EXCITED DELIRIUM

A disturbing study of how racialized pseudo-science led to “the medicalization of police violence.”

In a synthesis of academic critique and memoir that incorporates elements of postcolonial and religious studies, Beliso-De Jesús, a professor of American studies at Princeton, unearths the little-known narrative of how law enforcement and public health officials found reciprocal benefit in a dubious theory: “The haunting started when I was researching the policing of Afro-Latiné religions and came across a little-known cause-of-death classification called excited delirium syndrome.” The author calls out Charles Wetli, a Miami medical examiner who “coined the term excited delirium syndrome in 1985,” arguing that the symptoms “resulted from low-level drug toxicity and purportedly led to the death of people in police custody.” However, notes the author, “almost all these deaths occur during police interactions, and they almost always involve police use of force.” Her judgment of Wetli’s role is appropriately unsparing: “Wetli blamed the victims of police violence, who ended up on his medical examiner’s table, for their own deaths,” and he also dismissed serial killings of Black women as related to drug use. Structurally, Beliso-De Jesús ranges widely, reflecting her urgency and personal investment and also the complexity of related topics, including the role of the 1980 Mariel boatlift of Cuban immigrants and more recent events like the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. The author uncovers a cottage industry of so-called expert testimony, absolving police in excessive force cases by relying on Wetli’s discredited theories and supported by entities like the manufacturer of the allegedly nonlethal Taser. “Excited delirium syndrome seems designed to distract from this type of excessive use of force,” she writes in an occasionally repetitive yet dramatic discussion featuring intriguing true-crime aspects.

A unique addition to the literature on structural racism and police brutality.