The Day In Taser Madness
by digby
Earlier I wondered if Clarence Thomas might have his consciousness raised by the cruel tasering of his mentally ill nephew. I’m reminded by a commenter just what an epic epiphany that would have to be:
One of these years, before he dies, Thomas might explain to us why prisoners disgust him to the point of approving the very human rights violations we lecture China, Iraq, and other nations about. We have no explanation because Thomas has never conducted a major interview since being appointed to the court by the first President Bush.
Back in 1992, just after joining the court, Thomas dissented in the 7-2 decision that upheld a $800 award for damages for a Louisiana inmate who, from behind his locked cell, argued with a prison guard. Three guards took the inmate out of his cell, put him in handcuffs and shackles, and dragged him to a hallway where they beat him so badly that he suffered a cracked dental plate.
The lower court ruled that the beating had nothing to do with acceptable prison discipline. But Thomas all but laughed off the beating, saying the injuries were ”minor.” Thomas said the ”use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a prisoner may be immoral, it may be tortious, it may be criminal, and it may even be remediable under other provisions of the Federal Constitution, but it is not `cruel and unusual punishment.”’
Last year Thomas was one of three dissenters, with Rehnquist and Scalia, in the 6-3 decision that found that executing the mentally retarded was ”cruel and unusual punishment.” Also last year, Thomas dissented from a 6-3 decision to ban the practice in Alabama of chaining prisoners to outdoor ”hitching posts” and abandoning them for hours without food, water, or a chance to use the bathroom. While the majority also called that ”cruel and unusual,” Thomas said the hitching post served ”a legitimate penological purpose,” encouraging a prisoner’s ”compliance with prison rules while out on work duty.”
Maybe he can find some way to reconcile all this with his nephew’s plight, but it will take some serious mental gymnastics. He’s pretty much the last person on the planet one could count on to have any sympathy for anyone. But you never know …
And in more taser news, here’s a truly lovely story:
Phyllis Owens apparently didn’t know day from night when she died at 87, an hour after sheriff’s deputies closed in on her as she reached for a handgun, an officer said Friday.
“We had to respond,” said Detective Jim Strovink of the Clackamas County sheriff’s office.
An officer hiding in the shrubbery around her rural home jolted the frail woman with a stun gun Thursday afternoon, and she collapsed unconscious. She died soon after in the hospital. The autopsy report said her heart disease was the cause of death.
Two Clackamas sheriff’s deputies had gone to her wooded housing development near Boring after a man using a backhoe to replace her water line reported that she had threatened him with a handgun, Strovink said. It was about 2:30 p.m.
“She came out waving the gun and had him up against the backhoe,” Strovink said. “She yelled at him, ‘What are you doing here at this time of night?'”
The worker called for help, and deputies arrived to find the woman on her porch, Strovink said. Approaching her, they talked her into putting down the weapon, he said, but she quickly picked it up again.
The probes of the officer’s Taser hit her left arm and hip, said Dr. Larry Lewman of the state medical examiner’s office.
Owens had a history of heart disease and that was the cause of death, Lewman said Friday. He said he would do more research to determine what effect the electrical shock had on her pacemaker.
“A healthy person would not have died this way,” Lewman said.
And who could have predicted that an 87 year old woman might not be healthy?
Obviously, they had no choice. For instance they couldn’t possibly have backed off and called a mental health professional. And anyway, back before tasers they would have just shot her dead with with a bullet between the eyes, so at least they tried to spare her with non-lethal force.
This stuff is happening over and over and over again all over the county.
In reality, when you think you’re seeing everything, you’re really seeing nothing. But if you peel away some layers, all of a sudden you’re looking at the gun; peel back another layer and all of a sudden you can see the expression of horror on Mehserle’s face; or Oscar Grant’s desperate pleading. In the following video, I sought to add depth to the original interpretation of this tragic event, in order to reveal more of the story. If you remember the first grainy footage following the shooting, dispel the ingrained “YouTube truth” you may be harboring, so that you can look for what’s new, what wasn’t there before. This video is best (indeed, should only) be watched on Full Screen mode with good speakers or headphones.
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