Patricia Hagans v. Franklin Cnty Sheriff's Office

OPINION

SUTTON, Circuit Judge.

Invented by a NASA scientist more than fifty years ago, the taser has become an ever-present tool of law enforcement. The device allows officers to incapacitate resistant suspects for a brief period of time with relatively few risks. Relatively few though those risks may be, they are not non-existent, as this case illustrates. A police officer in Columbus, Ohio, used a taser to subdue Patrick Hagans, a middle-aged man undone by cocaine and unwilling as a result to allow officers to detain him. Hagans died three days after the incident. Because the officer did not…