Denver District Attorney Beth McCann’s announcement said she isn’t asking a grand jury to reconsider homicide charges but is focused on a “limited aspect of the case.” The decision is based on new information raised by a 2014 federal civil rights lawsuit that Marvin Booker’s family filed, she said.
A federal jury in the case found the five deputies used excessive force against the 56-year-old man when they shocked him with a Taser while he was handcuffed, put him in a sleeper hold and lay on top of him. The $6 million settlement that followed was among the largest in Denver’s history.
The grand jury investigation will focus on what happened after Booker died in the downtown jail, McCann said. “This will allow for a complete and thorough review of new questions that have been raised about conduct that took place after the death of Mr. Booker,” she said in statement.
A spokeswoman for the Denver Department of Public Safety didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment on Thursday afternoon.
In 2010, then-District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said the deputies were justified in the force they used. Morrissey wrote that Booker should have complied with deputies’ orders.
McCann didn’t provide more detail about her concerns with deputies’ actions after Booker’s death in Thursday’s statement.
But in a letter that Booker’s family wrote to McCann earlier this year, they requested another look at the case. The letter largely focused on whether a sheriff’s sergeant turned over the Taser she used on Booker or gave investigators reviewing his death a different device.
Darold Killmer, an attorney for Booker’s family, said data stored on the Taser devices and other evidence obtained during the civil lawsuit proves the latter.
Video footage also showed the five sheriff’s deputies talking in the sergeant’s office after Booker died but before each was interviewed about what had happened, violating department policy, Killmer said.
Booker’s family is “extremely gratified” at McCann’s decision, he said.
“This is a sea change in the approach of the district attorney’s office in Denver,” Killmer said. “I think it sends a powerful message to the police and the sheriff’s department that it’s new day. The Denver community deserves this type of protection, and finally we’re getting it.”