Protesters hold banners with a photograph of Myles Gray, who died following a confrontation with several police officers in 2015, before the start of a coroner's inquest into his death, in Burnaby, B.C., on April 17.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The coroner’s inquest into the death of Myles Gray during his arrest by Vancouver police more than seven years ago began with a spat over which experts would get to explain “excited delirium” – a condition that major medical organizations have roundly rejected.
The coroner’s inquest will look into the death of the 33-year-old business owner, who suffered a broken nose, eye socket, rib and voice box, as well as brain bleeding and a ruptured testicle. One of the inquest jury’s stated aims is to determine “how, when, where and by what means” Mr. Gray died, as well as to make recommendations on how to prevent similar deaths. Its other core goal is ensuring “public confidence that the circumstances surrounding the death of an individual will not be overlooked, concealed or ignored.”
The presiding coroner asked the five jurors to briefly leave the Burnaby, B.C., hearing room Monday morning just as Ian Donaldson, lawyer for the Gray family, was about to utter the phrase he described as the “magic two words” he expects officer after officer would bring up while testifying about their possible role in the man’s death.
“I don’t know how many witnesses are going to trot out that phrase as if it means something,” Mr. Donaldson said after the jury left.
The term rose to prominence in North America in the 1980s as a way to describe an extreme state of agitation, exceptional strength, overheating and hostility as a result of drug use or a mental-health crisis, but it was almost exclusively used to describe people who died while interacting with police. At the time of Mr. Gray’s August, 2015, death, the forensic pathologist who conducted his postmortem examination could not rule out the possibility he died from something unrelated to the severe beating he received at the hands of the officers, noting he had the drug kratom in his system or may have been suffering from excited delirium.
But a prominent medical expert on this phenomenon was recently dropped from the witness list and lawyers for the officers fought to have her brought back if Mr. Donaldson was allowed to call another expert to testify about “one particular view” on excited delirium. The presiding coroner decided Monday to wait until a forensic pathologist testifies later in the process before weighing in on whether these other two witnesses are needed.
During Monday’s hearing, Mr. Donaldson referenced the U.S. National Association of Medical Examiners rejecting the term as a cause of someone’s death earlier this month. Its president Joyce deJong told the Associated Press the group was concerned it might be used to justify excessive force by police, especially when Black people have died. The American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association do not recognize excited delirium as a diagnosis either.
Ryan Panton, a spokesperson for the BC Coroners Service, said Monday that his organization no longer recognizes excited delirium as a cause of death, noting its dismissal of the term is aligned with the World Health Organization, the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
”This change was made in response to the evidence-based literature changing over time,” he said in a statement.
Justice Thomas Braidwood concluded during his inquiry into Robert Dziekanski’s 2007 tasering death at Vancouver International Airport that the term “conveniently avoids having to examine the underlying medical condition or conditions that actually caused death, let alone examining whether use of the conducted energy weapon and/or subsequent measures to physically restrain the subject contributed to those causes of death.”
The latest iteration of the Vancouver police’s regulations and procedures manual, posted to its website at the end of last year, states in the section on use of force that officers are responsible for the well-being of everyone they arrest and should be aware of “indicators of excited delirium syndrome.”
After the jury was brought back in Monday, members heard heartfelt testimony from Mr. Gray’s younger sister Melissa Gray, who testified that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in high school but was able to lead a fulfilling life with the help of prescription medicine. Ms. Gray, a psychiatric nurse whose husband took over her late brother’s evergreen and salal-growing business in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast, said police need to overhaul how they treat those in crisis.
“Instead of understanding, compassion, empathy, they are using handcuffs, batons, guns, tasers, pepper spray, iron fists, chokeholds, hobbles,” she said before a lawyer for the inquest interrupted her to ask that she stick to facts she knew firsthand.
“He was hobbled. My brother was hobbled. It is not okay. And that is a fact,” she responded.