By Alan Blinder in the New York Times, Taser Use in Arrest Leads to Suit in Georgia – NYTimes.com. which begins:
ATLANTA — More than four months after a 24-year-old man died following an arrest in which the police used Taser devices on him up to 13 times, his family Thursday filed a wrongful-death suit against the Atlanta suburb of East Point and two of its former officers.
The family of Gregory L. Towns Jr., who was arrested on April 11 after he fled on foot from officers who wanted to question him about a domestic dispute, said in the lawsuit that police officers in East Point had “acted with malice and a deliberate intent to cause grievous bodily injury, pain and death” to Mr. Towns.
Amid national attention to police shootings involving black men, Mr. Towns’s death seemed certain to provoke new discussion about the use in law enforcement of Tasers, which critics have implicated in hundreds of deaths nationwide. The lawsuit came ahead of a decision by a prosecutor here over whether to pursue charges against any police officers in connection with Mr. Towns’s death. Mr. Towns was black, as were both of the officers named in the lawsuit.