Speaker 1: Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2: I remember looking at the screen and I said, that's capture.
Speaker 3: There was no change in what I was trained in
Speaker 3: four to twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4: None of these cases has the person died while being
Speaker 4: hit with the taser.
Speaker 5: You're saying that this was a coincidence.
Speaker 1: They would have died anyway.
Speaker 4: In every single case, these people would have died anyway.
Speaker 1: I walked into Matt and Stacy Master's house on a
Speaker 1: sticky July night, about a month after Timothy Runolds was
Speaker 1: sentenced to four years in prison. Matt was sitting at
Speaker 1: their kitchen table. That big accordion folder he'd stuffed full
Speaker 1: of taser articles and court papers for years was spilled
Speaker 1: out in front of him. Pages and pages marked with
Speaker 1: handwritten notes in red ink and highlighted passages yellow and
Speaker 1: orange marker.
Speaker 6: That's what blows my mind and then just infuriates me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I started skimming the titles covering the kitchen
Speaker 1: table and began to laugh. I realized we were too
Speaker 1: obsessive sitting down to compare notes I was.
Speaker 6: Told, And as I moved along through my own research,
Speaker 6: and it was so eye opening that I'm like, why
Speaker 6: the fucks don't departments know this, Like where is the disconnect?
Speaker 6: Where is Like.
Speaker 1: I was one of the few people in the world
Speaker 1: who actually understood what Matt was looking at. Like seeing
Speaker 1: one paper effects of cocaine intoxication on the threshold for
Speaker 1: stun gun induction of ventricular fibrillation, I'd go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the study from the Cleveland clinic that first discovered
Speaker 1: cardiac capture. Or another Butler versus Taser International. It's one
Speaker 1: of the first lawsuits that exposed the Taser's cardiac risks.
Speaker 6: Like cops believed everything, everything that Tayser told.
Speaker 1: Me, and like now I think I listened to Matt
Speaker 1: Rant for hours. Timothy Runnalds was in prison, but now
Speaker 1: it was time for the fight. Matt really wanted.
Speaker 7: I want to be in that.
Speaker 1: He told me Bryce was going to file a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Taser International. Matt wanted the company to pay for
Speaker 1: what happened to his son. This is absolute. Season one,
Speaker 1: Taser incorporated a story about unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini.
Speaker 1: Episode five n FW. There was one lawyer whose name
Speaker 1: kept coming up in the trial transcripts Matt put in
Speaker 1: his folder, John Burton. He was like the Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: of suing Taser International, and he'd studied Tasers every move.
Speaker 7: They had convinced their customer base, which are law enforcement agencies,
Speaker 7: that this device was absolutely safe and that any who
Speaker 7: says differently is just trying to take this great tool
Speaker 7: away from you and is probably some acou liberal pinko
Speaker 7: who wants to take your car away or something or
Speaker 7: bagas so you can eat Hamburgers.
Speaker 1: If anyone fit the stereotype of liberal pinko, it was John.
Speaker 1: John grew up in Pasadena. He became a hard charging
Speaker 1: civil rights attorney who hung portraits of famous jazz musicians
Speaker 1: on the walls of his office. He even ran for
Speaker 1: governor of California in two thousand and three, supported by
Speaker 1: the socialist Equality Party.
Speaker 7: I got like seven thousand votes. I remember Gary Coleman
Speaker 7: finished ahead of me and Arianne Huffington.
Speaker 1: John took his first taser case back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, nine years before Officer Runnels Taste Brice Masters.
Speaker 1: This is when news stories about grandma's and kids getting
Speaker 1: tasered and people dying from the weapon were becoming more
Speaker 1: and more common. Taser International was in an escalating battle
Speaker 1: with critics who thought the taser could kill. The company
Speaker 1: was spending lots of money on legal fees defending themselves
Speaker 1: and what they called the war against Taser, and CEO
Speaker 1: Rick Smith was in the news defending tasers all the time,
Speaker 1: like when he answered questions on CBS News of.
Speaker 4: The cases that we've seen, we strongly believe and our
Speaker 4: medical experts strongly believed the taser had no causal effect
Speaker 4: in those fatalities.
Speaker 1: In one of his first taser cases, John represented the
Speaker 1: family of a forty year old man named Robert Heston,
Speaker 1: who died after police tasered him twenty five times for
Speaker 1: more than a minute straight. John brought on his friend
Speaker 1: Peter Williamson. They were a team, two men with the
Speaker 1: same job and the same goal do what no legal
Speaker 1: team had done before and defeat Taser in court. They
Speaker 1: even sound similar. Well.
Speaker 8: First of all, they had had tremendous success in litigation
Speaker 8: before John and I got involved. I think was seventy
Speaker 8: six cases where they had been able to kick the
Speaker 8: cases out of court on summary judgment.
Speaker 1: It was actually seventy and zero. But Peter is right.
Speaker 1: So far, no lawyer had ever been able to convince
Speaker 1: a jury or a judge that Taser International was responsible
Speaker 1: for someone's death.
Speaker 8: So they had a certain arrogance and swagger about them that, hey,
Speaker 8: we can't be defeated, right, And who were these guys
Speaker 8: coming into court and you know, fighting us? And as
Speaker 8: I've often said, when I think back on this litigation,
Speaker 8: I wouldn't put it on the same level, but it
Speaker 8: was akin to tobacco litigation. It was a company that
Speaker 8: absolutely refused to concede any point whatsoever, fought everything tooth
Speaker 8: and nail, appealed everything. They would not give an inch
Speaker 8: on any of this. And you know, they got lawyers
Speaker 8: who had the same kind of mentality that you know,
Speaker 8: we're too big, you can't beat us.
Speaker 1: Taser's lawyers and executives had a swagger in part because
Speaker 1: they saw themselves as the good guys, providing a technology
Speaker 1: that made a violent world safer every day. CEO Rick
Speaker 1: Smith explained his personal frustration to a reporter from GQ
Speaker 1: magazine in twenty ten. They quote him saying, we're saving lives,
Speaker 1: don't you get it? And then he compares himself to
Speaker 1: Batman quote this sort of tragic thing where he's trying
Speaker 1: to stop the criminals, but the media and the general
Speaker 1: public think he's a vigilante, a bad guy. But John
Speaker 1: and Peter didn't see Rick Smith as batman. It seemed
Speaker 1: to them that the taser played some role in killing
Speaker 1: their client's son, Robert Heston, So they filled their offices
Speaker 1: with boxes and boxes of documents everything they could learn
Speaker 1: about the company and the weapon.
Speaker 8: I mean, the amount of time we spent researching and studying.
Speaker 8: I can't even calculate the amount of hours we spent.
Speaker 1: They were looking for two pieces of information, proof that
Speaker 1: the taser could kill, and proof that Taser International knew
Speaker 1: about it and didn't warn cops. John and Peter combed
Speaker 1: through what felt like endless pages of medical studies spread
Speaker 1: out around the office, and after a while, they came
Speaker 1: upon a couple of independent studies that suggested the taser
Speaker 1: might cause this thing called acidosis. Simply put, acidosis is
Speaker 1: a dangerous condition where lactic acid builds up in your
Speaker 1: blood from muscle contractions. One taser shot won't do much,
Speaker 1: but a taser shot that lasts sixty seconds that's roughly
Speaker 1: a thousand muscle contractions in one minute. In John and
Speaker 1: Peter's case, Robert Heston had been tasered for over a minute.
Speaker 1: Now they had their strategy. Before they went to trial,
Speaker 1: they had depositions, and this is where they met Rick
Speaker 1: Smith for the first time. John especially remembers reading Rick's resume.
Speaker 1: It was pages long going back to high school.
Speaker 7: And then it had its SAT scores going into college.
Speaker 7: It's college admission scores. There is a guy who was,
Speaker 7: you know, the CEO of a publicly traded company, and
Speaker 7: he's putting his SAT scores on his resume. I wasn't.
Speaker 7: I wasn't that in press because they were lower than mine.
Speaker 1: But you know, as you can imagine, things between the
Speaker 1: two sides got ugly in a hurry.
Speaker 8: I mean, we would get into screaming matches in some
Speaker 8: of these depositions. It was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I've seen over one hundred hours of footage of depositions
Speaker 1: from this case and others, and no doubt they were contentious,
Speaker 1: but there isn't much screaming. I'd say it was more
Speaker 1: like pissing contests.
Speaker 4: We take one last bathroom break. It can be very fascinating.
Speaker 8: Actually I'd prefer not. If you can hold on for
Speaker 8: twenty minutes, then I.
Speaker 4: Can twenty minutes. I cannot assure that I can't answer
Speaker 4: well cognitively and accurately. We've been going for well over
Speaker 4: an hour.
Speaker 8: Oh no, when I've been going for a lot less
Speaker 8: than an hour.
Speaker 1: This time Peter got the sense that to Rick, these
Speaker 1: cases were a waste of his time.
Speaker 8: He never ever showed any empathy for anybody in any
Speaker 8: of these cases. He could have cared less. Yes, it
Speaker 8: was beneath him, for certain. Never, once ever did I
Speaker 8: hear him say anything or do anything that would suggest
Speaker 8: to me that he had any empathy for anybody. He
Speaker 8: only cared about the bottom line of his company, and
Speaker 8: that was it.
Speaker 1: The depositions only made John and Peter want to win more.
Speaker 1: In previous cases against Taser International, other lawyers had tried
Speaker 1: to argue that exposure to the tasers electric current was
Speaker 1: directly causing cardiac arrest, like sticking a fork in a wall,
Speaker 1: but Taser had lots of research to show the electric
Speaker 1: current was too weak to really do that. No lawyer
Speaker 1: had ever won an argument against Taser International by focusing
Speaker 1: on acidosis until John and Peter made their case to
Speaker 1: the jury. They said the company failed to warn cops
Speaker 1: that so many shots in a row could cause acidosis.
Speaker 1: It was an emotional, intense back and forth in the courtroom.
Speaker 1: Taser's lawyers claimed Heston's death was a classic case of
Speaker 1: excited delirium because he was high on methamphetamine when he died.
Speaker 1: They said the Taser had nothing to do with killing him.
Speaker 1: But after listening to both sides make their arguments, the
Speaker 1: jury found the Taser partially responsible for Heston's death. On
Speaker 1: June sixth, two thousand and eight, John and Peter became
Speaker 1: the first lawyers to beat Taser International in a wrongful
Speaker 1: death case. It made headlines across the country, turned John
Speaker 1: and Peter into the Taser lawyers, the guys who finally
Speaker 1: got a court to say on the record that the
Speaker 1: Taser could kill. Their win against Taser brought John and
Speaker 1: Peter more cases families who claimed the Taser killed or
Speaker 1: injured their loved one, and though they'd gotten that first
Speaker 1: big legal win, it was looking like the Heston case
Speaker 1: might be a one off because acidosis didn't actually explain
Speaker 1: all these other cases. Many of these were cases where
Speaker 1: sober or healthy people were shot in the chest, sometimes
Speaker 1: just once or twice, not long enough to cause acidosis.
Speaker 1: So John and Peter went back to the pile of
Speaker 1: research papers, and John noticed something he'd missed before.
Speaker 7: I mean, this would be typical of Taser propaganda that
Speaker 7: maybe fooled me at first.
Speaker 1: It was about how the taser delivers an electric shock.
Speaker 1: Even though it seems like the shock delivered by a
Speaker 1: taser is constant, the electricity actually comes in extremely short,
Speaker 1: fast waves. At the peak of one of those waves,
Speaker 1: the electric current was high. Once John understood this, he
Speaker 1: noticed that Taser's lawyers and master instructors referred to the
Speaker 1: average current when they explained how safe the weapon was.
Speaker 1: Using average current would be like trying to argue your
Speaker 1: way out of a speeding ticket using your average speed.
Speaker 1: Like after you got caught driving eighty five and a
Speaker 1: fifty five, you told the cop that's bullshit, Officer, I
Speaker 1: was just stopped at two red lights. You should measure
Speaker 1: my average speed. John realized the peak current was much higher,
Speaker 1: much more dangerous than the average. This is how the
Speaker 1: company made the taser look weaker than a Christmas tree bulb.
Speaker 1: Before this, he and Peter had been focused on acidosis.
Speaker 1: But now that they understood how strong the taser current was,
Speaker 1: they went back to their research with a new question,
Speaker 1: is the taser's current strong enough to affect the heart?
Speaker 1: And that's when they hit the jackpot. The information they
Speaker 1: were searching for was you guessed it in a pig study.
Speaker 8: I told you I.
Speaker 7: Wasn't going to use profanity in this interview, but I
Speaker 7: just went holy shit.
Speaker 1: Taser International funded a study published in two thousand and
Speaker 1: six by a prominent doctor at the Cleveland Clinic named
Speaker 1: Patrick Chu. Doctor Chew and his team gave five pigs
Speaker 1: cocaine and shocked them to see what would happen. The
Speaker 1: pig hearts were visible on an ultrasound machine, so they
Speaker 1: could see everything during the taser shots. The cocaine didn't
Speaker 1: make the pigs any more likely to have a cardiac arrest,
Speaker 1: but buried in the studies conclusion was something that changed
Speaker 1: everything for John and Peter.
Speaker 7: These studies of these pigs show that there's cardiac capture.
Speaker 7: So I was really shocked that the science actually supported that.
Speaker 1: The taser's electric current was strong enough to override a
Speaker 1: normal heartbeat and speed it up, sometimes causing death.
Speaker 7: That's a much different kind of thing than the acidosis
Speaker 7: because that could just happen instantly.
Speaker 1: This study was exactly what John and Peter needed. Proof
Speaker 1: the company had known about the risk of cardiac capture
Speaker 1: for at least two years. It was buried right there
Speaker 1: in Taser's own research, and they still weren't warning cops.
Speaker 1: Around this time, John had a new client, the family
Speaker 1: of seventeen year old Darryl Turner. Daryl was tasered in
Speaker 1: the chest for thirty seven seconds straight. He collapsed to
Speaker 1: the floor of the grocery store where he worked and died.
Speaker 1: The entire incident was caught on video. It seemed like
Speaker 1: a clear case of taser induced cardiac capture. The taser
Speaker 1: sped Darryl's heart up and killed him. Soon they were
Speaker 1: back at it, meeting with Rick Smith again in depositions.
Speaker 7: So what you're saying, I mean, I'm trying to understand
Speaker 7: what you're saying. What you're saying is that the use
Speaker 7: of the taser had nothing to do with the cardiac
Speaker 7: arrest in this case. Is that your testimony.
Speaker 1: Taser International's argument was that Darryl Turner had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy,
Speaker 1: a condition where the heart muscles thicken and can cause death,
Speaker 1: and that he happened to die because of this condition.
Speaker 1: At the exact moment he got tased. Grilled Rick about it.
Speaker 4: What I'm saying is that, to the best of our knowledge,
Speaker 4: this does not appear that the direct electric effects of
Speaker 4: the taser would be the most likely cause of the
Speaker 4: cardiac arrest, and that this case is were similar to
Speaker 4: the cases of sudden cardiac death in high school athletes.
Speaker 4: It's not a fully understood phenomenon why young, otherwise healthy
Speaker 4: looking people collapse and die during physically stressful events.
Speaker 1: While John was litigating on behalf of Darryl Turner, he
Speaker 1: and Peter kept taking on more cases, and many of
Speaker 1: these cases were headed to trial. Darryl Turner's case wouldn't
Speaker 1: go to trial for another couple of years, but it
Speaker 1: was clear John and Peter found a blueprint that threatened
Speaker 1: the company. The taser could affect the heart, the company
Speaker 1: had the science that proved it. When the Turner case
Speaker 1: finally went before a jury in twenty eleven, John and
Speaker 1: Peter won easily, and it cost the company millions. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, Taser International was staring down the
Speaker 1: barrel of over forty separate lawsuits. If even a handful
Speaker 1: of those cases were as clear cut as Darryl Turner's death,
Speaker 1: Tayser would likely lose a fortune. Even the Canadian government
Speaker 1: was investigating them. After someone died in the Vancouver airport
Speaker 1: after being tased, Peter Williamson decided it was a good
Speaker 1: time to offer Taser a chance at legal surrender.
Speaker 8: We actually approached Mike Brave.
Speaker 1: Mike Brave, one of Taser's lawyers.
Speaker 8: And we said to Mike Brave, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 8: We're going to make you an offer. You resolved the
Speaker 8: few cases at that point that we had, and we'll
Speaker 8: sit down with you and we'll rewrite your warnings for you.
Speaker 8: And if we do that, you're going to insulate yourself
Speaker 8: from all future cases. And you know, you'll settle the
Speaker 8: cases that we have with us, and we'll be done
Speaker 8: and we'll move on in our lives to other things.
Speaker 8: And he said, wow, that's really interesting. I don't know
Speaker 8: how long it was after that, probably maybe a month
Speaker 8: or so after and we got an email from Mike
Speaker 8: Brave and the email just said it just contained three
Speaker 8: initials n f W. That was their response. So at
Speaker 8: that point we said, okay, games on, you know, no
Speaker 8: fucking way. And that decision ended up paying major dividends
Speaker 8: for us. I'll just leave it at that.
Speaker 1: What Peter means is that Taser kept fighting them. If
Speaker 1: the company kept refusing to warn cops, they were going
Speaker 1: to keep paying for it.
Speaker 8: And somebody got the clue, Hey, we've got to do
Speaker 8: something here or we're gonna keep getting sued.
Speaker 1: Taser International would eventually make changes to the design of
Speaker 1: its weapon too, and their words improve safety margins. They
Speaker 1: would issue a new version of the taser that shut
Speaker 1: off automatically after five seconds, so an officer would have
Speaker 1: to repress the trigger again to keep the electric current
Speaker 1: flowing longer than five seconds, and they would reduce the
Speaker 1: electric charge by about half. But before redesigning the weapon,
Speaker 1: on September thirty, two thousand and nine, they issued their
Speaker 1: own version of a warning, a new eighteen page training update.
Speaker 1: And this is that same warning. Matt Masters was so
Speaker 1: surprised to find Taser International was telling cops the risk
Speaker 1: to the heart from the taser is not zero. They
Speaker 1: also said that cops, when possible, should avoid shooting people
Speaker 1: in the chest.
Speaker 2: Baker of the Taser is now telling police officers where
Speaker 2: to shoot. This new requirement is to stay away from
Speaker 2: the head the neck and the chest.
Speaker 4: When an officers.
Speaker 1: Copsy read this bulletin, who had been under the impression
Speaker 1: that the taser was completely safe, were confused. The company
Speaker 1: immediately started getting calls and emails from cops asking for
Speaker 1: more information. This was a huge change for officers. CEO
Speaker 1: Rick Smith scheduled a two thousand and nine version of
Speaker 1: a zoom a conference call with hundreds of police departments
Speaker 1: around the country.
Speaker 2: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Taser
Speaker 2: International Incorporated customer Updates. I would now like to turn
Speaker 2: the call over to mister Rick Smith, CEO of Taser International.
Speaker 1: Lease proceed, Thank you very much.
Speaker 4: I want to start by addressing a couple of questions
Speaker 4: we've been receiving over email. The first one is our
Speaker 4: chest hits with the taser dangerous? And the answer to
Speaker 4: that is definitively no.
Speaker 1: Definitively no. Rick explained this addition to the training wasn't
Speaker 1: because the taser was dangerous. Chest shots were just less
Speaker 1: effective than shots to the back or stomach.
Speaker 7: But the real.
Speaker 4: Of the biggest reason here in my mind is risk
Speaker 4: management and avoiding the controversy.
Speaker 1: He was basically saying, new training recommendations were just to
Speaker 1: keep the greedy lawyers and anti cop critics off all
Speaker 1: their backs. If you still needed to shoot someone in
Speaker 1: the chest with a Taser, the company would be by
Speaker 1: your side. Taser International wasn't backing down or abandoning officers
Speaker 1: in a way.
Speaker 4: Will Taser helped defend officers where there's chest shots involved?
Speaker 4: And the answer is unequivocally yes. We pride ourselves that
Speaker 4: we stand up both for our technology and for officers.
Speaker 4: Here you'll recall a few years ago in Ohio Medical.
Speaker 1: I've listened to this call so many times. Cops were
Speaker 1: looking for the truth, but there wasn't any real dialogue
Speaker 1: about research results or science. I've often wondered how things
Speaker 1: might be different if there had just been an honest conversation.
Speaker 2: So there is an acknowledgement that there's a minute possibility
Speaker 2: that shat to the chats could result in cardiac a risk.
Speaker 4: I think the better way that I would answer that
Speaker 4: not better, But from the company's perspective is we cannot
Speaker 4: prove it's zero, and that means.
Speaker 1: Why didn't Rich just tell them it's rare, but it's
Speaker 1: a real risk. That's not what happened.
Speaker 9: Thanks to all of you a taste for what you've
Speaker 9: done for law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Thank you, hey, and I would say sorry for you
Speaker 4: know this situation. I don't enjoy it either. Unfortunately live
Speaker 4: in a country where you spill hot coffee in your
Speaker 4: laugh and you can see it for ten million dollars,
Speaker 4: So appreciate your understanding and support.
Speaker 1: On the conference call, Rick tells cops that his company
Speaker 1: will always stand by any officer who needs their legal
Speaker 1: support if they still have to shoot someone in the chest.
Speaker 1: But the reality was very different. When Taser International talk
Speaker 1: to cops in that conference call, they downplayed the real
Speaker 1: risks of the weapon. Instead, they said they were just
Speaker 1: writing this warning to help everyone avoid controversy. This is
Speaker 1: a pattern I've noticed in how the company deals with cops.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, they were calling Taser's non lethal and
Speaker 1: warning about the obvious like people falling and the taser
Speaker 1: is flammable, so if you shoot someone covered in gasoline,
Speaker 1: watch out. Over the years, they started calling tasers less lethal.
Speaker 1: They recommended officers not shoot people for longer than fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: recommended they not shoot them in the chest, not shoot
Speaker 1: pregnant women or people running away. They were warning about acidosis,
Speaker 1: cardiac risks, metabolic changes, just about everything, but in training,
Speaker 1: were cops actually getting the message that the taser posed
Speaker 1: any risk. About five years after this conference call, Matt
Speaker 1: Masters thought tasers were one hundred percent safe. That is
Speaker 1: until his own son went into cardiac arrest. Matt wanted
Speaker 1: John Burton to bring Bryce's case against Taser International.
Speaker 3: I called John's office out in California and got through
Speaker 3: to him and just kind of explained to him who
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: He raced through the details. He was convinced that Officer
Speaker 1: Runnels didn't understand how dangerous the taser was when he
Speaker 1: shot Bryce, and that Taser International was legally responsible for
Speaker 1: what had happened. John looked through everything Matt sent him,
Speaker 1: and he knew it wouldn't be an easy case. All
Speaker 1: those warnings Taser International had quietly added to their products,
Speaker 1: they gave the company an out. They could argue, it's
Speaker 1: written right here. You're not supposed to taser someone for
Speaker 1: more than fifteen seconds at a time. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: avoid the chest. It wasn't their fault when a cop
Speaker 1: misused the product. John told Matt Bryce's case wasn't the
Speaker 1: slam dunk Matt thought it was, but he did see
Speaker 1: illegal strategy. Officer Runnels tasered Bryce with an old model
Speaker 1: of the taser that allowed him to hold down the
Speaker 1: trigger as long as he wanted for twenty seconds. Taser
Speaker 1: International had since changed the design and reduced the charge,
Speaker 1: but the company never recalled the older teaser model that
Speaker 1: caused Bryce's cardiac arrest. Taser even stopped selling that model
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, the same year Bryce was shocked. John
Speaker 1: could argue they knew the old version of the taser
Speaker 1: was more dangerous. Taser International was still being negligent, so
Speaker 1: he came up with a plan to sue both Taser
Speaker 1: International and Timothy Runnels at the same time. The more
Speaker 1: defendants at the start, the more information the lawyers can gather,
Speaker 1: and the easier it becomes to figure out who to blame.
Speaker 1: John partnered with some local Kansas City attorneys for Bryce's case,
Speaker 1: and in March of twenty eighteen, they got the chance
Speaker 1: to question Timothy Runnels for the first time. Runnels was
Speaker 1: still serving his prison sentence. A video of the deposition
Speaker 1: shows him wearing green Department of Corrections scrubs. He's calm,
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 9: With the taser if you hold the trigger dead.
Speaker 10: At that point in time, I believed it would do
Speaker 10: a five second cycle.
Speaker 9: It was your understanding that even if you continued to
Speaker 9: hold the triggered in that the person you had tased
Speaker 9: would only receive a five second cycle of current.
Speaker 10: Yes, and our most recent training, they were talking about
Speaker 10: the new Taser, which was an automatic shut off.
Speaker 1: Runnell says he thought he'd been given a smart battery
Speaker 1: that would give his older Taser model an automatic shut off,
Speaker 1: but this wasn't the case. Later, he has asked what
Speaker 1: he learned about chess shots from his most recent training.
Speaker 9: What was your training and information on the potential for
Speaker 9: cardiac arrest as it related to chess shots that were
Speaker 9: close to the heart muscle?
Speaker 10: Chess safts are still appropriate if it's the option.
Speaker 9: Provided that was still okay under the City of Independence.
Speaker 8: Correct.
Speaker 10: Yes.
Speaker 1: More than two hours into the deposition, Taser Internationals lawyer
Speaker 1: takes her turn, and it's hard for me to hear
Speaker 1: the company defending or standing up for Officer Runnels in
Speaker 1: her line of questioning.
Speaker 11: They specifically say, avoid chest shots when possible.
Speaker 10: Right when possible.
Speaker 11: Yes, and that was your understanding. Describe reviewing this training
Speaker 11: bulletin that you received, correct.
Speaker 10: My understanding that any shot is acceptable. It's preferred to
Speaker 10: try to aim for lower center mass.
Speaker 11: Show me where it says any shot is acceptable in.
Speaker 10: This bulletin, it says when possible, and also says preferred.
Speaker 10: We can indicate any area.
Speaker 11: So it doesn't say it's acceptable, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: John Burton was infuriated by Taser's legal strategy. The company
Speaker 1: he'd battled for so long was using the warning he
Speaker 1: pushed them to write to try to win a case
Speaker 1: against him.
Speaker 7: They talked out of both sides of their mouth, so
Speaker 7: it depended on which side of their mouth you were on, right,
Speaker 7: because they were saying, yeah, I look right there. It says,
Speaker 7: you know it could cause cardiac capture, and hearing a
Speaker 7: Taser lawyer questioning law enforcement and raking them over the
Speaker 7: coals about it causing cardiac capture when I had spent
Speaker 7: so much of my life at that point disputing that
Speaker 7: exact point with him.
Speaker 11: It specifically says that to reduce any risk of setting
Speaker 11: cardiac or risk right, that's what we just read in
Speaker 11: the previous.
Speaker 10: Paragraph previous one, Yes, and.
Speaker 11: It says minimize repeated continuous or simultaneous exposures. That's what
Speaker 11: was in the warning that you reviewed and signed off on.
Speaker 11: Right right.
Speaker 1: I wish I could ask Runnels about this moment, but
Speaker 1: he declined to be interviewed. What he did to Bryce
Speaker 1: was terrible, but Runnels was in prison for that crime.
Speaker 1: Taser International, on the other hand, never admitted the taser
Speaker 1: cause Bryce's cardiac arrest. But here was their lawyer throwing
Speaker 1: it back in his face, implying with her questions that
Speaker 1: he didn't heed the warnings. Bryce's cardiac arrest is your fault.
Speaker 1: As Peter Williamson explained to me, writing the warning in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, deflected the liability of the taser
Speaker 1: from the company that made them to the cops who
Speaker 1: used them.
Speaker 8: Here, they were that company was formed in order to,
Speaker 8: you know, do something favorable for law enforcement. Right, We're
Speaker 8: going to give you a device that won't kill people,
Speaker 8: and it ends up killing people. So now what they
Speaker 8: do is they put the onus on the officers.
Speaker 1: Matt Masters watched runnels deposition afterwards.
Speaker 3: It was weird because I thought, well, maybe Runnels missed something,
Speaker 3: but then his sergeant, Blake Moore, said the exact same
Speaker 3: thing in his deposition that we were taught that the
Speaker 3: taser couldn't cause cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1: After the depositions, John Burton spoke with Matt Stacy and Bryce.
Speaker 3: John knew that, like, look, we've got to make a choice.
Speaker 3: We're going to either battle Taser and all their attorneys
Speaker 3: and all the stuff they're gonna throw at you, and
Speaker 3: they're gonna you know, it's gonna be rough.
Speaker 1: In the Hollywood version, Matt Stacy, Bryce, and John Burton
Speaker 1: take on the company in an epic legal battle to
Speaker 1: hold Rick Smith accountable for what they believed was a
Speaker 1: betrayal of cops. The climactic a Few Good Men courtroom
Speaker 1: scene where the Tom Cruise version of John Burton yells,
Speaker 1: did you know that taser could cause a cardiac arrest?
Speaker 1: And the Jack Nicholson version of Rick Smith shouts back,
Speaker 1: your goddamn I'm right I did. It'd be a good movie.
Speaker 1: But Matt, Stacey and Bryce were living in the real world.
Speaker 1: John explained making the Hollywood version real was complicated. Maybe
Speaker 1: they could win that case, but it would be hard,
Speaker 1: and if they lost, well, they didn't want to think
Speaker 1: about how hard Bryce's life would be if they lost,
Speaker 1: there was a much easier victory.
Speaker 3: Do we want to continue this route and go after
Speaker 3: both or do we want to go after the easy money,
Speaker 3: which is Timothy Reynolds and his insurance company.
Speaker 1: They dropped taser from the lawsuit.
Speaker 3: It was much easier to pen it all on Reynolds
Speaker 3: and say he shouldn't have shot the kid and held
Speaker 3: the trigger down for twenty four seconds, which is all true.
Speaker 10: Or not.
Speaker 1: Runnels knew his taser could be lethal, didn't matter. He
Speaker 1: signed training documents that warned him, and he fired the
Speaker 1: taser anyway. The trial lasted about a week. Do you
Speaker 1: remember anyone in the jury in particular? Do you make
Speaker 1: eye contact to anyone on the jury who stood out
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 3: There was a guy that I remember, just a kind
Speaker 3: of a country bumpkin guy. If I remember, he had
Speaker 3: a beard, and he was kind of up in the
Speaker 3: upper left hand corner. He just made eye contact with
Speaker 3: us throughout. I really remember that he was really engaged
Speaker 3: and he seemed just like this guy that I kind
Speaker 3: of was worried to. Honestly, I was kind of worried
Speaker 3: about him. I don't know about that guy, you know,
Speaker 3: like he just looked like he'd just come right out
Speaker 3: from the farm, you know, and he parked his truck
Speaker 3: out in a lot and came in and I just
Speaker 3: I remember thinking that guy is probably not gonna be
Speaker 3: on our side, you know.
Speaker 1: Bryce's lawyers started the try with the dash cam video
Speaker 1: from inside runnels squad car. I was there and saw
Speaker 1: the jury members cover their mouths and shock the US
Speaker 1: Marshal guarding Runnels burst into tears and had to rush
Speaker 1: out of the courtroom after it was over two years earlier.
Speaker 1: In the criminal case, officer Runnels wasn't even charged for
Speaker 1: tasing Bryce and causing his cardiac arrest, only for dropping
Speaker 1: him onto his face. Now, in the civil case, Bryce's
Speaker 1: lawyers had to prove that the taser shot on its
Speaker 1: own was excessive force. Fortunately for the Masters, their attorney
Speaker 1: called an expert witness to the stand, a former cop
Speaker 1: himself who'd seen firsthand how dangerous the taser could be,
Speaker 1: Mike Leonisio, a now retired use of force expert from
Speaker 1: Oakland PD. Mike explained to the jury that every five
Speaker 1: second taser shot was its own individual use of force.
Speaker 1: So even if you thought the first five seconds was reasonable,
Speaker 1: the next fifteen seconds of taser shock was unnecessary. Ronalds
Speaker 1: should only have tasered Bryce for as long as he
Speaker 1: needed to get him into handcuffs. Today, looking back at
Speaker 1: the situation, Mike isn't sure what Ronald's knew about the weapon.
Speaker 1: Do you think he understood what might happen by tasering
Speaker 1: Bryce in the chest?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, and I say that based on
Speaker 2: my review of all the other case materials, I don't
Speaker 2: think that he understood that that weapon was capable of
Speaker 2: affecting the human heart. And I think, unfortunately, there's still
Speaker 2: a lot of officers out there today who, because of
Speaker 2: their department training, don't understand the capabilities of this weapon.
Speaker 1: After Mike came Stacy, Ronald's lawyer, had tried to make
Speaker 1: it seem like Bryce wasn't hurt so badly, that he
Speaker 1: was living a normal life. But when Stacey took the stand,
Speaker 1: she just described how Bryce had changed the memory loss,
Speaker 1: mood swings, insomnia, the deep and terrifying depression. She told
Speaker 1: the jurors what Bryce was like before this all happened,
Speaker 1: and how Bryce told her he would give anything to
Speaker 1: have that version of himself back. After several emotional days,
Speaker 1: the jury filed out to make their decision. Timothy Runnels
Speaker 1: guilty again, Bryce Masters awarded six point five million dollars.
Speaker 1: Matt made eye contact with the guy on the jury,
Speaker 1: the one who he thought might go against them.
Speaker 3: If I remember, I think he even winked at me like,
Speaker 3: you know, like gotcha, you know type thing.
Speaker 5: He had made it and it wasn't all for nothing,
Speaker 5: and we didn't end up with, you know, nothing for
Speaker 5: Bryce's future, nothing to make sure he was taken care of.
Speaker 5: And it was quite literally, you know, pay day.
Speaker 1: They had imagined this moment for years. Rick Smith at
Speaker 1: the defense table and listening as the jury found his
Speaker 1: company guilty. But Rick wasn't there. Timothy Runnolds was alone.
Speaker 3: I used to think when we first started that there
Speaker 3: was this reckoning coming. You know, it's hard for me,
Speaker 3: like because I know Rick Smith is a father. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's crazy numbers out there. At least a thousand people
Speaker 3: have died from him tasers. You know, how do you
Speaker 3: live with yourself like you do you live with yourself that.
Speaker 8: I'm just I'm saving lives.
Speaker 10: Oh you're really.
Speaker 3: You're not saving lives one hundred percent?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like they got away with it a
Speaker 1: little bit. Oh yeah, by design, he got over there.
Speaker 10: Really.
Speaker 1: Rick Smith loves to talk about his company using science
Speaker 1: fiction and superhero culture. Rick started out as Captain Kirk,
Speaker 1: the altruistic leader protecting a utopian society. Then as people
Speaker 1: died from the Taser, he talked about himself as Batman,
Speaker 1: a dark hero fighting for justice. But in the best
Speaker 1: superhero stories, the villains think they're the heroes. Next time
Speaker 1: on Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 4: We want to be building technology for the society we
Speaker 4: all want to live in, and we don't want this
Speaker 4: stuff to get misused.
Speaker 10: At one point, Rick Smith, the CEO of the company,
Speaker 10: accused me of costing them more than five hundred million
Speaker 10: dollars in shareholder value.
Speaker 2: Then next thing I know, I'm getting these anonymous written complaints.
Speaker 3: My thing would be the question, why didn't you tell
Speaker 3: the truth from the beginning because you knew.
Speaker 1: Absolute Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number one. Be sure to
Speaker 1: follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and threads at Lava
Speaker 1: for Good. Follow me at Nick Beredini on Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker 1: Taser Incorporated is written and produced by me Nick Beredini.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Wortis.
Speaker 1: Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer.
Speaker 1: Hannah Biel is our writer and producer. Joe Plored is
Speaker 1: our sound designer. Music composed and produced by Alexis Quadrado
Speaker 1: at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Marianne mckowne is our editor.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Donya Suleman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
Speaker 1: of marketing and operations. Our social media director is is
Speaker 1: Marie guard Rama, our Social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons,
Speaker 1: and our art director is Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by
Speaker 1: Matt Strapp.