"...homicide by Taser..."

C.S.M. (12 August 2008) Atlanta - A grand jury in rural Louisiana considers Tuesday whether to bring murder charges against a taser-wielding police officer in what may become a seminal case in the hotly debated history of stun guns. No US jury has ever convicted a police officer in connection with a death related to use of an electroshock weapon. But the number of deaths in which the guns have played a role has been growing, along with their use in law enforcement agencies. Now, the coroner in Winnfield, La., has found the death of one Baron "Scooter" Pikes to be homicide by Taser, intensifying a simmering controversy over the devices and exposing the tense tug of war between police and young black men in rural Louisiana. After Winnfield Parish police took Mr. Pikes, who is black, into custody one January morning, a white police officer fired a taser, jolting Pikes nine times in the span of 14 minutes. Pikes never woke up. Police said the 21-year-old Pikes was on drugs and uncooperative, but coroner Randolph Williams took a different view. In a report last month, he said he found no signs of a physical struggle, of drugs, or of any medical condition that could have exacerbated the jolts' effect. ... [LINK]

How is this possible? Weren't we told by Kroll and Taser that the tasers are essentially perfectly incapable of causing death via any internal risk mechanism? "Safer than Tylenol" was the claim.

If I recall correctly, this was the case where the victim was hit with an apparently fatal Touch-Torture taser shot directly to the chest (in addition to the six previous Touch-Torture taser shots to other parts of his body, and two subsequent Touch-Torture taser shots that had no effect since he was already dead). But you might wish to look up the details yourself.