Raymond Smoot

An inmate at an overcrowded and long-troubled jail died after a fight with guards. An attorney for his family said he was beaten and stomped to death in his cell.

Six guards were placed on leave Monday while state investigators look into Raymond Smoot’s death, which was ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner’s office.

He was out of his cell asking to talk to a guard supervisor about his medications. A diabetic with high blood pressure, Smoot had been without his medications.

A guard had trouble getting Smoot back in his cell Saturday night at the state-run Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center, and he called for backup, authorities said. A struggle broke out and 25 to 30 guards were involved, said Archer Blackwell, a spokesman for the guards union.

Smoot, 52, was injured and died at a hospital.

Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, declined to release details of the fight.

But Warren Brown, an attorney for Smoot’s family, said Smoot was “beaten and stomped while in his cell by a number of officers.”

“It’ll be clear that this institution is operating with an absence of rules and regulations on how to deal with these types of procedures,” Brown said.

The Baltimore branch of the NAACP will request an FBI investigation, the civil rights organization said in a news release issued late Monday.

‘Overwhelmed and broken’ 

Since 2002, 27 inmates have died at central booking, according to state Sen. Verna Jones, who called for a task force to investigate the jail, saying Smoot’s death “illustrates a system that is overwhelmed and broken.”

People arrested in Baltimore are brought to central booking to be identified, fingerprinted and photographed before they have court hearings.

Opened in 1995, central booking was designed to process up to 45,000 people a year. Last year, it processed about 100,000. Cells designed to hold five to eight people are frequently jammed with as many as 18. Some inmates nap under toilets. Sick people without medications get sicker, sometimes vomiting on others.

Last month, a judge ordered that all inmates held longer than 24 hours be set free.

Smoot had been in central booking since May 4 on a theft charge, awaiting trial in June. He was initially held on $5,000 bail, which was later reduced. His family said they had intended to bail him out on Monday.

Bruised, bloody 

Delvonna Smoot, Smoot’s niece, said she saw her uncle’s body and his face was bruised and bloody.

“The doctors said they’ve never seen another human being beat somebody as bad as they beat my uncle, never,” she said.

The incident is the latest problem for Maryland’s troubled prison system. An inmate died last year after a violent encounter with prison staff. Another was allegedly strangled in February on a prison bus, leading an inmate to be charged and prison officials to fire three officers and discipline two others.