Marvin Booker’s enlarged heart and chronic cocaine use made him highly vulnerable to sudden cardiac death even before he began battling deputies at the Denver jail, a physician testified Tuesday.
“I think he was facing imminent mortality even before he started resisting,” testified Dr. Phillip Wolf, a cardiologist who practiced medicine 25 years before teaching another 25 years at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Wolf was one of several witnesses testifying on behalf of the city of Denver in the Booker trial in federal court. Other defense witnesses testified that a carotid restraint hold did not contribute to Booker’s death and that he was stunned by a Taser for less than 5 seconds.
Wolf testified that two examinations of Booker’s heart in 2001 and 2008 confirmed that his heart was severely damaged with about half the function of a normal heart.
Booker was 56 when he died July 9, 2010, at the Denver jail. His family has sued the city, claiming deputies used excessive force.
Also, at the time of Booker’s death, his heart weighed nearly twice as much as a normal heart, Wolf testified. Booker was also suffering from micro-vessel disease with small blood vessels severely narrowed to the point of blockage, Wolf testified.
Dr. Gary Vilke, an emergency-room physician at the University of California Medical School, testified that a carotid choke on Booker did not cause damage to Booker’s throat.
“The neck hold was not causative of death,” Vilke said.
Dr. Jeffrey Ho, a Minnesota researcher on the impact of Tasers on the body, said that Booker could not have been stunned for 5 seconds because his leg was not bruised.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, kmitchell@denverpost.com or ,
