Stunning safety (Image: Matt Slocum/AP/PA)

UPDATE: A man has died in Barrow, UK, after being shot with a Taser during his arrest on Tuesday night. He felt unwell after being hit with the stun gun and was taken to hospital, where he later died. The Independent Police Complaints COmmission is to investigate.

TASER International, the maker of the electro-shock stun gun, has seen off 127 lawsuits from families who have claimed that its 50,000-volt weapon, in the hands of police, killed a relative. In all but one case the firm’s lawyers have successfully argued that mitigating circumstances – mainly the victim’s alleged drug use or a pre-existing cardiac condition – meant they would have died from the trauma of being physically subdued by police officers in any case.

In the one case the company lost, it paid out $150,000 in damages. But on 19 July the Arizona-based firm lost a major decision when a jury in a US district court ruled that Darryl Turner, a 17-year-old shop assistant in Charlotte, North Carolina, had been killed by a police taser after receiving an extended 37-second shock. The ruling orders the firm to pay Turner’s family $10 million in damages.


Amnesty International estimates that 450 people in the US have died after being tased since 2001. It welcomed the verdict. “This important verdict confirms our long-held position that tasers are potentially lethal and therefore should only be used in a limited set of instances where there is a very serious and real threat to loss of life,” says Oliver Sprague, Amnesty’s UK arms programme director.

The court’s ruling does not question the safety of the weapon itself. Instead, it finds the firm negligent for improperly instructing and training the officers of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD).

The Turner case concerned an incident in a Charlotte supermarket on 20 March 2008. Police were called when Turner, an employee, had an argument with a manager. When Turner lunged at a CMPD officer, the latter fired the taser probes into Turner’s chest. He then kept the current applied for 37 seconds. After that, Turner was not moving. The Mecklenburg County medical examiner found he had died from cardiac arrest.

This is not how a taser is supposed to be used. When you see a taser demonstration, the volunteer usually gets a half-second burst – enough to fell most people with excruciating muscle spasms. In practice, officers use a 5-second burst. This can be repeated – and often is – but officers should be well aware that research shows multiple bursts are a health risk (New Scientist, 12 November 2005, p 30). In 2009, despite winning legal challenges, Taser International revised its training manuals to warn users that they should avoid firing at people’s chests owing to the proximity of the heart to the electric pulses.

Toxicology tests revealed no drugs in Turner’s bloodstream and that his heart was in good shape. Death was caused by “agitated state, stress and use of a conducted energy device”, according to the medical examiner. Taser International disputed this, arguing Turner had a pre-existing risk of cardiac arrythmias of a type exacerbated by drugs – and that he was carrying marijuana.

What was clear to the jury, however, was that the CMPD officer should have been trained to avoid the chest, and they found Taser International had been negligent in not doing this. John Burton, legal counsel for Turner’s parents, proclaimed the case would mark the beginning of the end for the energy weapon. “I think the taser is on the way out,” he told New Scientist.

The jury found that the police officer should have been trained to avoid firing a taser at the chest

When contacted by New Scientist, Taser International said it plans to appeal the verdict. But whatever the outcome, the use of tasers remains controversial. Just hours after the Turner verdict was delivered, another CMPD officer tased a 21-year-old man. He died an hour later.