QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Critics said there's no evidence people can be excited to death. "It is a diagnosis that is comfortable and convenient for medical examiners, my colleagues and the cops throughout all these years," (Forensic Pathologist Dr. Cyril) Wecht said. In nearly all of the cases in Maryland that involve an excited delirium finding at autopsy, the manners of death were left undetermined, which have also helped clear officers involved from liability.
STORY: "New details about in police-custody death cases in Maryland," by Reporter Jayne Miller, published by WBAL TV on June 10, 2021.
GIST: The 11 News I-Team has new details about cases of people who have died in police custody in Maryland.
The cases could come under new scrutiny as an independent panel will review the work of former chief medical examiner Dr. David Fowler.
A video taken by a bystander in 2013 shows police in Montgomery County used tasers to control 51-year-old Anthony Howard. A caller reported Howard was acting strangely. Medics were called when he stopped breathing after the tasers had been fired. Howard died at a hospital.
An autopsy found Howard died of agitated delirium, associated with cocaine intoxication. It left the manner of death undetermined.
The ruling came during the tenure of Fowler. Death in custody cases handled by his office are now subject to audit, after Fowler drew widespread criticism for his testimony in the George Floyd case.
Testifying for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin's defense, Fowler blamed Floyd's death on a heart condition, refuting the opinion of other experts who said Floyd died due to the compression on his neck.
The ruling in the Howard case is just one of more than two dozen police in-custody deaths in Maryland in the last 20 years to be blamed at least in part on excited delirium. It was also cited in the death of Albert Covington III in 2001.
"Instead of growing up to watch him get old and to take care of him in that way, I had to kind of adjust that he died a violent death, and I wasn’t there for him," said Chereka Rainey, Covington's daughter.
Rainey has asked that her father's death be included in the audit of death in-custody cases. Covington died while being restrained by Baltimore County police.
That autopsy, signed by Fowler, ruled Covington died as a result of cocaine-induced excited delirium during restraint.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht believed Covington died of positional asphyxiation. Wecht has criticized medical examiners who rely on excited delirium to explain the deaths of people who die in police custody.
"Excited delirium, to me, is a nonsensical diagnosis," Wecht said. "Hundreds of cases, we will never know how many, if go back decades, there were thousands of cases that were signed out as ‘excited delirium’ where, like in this case, they found a little bit of cocaine."
According to the National Library of Medicine, "...excited (or agitated) delirium is characterized by agitation, aggression, acute distress and sudden death. But it is not a currently recognized medical or psychiatric diagnosis, leading authorities to either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IVTR) of the American Psychiatric Association or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) of the World Health Organization."
Critics said there's no evidence people can be excited to death.
"It is a diagnosis that is comfortable and convenient for medical examiners, my colleagues and the cops throughout all these years," Wecht said.
In nearly all of the cases in Maryland that involve an excited delirium finding at autopsy, the manners of death were left undetermined, which have also helped clear officers involved from liability.
Fowler, now in private business, told 11 News he could not recall the Albert Covington case, and has no access to that file.
The outline of the audit of death in custody cases is not yet available. A comment period for the public to provide information ended this week."
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