The way Sheldon Haleck\u2019s parents see it, the 38-year-old\u2019s only crime was jaywalking. But that March night in 2015, after Honolulu police found him behaving erratically, they pepper-sprayed him, shocked him with a Taser, and restrained him. Haleck became unresponsive and was taken to a hospital. Before his parents could get from their home in Utah to Hawaii, the former Hawaii Air National Guardsman was taken off life support.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody\u2019s supposed to die from something like this,\u201d said Haleck\u2019s father, William.<\/p>\n

An initial autopsy ruled Haleck\u2019s death a homicide and his family filed a civil lawsuit in federal court against the three officers who tried to remove him from the street. The case should have been \u201cone of the easiest wrongful death cases\u201d to win, said Eric Seitz, an attorney who represented Haleck\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

But the officers\u2019 attorneys seized on a largely discredited, four-decade-old diagnostic theory called \u201cexcited delirium,\u201d which has been increasingly used over the past 15 years as a legal defense to explain how a person experiencing severe agitation can die suddenly through no fault of the police. \u201cThe entire use of that particular theory, I think, is what convinced the jury,\u201d Seitz said.<\/p>\n

Sheldon Haleck (front) with his mother, Verdell, father, William, and brother, Anthony. The former Hawaii Air National Guardsman was 38 when he died after an encounter with police in 2015. His parents filed a civil lawsuit against the officers after his death, which they ultimately lost in large part due to an argument that he died of \u201cexcited delirium.\u201d (Aaron Reis)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Haleck\u2019s case is just one legal battle in which the theory of excited delirium exonerated law enforcement despite mounting opposition to the term among most prominent medical groups. The theory has been cited as a defense in the 2020 deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis; Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York; and Angelo Quinto in Antioch, California. It figures in a criminal trial against two police officers involved in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado, now underway. It has allowed defense attorneys to argue that individuals in police custody died not of restraint, not of a Taser shock, but of a medical condition that can lead to sudden death.<\/p>\n

But now, the American College of Emergency Physicians will vote at an October meeting on whether to formally disavow its 2009 position paper<\/a> supporting excited delirium as a diagnosis that helped undergird those court cases. The draft resolution also calls on ACEP to discourage physicians who serve as expert witnesses from promoting the theory in criminal and civil trials.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s junk science,\u201d said Martin Chenevert<\/a>, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, who often testifies as an expert witness. The theory has been used to provide a cover for police misconduct, he said. \u201cIt had an agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passing the resolution wouldn\u2019t bring Haleck back, but his parents hope it would prevent other families from experiencing their agony. \u201cMay that excited delirium die here,\u201d said his mother, Verdell.<\/p>\n

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering signing into law a bill passed Sept. 12<\/a> that would do much of the same in his state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t fully denounce this now, it will be there for the grasping, again,\u201d said Jennifer Brody<\/a>, a physician with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, who co-authored a 2021 editorial calling on organized medicine to denounce excited delirium. \u201cHistorically, we know what happens: The pendulum swings the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most major medical societies, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, don\u2019t recognize excited delirium as a medical condition. This year, the National Association of Medical Examiners rejected excited delirium<\/a> as a cause of death. No blood test or other diagnostic test can confirm the syndrome. It\u2019s not listed in the \u201cDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,\u201d a reference book of mental health conditions, nor does it have its own diagnostic code, a system used by health professionals to identify diseases and disorders.<\/p>\n

But the argument\u2019s pervasiveness in excessive-use-of-force cases has persisted in large part because of the American College of Emergency Physicians\u2019 2009 white paper proposing that individuals in a mental health crisis, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol, can exhibit superhuman strength as police try to control them, and then die from the condition.<\/p>\n

The ACEP white paper has been cited in cases across the U.S., and lawyers who file police misconduct cases said that courts and judges accept the science without sufficient scrutiny.<\/p>\n

ACEP\u2019s position \u201chas done a lot of harm\u201d by justifying first responder tactics that contribute to a person\u2019s death, said Joanna Naples-Mitchell, an attorney who worked on a Physicians for Human Rights review<\/a> of excited delirium. The term has also been used in cases in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, according to the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a really important opportunity for ACEP to make things right,\u201d she said of the upcoming vote.<\/p>\n

ACEP officials declined KFF Health News requests for an interview.<\/p>\n