189, the Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, passed the House of Representatives. This law would exempt tasers from the regulations they should be subject to under the Gun Control Act. The bill still has to make its way through the Senate, but it is expected to pass. With Axon potentially receiving a special legal exemption for their new weapons that will continue to avoid any regulation, they are extremely incentivized to continue to promote the fraudulent diagnosis of excited delirium to law enforcement and the public. After all, it's not like Axon's products could possibly be responsible for anyone's death, because the weapons they sell are advertised as non-lethal. Did we say non-lethal? We meant less lethal. And now the new models are legally guns. But hey, that's probably all fine. ## Key Takeaways - Excited delirium originated in 1985 from Miami-Dade medical examiner Charles Welti to explain deaths of black men in police custody with minimal cocaine in their systems. - Welti's theory was discredited when his boss found 19 women he claimed died from excited delirium were actually murdered by serial killer Charles Henry Williams. - Taser manufacturer Axon heavily promoted excited delirium, paying expert witnesses and threatening medical examiners to avoid liability for taser-related deaths. - Major medical organizations including WHO, AMA, and APA refuse to recognize excited delirium, which was never listed in standard diagnostic manuals. - California banned excited delirium as a cause of death in 2023, Colorado in 2024, though Axon continues pushing the narrative amid new regulatory exemptions for tasers. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is excited delirium and who created it? Excited delirium is a pseudoscientific diagnosis created in 1985 by Dr. Charles Welti, the deputy chief medical examiner for Miami-Dade County. He coined the term in a paper titled 'Cocaine-Induced Psychosis and Sudden Death in Recreational Cocaine Users' to explain sudden deaths of men, particularly black men, who exhibited violent behavior and superhuman strength before dying, often while in police custody after being forcibly restrained. ### Is excited delirium recognized as a legitimate medical condition? No, excited delirium is not a recognized medical condition or diagnosis. The World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, the UK Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the UK Forensic Science Regulator and Royal College of Physicians, and the UK College of Pathologists all refused to recognize the term. It was also never listed in the International Classification of Diseases or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. ### How was excited delirium used to protect police and Taser manufacturer Axon from liability? Excited delirium acted as a shield for police by providing an alternate cause of death for what otherwise might have been identified as police brutality. Axon (formerly Taser) promoted excited delirium aggressively by paying Charles Welti and other proponents to serve as expert witnesses in wrongful death trials, sending prewritten press releases to police departments blaming deaths on excited delirium, and threatening lawsuits against medical examiners who claimed tasers contributed to deaths. A 2011 survey found that 14% of medical examiners had changed their reports for fear of a lawsuit from Axon. ### What discredited Welti's theory about excited delirium affecting women? Welti claimed 19 women died from excited delirium caused by combining cocaine and sex, but this was disproven when his boss examined the bodies and found they had all been sexually assaulted and murdered. Nine had clear marks of asphyxiation and strangulation. The case of 14-year-old Antoinette Burns, who had no cocaine in her system according to toxicology reports, was particularly damning. The murderer was identified as Charles Henry Williams, a serial killer suspected of at least 32 murders. ### What role did the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) play in legitimizing excited delirium? In 2009, the ACEP became the first physician organization to endorse excited delirium through a white paper produced by a 19-person task force. However, investigative reporters from Reuters later discovered that three task force members were on Axon's payroll, and this conflict of interest was not disclosed in the paper as is standard practice. The ACEP didn't officially retract the 2009 paper until 2023, after appointing a new task force in 2021 to investigate the original paper. ### How were tasers originally marketed, and how did that marketing change? Tasers were originally marketed as 'non-lethal' weapons, but are now marketed as 'less lethal.' The change occurred as data from police departments revealed that tasers were only about 55% effective at subduing people (not the 97% Axon claimed), and that nearly 200 people had died after being tased by 2001. Axon denied responsibility, insisting the taser use was coincidental and those people would have died anyway. ### What evidence suggests excited delirium diagnoses were racially biased? Multiple studies showed racial disparities in how deaths were labeled. Welti himself stated that 'Seventy percent of people dying from coke induced delirium are black, even though most users are white,' attributing this to supposed genetic differences. A study of cocaine-related deaths in Florida in the 1980s found that black men, especially those restrained by law enforcement, were typically labeled as excited delirium deaths, while white men were labeled as dying from 'accidental cocaine toxicity.' Additionally, all 21 men in a 1998 study diagnosed with excited delirium died while being restrained, with three having pressure applied to their necks. ### What recent legislative actions have been taken regarding excited delirium? In 2023, California became the first US state to ban excited delirium from being listed as a cause of death. Colorado followed in 2024. Legislation has been proposed in Hawaii and New York; the Hawaii bill appears to be dead, but the New York bill is still working through the system. ### How was excited delirium involved in the George Floyd case? George Floyd's murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's back and neck for over nine minutes, became one of the most high-profile cases involving excited delirium. Although the defense did not work and Chauvin was convicted of murder, a rookie officer can be heard in body cam footage expressing concern about excited delirium during the incident. This demonstrates that the supposed condition was still being taught in police training in 2020, despite a complete lack of scientific evidence supporting it. ### What is the current regulatory status of the newest Taser model? The Taser 10, Axon's latest model, uses gunpowder rather than compressed nitrogen as a propellant, which means it is legally classified as a firearm and subject to gun regulations. However, H.R. 2189, the Law-Enforcement Innovate to De-Escalate Act, recently passed the House of Representatives and would exempt tasers from regulations under the Gun Control Act. The bill is expected to pass the Senate, potentially giving Axon a special legal exemption that would allow their new weapons to avoid regulation. ## Sources - [Original Into the Shadows video: How a Fake Diagnosis "Legalized" Police Brutality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9y8E0kDm9E) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Shadowy_figures_%282016_04_03_shadow_silhouettes_to_at-cc%29.jpg) by P. Horálek/ESO / openverse, by. ## Related Coverage