UTICA, N.Y. — Prosecutors investigating the death of a handcuffed man who was punched and roughed up by guards in an upstate New York prison were scheduled to appear in court Thursday with the possible announcement of criminal charges.
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.
The office of the special prosecutor, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, said a “noteworthy development” in the case would be announced before a state judge Thursday afternoon, but they would not provide details. Fitzpatrick has previously said he would not comment on the investigation until a grand jury has acted.
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 Dec. 9 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’ death was caused by compression of the neck and multiple blunt impact injuries and that the manner of death was determined to be homicide, according to Brooks family attorneys.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered state officials to initiate proceedings to fire more than a dozen employees implicated in the attack.
Brooks had been serving a 12-year prison sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He arrived at the prison 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of New York City only hours before the beating after being transferred from another nearby facility, officials said.
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 prison system tolerates violence.
Even before Brooks’ death, employees at the medium-security prison had been accused of abusing incarcerated people.
Fitzpatrick took over the case as a special prosecutor after state Attorney General Letitia James recused herself, citing her office’s representation of several implicated officers in separate civil lawsuits. Those employees had previously been accused of either taking part in previous beatings of inmates or letting them continue.
A watchdog group reported “rampant abuse by staff” at Marcy after interviewing people incarcerated there in October 2022. The Correctional Association of New York said they were told of physical assaults in locations without cameras, such as between the gates, in vans and in showers. A guard told one new arrival that this was a ”‘hands-on facility,’ we’re going to put hands on you if we don’t like what you’re doing,” according to the report.