Police departments in Minnesota can no longer offer training that includes the use of “excited delirium,” a decades-old diagnosis used by law enforcement that has been debunked by the medical community in recent years.
The change in law is one of many provisions included in the judiciary and public safety supplemental budget bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz at the end of the session in late May. The package includes millions of dollars in grants for services targeting crime victims, as well as changes to statutes ranging from traffic stop reform to law enforcement training requirements.
This month, MinnPost is highlighting a specific provision each week.
Excited delirium refers to the description of a person’s state of extreme agitation, aggression, excitability and distress, sometimes in conjunction with drug use. The term has been widely used in the past by law enforcement, paramedics and medical examiners to describe people who had died in police custody.
The term is not listed in the most current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and many medical associations have come out and rejected its validity. The American Medical Association in 2021 instituted a policy opposing excited delirium’s use as a medical diagnosis, citing reports that show the term has been used to justify excessive force by police and disproportionately appears in cases where Black men die in police custody.
Related | Minnesota police can no longer ask why a driver thinks they’ve been pulled over
“There’s no set of symptoms or diagnostic criteria that can prove this diagnosis,” said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB). “It’s nonsensical to have a disease or an ailment that only the people who have law enforcement encounters experience.”
The original bill was carried by DFL Rep. Jessica Hanson of Burnsville, who was approached with the idea by Gross after Gross had seen California had passed a ban and got to work to ensure Minnesota did the same.
“We want to make sure that deaths from excessive force and particularly deaths involving any kind of asphyxia are not blamed on a nonsensical, mythical diagnosis and that officers are actually held accountable for their own actions,” she said.
The term first appeared in the 1980’s, when a medical examiner in Miami-Dade County in Florida used it to describe the cause of deaths for 19 Black women suspected of being prostitutes who were found with cocaine in their systems. Since then, law enforcement has widely used the term in as an explanation when someone has died in their custody.
In 2019, 23-year-old Elijah McCain, who was Black, was forcibly restrained and injected with ketamine by paramedics in Colorado. McCain died in their custody and the emergency responders cited excited delirium as the cause. Attorneys for the Minneapolis Police officers involved in George Floyd’s murder used the term in their legal defense as well.
Since then, more experts in the legal field are writing about why the use of the faulty diagnosis is problematic and rooted in racism, said Rachel Moran, founder of the University of St. Thomas School of Law’s Criminal and Juvenile Defense Clinic. As more states ban the use of the term and the public becomes more aware of its rejection by most major medical associations, the hope it will stop being used to justify deaths in police custody.
“I think it’s entirely possible that lawyers will be better equipped to explain why it’s not a real diagnosis, and some judges will just prevent people altogether from using this as an excuse,” Moran said. “The more awareness, the better.”
More on the provisions included in the judiciary and public safety supplemental budget bill:
- Court decision ending cannabis odor as sole reason for search codified by Minnesota lawmakers
- Minnesota police can no longer ask why a driver thinks they’ve been pulled over
- Minnesota railways will soon be patrolled by licensed police officers
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
