Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 10, 1994 TAG: 9404100010
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LARRY GERBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SANTA ANA, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
A new electric belt can jolt prisoners into shivering submission at the touch of a marshal's remote button.
Defendants sometimes choose it, when they have a choice, because it can be worn out of sight: no handcuffs to give the jury a bad impression.
Some attorneys, however, argue that the painful eight-second "ride" amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, administered in a split-second decision without a hearing.
It's an example of the law-and-order mentality run amok, said David Kairys, a professor at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia.
"We've been going on now two decades of this very fierce war on crime, and I don't see us getting very far," he said. "There seems to be no end in sight to the things we come up with."
On one point, there's no argument: These things work.
Dubbed REACT belts by the manufacturer, Stun-Tech Inc. of Cleveland, the devices have been on the market for three years. A 4-inch-wide elastic band wraps around the waist and fastens with Velcro. A battery pack fits at the kidney.
Activated by remote control like a garage-door opener, the belt sends 4 to 6 milliamperes of pulsed, 50,000-volt current in an eight-second burst through the prisoner's back muscles.
The shock is weaker than an electric cattle fence, said Stun-Tech spokeswoman Elizabeth Ryan, but it's enough to make subjects scream and drop to the floor, writhing in pain. Though there's no permanent injury, the company says the feeling can be described in one word: "devastation."
About 150 of the $600 belts are in use throughout the country, Ryan said, and officers have had to push the button just three times. All three incidents took place last year:
In Kankakee, Ill., a police officer immobilized an inmate who had charged a colleague at a hospital in June;
A San Diego County bailiff zapped a man facing assault charges when he started walking out of the courtroom during a hearing;
A judge in Pensacola, Fla., ordered the belt removed from a murder defendant after learning he had been shocked outside court. The man, who had threatened to cut the judge's throat, was put back in shackles. Authorities said the jolt was justified, but the defendant's lawyer accused them of "gestapo tactics."
At a pretrial hearing after the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas, a judge in Santa Rosa agreed to let suspect Richard Allen Davis wear the belt under street clothes.
Davis' lawyer wanted him to wear the belt to avoid negative pretrial publicity: News photographs showed his client in a white shirt rather than a jail suit and handcuffs.
Just knowing the belt is there keeps prisoners where they belong, said Capt. Thomas Twellman of the Orange County marshal's office. The belt has been worn just once in a local court, and it wasn't activated.
"We don't use it for rude conduct; we don't use it on misdemeanors, drunk driving, petty thefts, that sort of thing," Twellman said. "We only use it on felony cases and would only activate the belt if there was an overt act of violence."
The device is so new that many people haven't formed an opinion. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has been watching the debate but hasn't taken a position, spokeswoman Mary Takita said.
To Kairys, problem prisoners should be restrained with either handcuffs or courtroom cages or removed from the courtroom.
"It's an example of our going really to any lengths at all, without thinking of what we do to some people or what we do to ourselves as a society," he said.
by CNB