N.Y. Corrections Officers Charged With Murder in Death of Robert Brooks

Six New York corrections officers were charged with murder and other crimes on Thursday in the killing of a state prison inmate, whom they are accused of beating to death while he was handcuffed in an assault captured by officers’ body-worn cameras.

Three other corrections officers were charged with manslaughter for failing to halt the fatal attack on the man, Robert Brooks. A ninth officer was charged with evidence tampering for cleaning the area where the beating occurred in an effort to remove bloodstains.

The charges were announced in Oneida County Court by the special prosecutor in the case, William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney.

Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a statement expressing approval for the murder counts before the charges were unsealed. “The brutal attack on Mr. Brooks was sickening, and I immediately moved to terminate the employment of those involved,” she said. “Now, the perpetrators have been rightfully charged with murder and State Police are making arrests.”

Mr. Brooks’s son, Robert Brooks Jr., said the murder counts were appropriate but inadequate given what had happened to his father, who was attacked late on Dec. 9 at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica and declared dead early the next day.

“Nothing can bring him back to us,” Robert Brooks Jr., 27, said in a statement. “Nothing can return to us what these men have taken away. Still, these indictments are a necessary and important step toward accountability. These men killed my father, on camera. All the world could see what happened.”

In a separate statement, Mr. Brooks’s father, Robert Ricks, called the charges “an important step on the long road to accountability and justice.”

“I truly believe that my son died so that others may live,” Mr. Ricks said. “The first step towards accountability is obtaining convictions of those who murdered him.”

Five of the officers charged with second-degree murder, Nicholas Anzalone, David Kingsley, Anthony Farina, Christopher Walrath and Mathew Galliher, pleaded not guilty at arraignments Thursday afternoon.

All five were charged with manslaughter as well. Officer Galliher was also charged with gang assault, and Officer Anzalone was charged with filing a false report. The name of the sixth officer charged with murder and other crimes was redacted from the indictment. He is scheduled to be arraigned next week, Mr. Fitzpatrick said at a news conference.

The three officers charged solely with manslaughter, Michael Mashaw, Michael Fisher and David Walters, also pleaded not guilty, as did the officer charged with trying to clean up the bloodstains, Nicholas Gentile.

Judge Robert Bauer set bail at $100,000 cash or $250,000 bond for the officers charged with murder and $50,000 cash or $100,000 bond for Officers Mashaw, Fisher and Walters. Officer Gentile was released without bail. All nine are scheduled to return to court next month.

Lawyers for the officers either did not immediately respond to requests for comment or could not be reached on Thursday.

The union that represents the officers denounced the attack on Mr. Brooks shortly after it became public. On Thursday, a spokesman for the union, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, reiterated that condemnation.

“As we stated in December, the actions of those staff were incomprehensible and not reflective of the majority of our membership,” the spokesman, James Miller, said. Still, he added, the accused officers “should be afforded the same presumption of innocence that every citizen is afforded until proven guilty.”

The streets around the courthouse had been closed on Thursday as people poured into the building for the arraignments. Relatives and friends of Mr. Brooks filled the courtroom gallery, the hallways outside and an adjacent room that was opened up to accommodate the overflow.

Court officers struggled to maintain order as spectators jeered at the defendants or questioned why they were being offered bail. When the defendants were told to surrender their passports, people in the gallery shouted: “Surrender his gun, too.”

“How do you live with yourself?” someone shouted at Officer Galliher.

At another point, a supporter of one of the officers was shouted down in the overflow room as she tried to speak.

“Are you going to beat me up, too?”

“You are killing our kids.”

The target of their ire, an older woman with a cane and a hat bearing a bald eagle patch, was forced to retreat to the back of the courtroom.

The charges were unsealed amid a growing crisis in New York’s prison system. Wildcat strikes by officers across the state stretched into a fourth day on Thursday, in defiance of a judge’s order that the work stoppages were illegal and that the strikers must return to work immediately.

The striking officers have argued that they are protesting what they say are severe staffing shortages, hazardous working conditions and excessive forced overtime.

Some prisoners’ rights advocates accused the striking officers of trying to distract attention from their colleagues’ role in Mr. Brooks’s death. The Legal Aid Society called the strikes a “deplorable” effort to “deflect from the brutal killing of Mr. Robert Brooks.”

At the time he was attacked, Mr. Brooks was serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2017 in Monroe County to first-degree assault in the stabbing of a former girlfriend, according to court documents and prison records.

Ms. Hochul said two weeks ago that an autopsy had determined that Mr. Brooks’s death was a homicide. The indictment charging the officers said he had injuries to his head, neck, hyoid bone, thyroid cartilage, torso, liver, spleen and testicles “as well as having his air passages restricted and choking on his own blood, thereby resulting in his death.”

The attack was filmed by body-worn cameras belonging to Officers Galliher and Fisher and two of their colleagues. Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, publicly released the footage captured by the cameras. She described it as “shocking and disturbing.”

Ms. James subsequently recused herself from the case, citing her office’s defense of several of those implicated in Mr. Brooks’s killing, including Officers Anzalone and Farina, in lawsuits filed by other prisoners. Mr. Fitzpatrick was then appointed as special prosecutor.

The body camera videos do not include sound; the officers’ cameras were running but the devices do not record audio unless activated by the wearer to film an encounter. Mr. Fitzpatrick said on Thursday that the officers had not known their actions were being recorded.

The footage shows one officer kicking Mr. Brooks, whose face is bloodied, and then forcing him onto his back on an infirmary examination table while another officer punches Mr. Brooks in the upper body. The videos also show officers yanking Mr. Brooks up and dragging him to the back of the room, where they press him against a window. He sinks down, and the officers hoist him back up and push him against the window again.

The footage does not show Mr. Brooks doing anything to provoke the attack or to incite the officers to continue it. Several officers appear to be the main aggressors, while others walk in and out of the room, chatting among themselves and watching their colleagues treat Mr. Brooks like a rag doll. No one tries to stop the beating.

Mr. Fitzpatrick confirmed on Thursday that his investigation had found no evidence that Mr. Brooks had provoked the assault. He said he could not explain why the officers had attacked Mr. Brooks as they did.

Two weeks after the killing, Ms. Hochul ordered that those involved be fired. Eighteen prison employees — 16 officers and two nurses — were suspended without pay as a step toward termination. Officer Farina and a second officer implicated in the attack resigned.

Mr. Brooks had been serving his sentence at Mohawk Correctional Facility, a short drive from the Marcy prison, until the day of the attack. Both are medium-security facilities. He was moved to the Marcy prison just before the fatal beating began.

Mr. Fitzpatrick said on Thursday that Mr. Brooks had been moved for his safety after being involved in altercations with other Mohawk inmates.

Murder charges against corrections officers are rare, but not unheard-of. Last year, four Missouri prison guards were charged with murder, and a fifth with accessory to involuntary manslaughter, in the death of an inmate; a former Georgia corrections officer was charged with murder in the death a prisoner there; and a New Hampshire prison officer was charged with second-degree murder for causing the death of a patient in a secure psychiatric unit.

Jan Ransom contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.