Parents of inmate who died in Denver jail hire legal help - The Denver Post

Parents of inmate who died in Denver jail hire legal help - The Denver Post

The parents of a 56-year-old man who died in the new Denver county jail have hired a law firm to represent them.

The firm of Killmer, Lane & Newman requested a meeting with officials last week on behalf of the Rev. Benjamin Booker Sr. and Roxey Walton, parents of Marvin Booker, who died July 9 in the booking area of the jail after being restrained.

In a July 14 letter to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, attorney Darold W. Killmer wrote that the family hired the law firm after their "desperate" attempts to learn the circumstances of Marvin Booker's death were "thwarted."

Killmer requested copies of all surveillance tapes of Marvin Booker's initial arrest and his treatment inside the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Facility as well as copies of all evidence related to his death.

The materials were requested immediately, Killmer wrote, to avoid what happened in the case of a previous client, Emily Rice, 24, who bled to death in jail from injuries sustained in a drunken-driving crash in 2006.

Surveillance videos and documents were lost or destroyed in Rice's case, in which Denver Health Medical Center and the city of Denver settled separately with Rice's family in 2008 for a total of about $7 million.

In Marvin Booker's case, two detainees told The Denver Post that he was restrained after he disobeyed an order not to retrieve shoes that he left near the chair where he had been sleeping about 3 a.m.

Deputies held him while he was repeatedly Tasered and he was left in a holding cell.