Prosecutors investigating the loss of life of a handcuffed man who was punched and roughed up by guards in an upstate New York jail had been scheduled to seem in court docket Thursday with the attainable announcement of legal expenses.
The beating of Robert Brooks by a number of officers at Marcy Correctional Facility in December was caught on body-cameras, triggering widespread outrage and requires justice.
The workplace of the particular prosecutor, Onondaga County District Legal professional William Fitzpatrick, mentioned a “noteworthy improvement” within the case could be introduced earlier than a state decide Thursday afternoon, however they might not present particulars. Fitzpatrick has beforehand mentioned he wouldn’t touch upon the investigation till a grand jury has acted.
Physique digicam video exhibits officers pummeling Brooks, whose fingers are cuffed behind his again. Officers strike him within the chest with a shoe and elevate him by the neck and drop him. The video recorded on the night time of Dec. 9 has no sound, however the guards meting out the punishment and watching it seem unconcerned. Brooks, 43, died the subsequent day.
An post-mortem report issued by the county medical expert’s workplace in January concluded that Brooks’ loss of life was brought on by compression of the neck and a number of blunt affect accidents and that the style of loss of life was decided to be murder, in response to Brooks household attorneys.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered state officers to provoke proceedings to fireside greater than a dozen staff implicated within the assault.
Brooks had been serving a 12-year jail sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He arrived on the jail 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of New York Metropolis solely hours earlier than the beating after being transferred from one other close by facility, officers mentioned.
Brooks’ 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 jail system tolerates violence.
Even earlier than Brooks’ loss of life, staff on the medium-security jail had been accused of abusing incarcerated folks.
Fitzpatrick took over the case as a particular prosecutor after state Legal professional Normal Letitia James recused herself, citing her workplace’s illustration of a number of implicated officers in separate civil lawsuits. These staff had beforehand been accused of both participating in earlier beatings of inmates or letting them proceed.
A watchdog group reported “rampant abuse by staff” at Marcy after interviewing folks incarcerated there in October 2022. The Correctional Affiliation of New York mentioned they had been instructed of bodily assaults in areas with out cameras, comparable to between the gates, in vans and in showers. A guard instructed one new arrival that this was a ”‘hands-on facility,’ we’re going to place fingers on you if we don’t like what you’re doing,” in response to the report.
