The suspect woke up with a chipped tooth, a hammering heart, a bruise the size of a grapefruit around his groin and more on his stomach, wrists and sides. As he regained consciousness, nurses wanted to stick tools down his throat, which was so swollen Penn's voice would come out in a thready scratch for the next three weeks. The ICU nurses told him East Ridge police officers brought him to the hospital. "One of the nurses told me I ought to be glad to be here, that they thought I was going to die," Penn said in a recent phone interview. "The police choked me. They tased me."
