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Six New York prison workers have been indicted for second-degree murder in the beating death of an incarcerated man who had been handcuffed, while four others were charged with lesser crimes.
The beating of Robert Brooks by multiple officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in December was caught on body cameras, triggering widespread outrage and calls for justice.
Some of the corrections officers appeared in a Utica court in handcuffs while a judge heard pleas and considered bond. The special prosecutor, Onondaga county district attorney William Fitzpatrick, began to detail the charges in court Thursday afternoon.
Prison guards Nicholas Anzalone, David Kingsley, Anthony Farina, Christopher Walrath and Mathew Galliher were among the people charged with second-degree murder, according to court documents. The name of the sixth person charged was redacted, so it’s unclear whether they were a guard.
All six were also charged with first-degree manslaughter, meaning prosecutors believe they are criminally liable for the conduct of others.
After some of the corrections officers were released on bond, one man said: “This is not justice, judge. These people killed a Black man,” as he left the courtroom. One woman was removed after shouting :“Murder, murder.”
Body-camera video shows officers pummeling Brooks, whose hands are cuffed behind his back. Officers strike him in the chest with a shoe and lift him by the neck and drop him. The video recorded on the night of 9 December has no sound, but the guards meting out the punishment and watching it appear unconcerned. Brooks, 43, died the next day.
An autopsy report issued by the county medical examiner’s office in January concluded that Brooks’s death had been caused by compression of the neck and multiple blunt-impact injuries, and that the manner of death was determined to be a homicide, according to Brooks’s family’s attorneys.
Corrections officer Matthew Galliher was further charged with gang assault. Three other prison guards were charged with lesser manslaughter offenses, meaning that prosecutors believe they did not commit murder, but were criminally responsible for the actions of others to some degree. Those include Michael Mashaw, Michael Fisher and David Walters.
Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, first announced the murder charges early Thursday afternoon in a statement.
“Robert Brooks should be alive today. The brutal attack on Mr Brooks was sickening, and I immediately moved to terminate the employment of those involved. Now, the perpetrators have been rightfully charged with murder and State Police are making arrests,” she said.
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Hochul’s announcement of the murder charges came on the fourth day of a wildcat strike, in which at least some corrections officers are refusing to enter their shifts at 36 correctional facilities across the state, according to prison officials.
“This incident is a sobering reminder of the challenges facing our correctional system. I’ve worked with Commissioner [Daniel] Martuscello [of New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision] on safety reforms, including installing new security cameras, strengthening the Office of Special Investigations and increasing compensation for our hard-working correction officers,” Hochul said in Thursday’s statement.
Hochul had ordered state officials to initiate proceedings to fire more than a dozen employees implicated in the attack on Brooks.
Brooks had been serving a 12-year prison sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He arrived at the prison 200 miles (320km) north-west of New York City only hours before the beating, after being transferred from another nearby facility, officials said.
Brooks’s son, Robert Brooks Jr, claimed in a federal lawsuit filed in January that his father’s attackers “systematically and casually beat him to death” and that the prison system tolerates violence.
