Tasers are one of those weapons with the perpetually unhelpful good news/bad news outcome. Sure, the officer didn’t draw his handgun and put a bullet into the guy’s center mass, which is never good news. But cops often treat Tasers, because they won’t necessarily kill, so casually that they are used when force isn’t justified, often for convenience rather than necessity. And then there’s the problem that sometimes they do kill, even as Axon, formerly known as Taser International until they had to change their name to shed the taint of early Taser abuse, blames it on contrived causes that aren’t its fault.
Two Wilson, Oklahoma, officers were convicted of second degree murder for tasering a guy to death. His crime was resisting their commands to let them arrest him after running around naked in the street.
The tasings themselves happened on July 4th of 2019 when officers Joshua Taylor and Brandon Dingham responded to a call about a naked man screaming and running down the street.
Officers tried to restrain him but he didn’t obey their commands.
They began tasing him but after nearly 4 minutes of tasing, it still wasn’t working.
Backup arrived and another officer put the deceased in a “sleep hold.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be “attributed to a few things-his heart health and law enforcement’s use of electrical weapons and restraint.” And by “electrical weapons,” the officers were alleged to have used their Tasers more than 50 times.
Prosecutors said the repeated use of the Tasers, also known as stun guns, by the former officers, Brandon Dingman and Joshua Taylor, was “dangerous and unnecessary” during their encounter with Jared Lakey on July 4, 2019.
It was a “substantial factor” in the death of Mr. Lakey, 28, who stopped breathing and became unresponsive shortly after he was taken into custody by the officers, who were employed by the Wilson Police Department, court documents said. Mr. Lakey died two days later.
On the one hand, the physical condition of the deceased lent itself to making the deceased particularly vulnerable to harm from tasing, as the autopsy report stated he had an “enlarged heart and critical coronary artery disease.” Of course, the underlying physical condition is not an excuse for the improper use of a wapon.
The chief, Kevin Coley, testified that the officers had been attempting to cause neuromuscular incapacitation in Mr. Lakey but that he had kept moving around on the ground, the television station KXII reported. The chief could not be reached on Monday.
When Mr. Lakey would not comply with the officers’ commands, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Dingman used their Tasers a combined total of more than 50 times, “which greatly exceeded what would have been necessary or warranted by the attendant circumstances,” court records said.
Much as “neuromuscular incapacitation” is one of those delightful copspeak ways of making the conduct sound benign and criminal, the Taser didn’t work the first time and so they did it again. And again. And again.
Craig Ladd, the district attorney for the 20th Judicial District in Oklahoma, which includes Carter County, said on Monday that police officers were trained to limit Taser exposure to 15 seconds or less and to avoid simultaneously using their devices. But in the case of Mr. Lakey, he said, the electrical connection from the officers’ Tasers lasted 3 minutes and 14 seconds.
“They clearly failed to adhere to these safety guidelines,” Mr. Ladd said, adding that in Oklahoma, officers are only permitted to use the degree of force “reasonably necessary” under the circumstances.
The problem wasn’t that the deceased posed a threat of harm to the officers, or anyone else, but that he was non-compliant, refusing to put his hands behind his back as people running naked through the streets occasionally do. It may be likely that he was experiencing a psychotic episode and lacked the capacity to comply, but what were the two cops to do? So they tased and tased. And tased. Because Tasers are less-than-lethal, so how harmful and painful could it be?
But the officers weren’t fired for violating department policy concerning the use of Tasers. There is no evidence to suggest they had any personal beef with the deceased, or even knew who he was before responding to the call. And it remains unclear, as might raise a reasonable doubt, whether it was their tasering or the “sleep hold” that resulted in the heart attack the killed the Lakey.
Second degree murder in Oklahoma covers “depraved mind” murder and felony murder, raising many of the same concerns in this conviction as existed with the Chauvin conviction for murdering George Floyd. It’s unclear what theory was pursued, as the officers were also charged with battery.
For many, the fact that the two cops were convicted of Murder 2 won’t raise many concerns. Whether it’s karma or payback, the fact that cops got away with killing people without justification or consequences in so many cases will be sufficient to shrug and say, “it’s about time cops were held to account for their actions.” And, in a cosmic sense, it’s hard to argue to the contrary.
But as each case, each defendant, charged with a crime is entitled to individualized determination of guilt, no matter how much others in his occupation have gotten away with it in the past, the generic lack of tears for convicted cops misses the point. Did these two officers, whose use of force was clearly excessive and contrary to policy, commit murder? was their tasing the proximate cause of death? Did their actions evince a depraved mind or two dumbass cops who kept tasing when it failed to paralyze Lakey so they could cuff him not out of any sort of malice but because they were just too callous to grasp the risk they were causing?
Much as these questions may not evoke much officer empathy, the use of murder prosecutions for cops whose training, intelligence and self-control is lacking raises serious issues that may well prevent officers from acting swiftly when needed to protect lives out of fear that the outcome will be life in prison. The excuse of “split-second decision making” is a grossly overused rationalization, but at the same time, it does happen and fear of prosecution for murder could well mean the difference between life and death.
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