The relatives of a 56-year-old man who died in the new downtown Denver jail early Friday morning say he was a small, passive man and they believe an independent death investigation is warranted.
Marvin Louis Booker, 56, was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia about 1 a.m. Friday and was pronounced dead at 4:33 a.m.
“It’s kind of suspicious. I believe they probably beat him to death,” said George Booker, Marvin Booker’s cousin. “There have been a lot of incidents where the police brutalized people and then lied about it. They need to assign some kind of special prosecutor.”
Booker said his cousin was a short, older man and couldn’t have put up much resistance. According to booking records, Marvin Booker was 5 feet 5 and weighed 175 pounds.
“It’s surprising this happened to him,” Booker said. “Marvin was intimidating to nobody.”
He said he has called the jail, but authorities have not told him what happened to his cousin.
“They’re being awful hush-hush right now,” Booker said.
Denver sheriff’s Capt. Frank Gale said Saturday that no one from the sheriff’s department will be involved in the death investigation, so there will not be a conflict of interest.
“It is being investigated independently because the Denver Police Department and the Denver District Attorney’s Office is investigating,” Gale said.
He added that the Denver medical examiner’s office will perform an autopsy and determine the cause of death.
Gale said that Booker was in the intake room, an open seating area, of the new Van Cise-Simonet Detention Facility, when deputies had to use force because of some type of altercation. A female sheriff’s officer was treated and released for injuries she suffered in the incident, Gale said.
George Booker said that years earlier, his cousin had numerous brushes with the law, but was straightening out his life and planning to become a minister like his father, Benjamin Booker of Tennessee.
Booker said his cousin told him it was difficult growing up as the son of a minister.
Marvin Booker, who was never married and had no children, had recently been employed at a shop where he worked with marble.
He also volunteered at local churches to help the poor, George Booker said. He would often recite Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in a way that was almost as inspiring as the reverend was, he said.
“He was turning his life around,” George Booker said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
