Force used in removing protestor from city council meeting was minimal, city had interest in forcibly removing protestor from meeting, although it was low, and balance between intrusion on protestor and city’s interests was reasonable, hence no violation of constitutional rights.
This Article provides the first comprehensive assessment of excited delirium in law and legal scholarship. Drawing upon an original dataset that collects information on in-custody deaths over the past decade tied to excited delirium, this Article documents the extent to which this condition has been articulated by legal and medical actors as a cause of death in situations where police have used force. The data show, among other findings, that at least 56% of deaths that occur in police custody that are attributed to excited delirium involve Black and Latinx victims.
This Article argues that courts overseeing criminal prosecutions of police officers should broaden the time frame and allow juries assessing the reasonableness of the officer’s use of deadly force to consider pre-shooting conduct of the officer that created or increased the risk of a deadly confrontation. Broadening the time frame is an important way to encourage law enforcement officers to take the steps needed to prevent police-civilian encounters from ending in death or serious bodily injury.