A doctor testified Wednesday that different forms of restraints used against jail inmate Marvin Booker, including shocking him with a Taser and putting him in a carotid sleeper hold, did not cause his death.
Booker, a street preacher, was the “poster boy” for sudden cardiac death, said Dr. Steven Karch, a retired cardiac pathologist from Berkeley, Calif. Booker’s health was so compromised that he could just as easily have died while sitting at a bus stop, Karch said.
A video of Karch’s testimony was played at the Booker trial Wednesday in federal court because he had to testify at another trial this week.
During cross-examination, Karch, who was paid $750 per hour by Denver, said that of the many cases he has given testimony for, he has never testified for a plaintiff in an excessive-force case against law enforcement.
claiming that he was killed because of excessive force after attempting to retrieve his shoes before going into an isolation cell on July 9, 2010.
Closing arguments in the case are expected to begin later this week.
In contradiction to an autopsy report that said Booker’s death was a homicide, Karch testified that the carotid neck hold, handcuffing behind his back, a Taser stun and being in a prone position did not cause Booker’s death.
Given Booker’s chronic cocaine abuse, an enlarged heart and various ailments, including emphysema, it is unlikely that had a nurse been called more urgently and attempted resuscitation after he stopped breathing that he could have been saved, Karch testified.
“If he had a normal heart, it would have been more likely (he could have been saved), but he didn’t,” Karch said.
Karch cited a late-1990s study of 99 cocaine users who died. He said their average age was 36.2 years and pointed out that Booker lived 20 years longer than the average chronic cocaine user.
Under cross-examination, and animated state could have contributed to his fate, but he repeatedly emphasized that Booker “was a ticking time bomb.”
Karch also agreed that a person’s natural physiological response to pain, including being stunned, is “you withdraw.” But he added that he didn’t believe Booker was effectively stunned by a Taser because no mark was found.
He added that most sudden cardiac deaths happen in the early morning.
Booker died sometime in the minutes after four deputies and a sergeant restrained him around 3:35 a.m.
