LAPD Use of Taser Ruled Legal in Death

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has ruled that police officers acted legally when they used a Taser gun to subdue a man suffering from PCP intoxication who later died, partially because of the electrical shock from the weapon’s dart.

“The officers’ conduct, although possibly contributing to the death . . . was lawful,” the district attorney told the Los Angeles Police Commission in a report on the death of Cornelius Garland Smith, 35, in April.

The prosecutor’s written report, dated Dec. 13 and released Tuesday, said an investigation indicated that Smith had a history of heart problems, needed a pacemaker but declined to use one.

The report said Dr. Ronald Kornblum, the county’s acting chief medical examiner, found that Smith could have died at any time because of the heart ailment.

Kornblum told investigators that “because of his medical problems, he (Smith) did not survive the electrical stimulus of the Taser,” the report said.

The coroner’s office attributed Smith’s death to heart failure brought on by his existing heart problems and by the shock from the Taser gun administered to him while under the influence of a drug.

A Police Department spokesman said Tuesday that in the past two years there have been four deaths--including Smith’s--of persons struck with a Taser dart.

A coroner’s spokesman said he did not know if use of the Taser in the other three cases directly or indirectly contributed to the deaths.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, in a statement released in April, said the Taser had been used by his officers more than 1,000 times in four years without a single death directly attributed to its use.

In the Smith case, officers who had responded to 110th Street and Avalon Boulevard found him writhing on the ground and screaming while under the influence of PCP. After the Taser was used, Smith was restrained and taken to a hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and died.