Concerns Over Jail Stun Guns Spark Debate

Deterrent to violence in the courtroom or torturer’s device?

Those are the conflicting descriptions in a debate over use of electric stun belts on prisoners, including some inmates in Los Angeles County.

Stun belts, locked around the waists of troublesome defendants, enable a bailiff to deliver a 50,000-volt jolt of electricity from a safe distance--using a device such as a TV remote control--if the prisoner, for instance, tries to assault the judge or a witness. The shock is meant to immobilize a defendant without injury.

To deputies assigned to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which provides security in county courtrooms, the belts are a helpful tool. Defendants fitted with the belts are less likely to act up, thus reducing the chance that deputies will have to wrestle a violent defendant to the floor, sheriff’s officials contend.

“It’s an excellent deterrent,” Sheriff’s Lt. Roger Mayberry said. “Since it’s worn under a defendant’s clothes, it’s not visible and [when activated] it can incapacitate the wearer.”

Amnesty International, however, has called for more medical testing of the belts.

The global civil rights organization is concerned over possible misuse of the belts by law enforcement officials as well as export to countries where police use electroshock weapons for torture, said William Schulz, executive director of Amenesty International U.S.A.

Elizabeth Ryan, spokeswoman for Stun Tech Inc., the Cleveland-based manufacturer of the “REACT” belt, says its devices are not sold outside the United States. About 1,100 of the $700 belts are in use throughout the country, she said.

Officers have pushed the button 14 times since Stun Tech began manufacturing the belts nearly six years ago, Ryan said. The belts have also been unintentionally activated nine times, she said, all without lasting injury to the wearers.

So far in Los Angeles County, where the belts have been in use for about two years, sheriff’s deputies have activated the belt just once on a defendant who became unruly after being sentenced, Mayberry said.

“To my knowledge we’ve had no injuries created by the belt,” he said.

According to Mayberry, the county’s 60 belts are in use somewhere in the system just about every weekday, either while transporting a defendant from County Jail or as an extra security precaution inside a courtroom.

Deputies complete special training before they are put in charge of the belt’s remote-control device, he said.

Sheriff’s officials make recommendations to the court on who should wear a belt based on a number of factors, including whether the defendant is high risk, combative, an escape risk, or if a case involves multiple defendants who possess at least one of the above traits.

Defendants in the San Fernando Valley-based “Bryant Family” drug and murder case, for instance, wore the bulging belts under their clothes during their 1995 trial.

The belts were never activated on the defendants, three of whom were later convicted and sentenced to be executed for the 1988 slayings of two rivals and two witnesses, including a 2 1/2-year-old girl.

It is the cases in which the belt has been used, however, that have captured the attention of officials at Amnesty International, which released a report last month on the spread of electroshock weapons.

The report expressed concern over the use of stun belts on U.S. prisoners, saying the belts appeared to be designed to humiliate and could be misused by officials.