Gov. Kathy Hochul agreed to sign a bill to bolster prison oversight in New York. It was spurred by the death of Robert L. Brooks, who was beaten by correction officers.
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Brooks was beaten by several officers while he was restrained at Marcy Correctional Facility. His death was ruled a homicide.
(Courtesy of New York Attorney General’s Office)/New York Attorney General’s Office
David Kingsley, pictured here, is the only former correction officer who was convicted of murder in Brooks’ death. Several others struck plea bargains with prosecutors.
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Robert Ricks, father of Robert L. Brooks, met with Democrats in the state Legislature this year to discuss legislative reforms after the death of his son.
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Members of both the state Senate and Assembly held a hearing to consider prison oversight legislation in May. That’s what led to the bill Hochul agreed to sign.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
Daniel Martuscello III, commissioner of Department of Correction and Community Supervision (DOCCS), has condemned the officers whose actions led to Brooks’ death.
Lori Van Buren/Times Union
ALBANY — A package of prison oversight legislation spurred by two fatal beatings committed by New York correction officers has been signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Democrats in the state Legislature agreed in a deal with Hochul to make changes to the bill in exchange for her approval. Those amendments will be passed in January.
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State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democrat who chairs the Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee and sponsored the bill, said she still considered the revised legislation to be a win.
“Although the final legislative package does not include everything we sought, it is still a serious step toward making our state prisons less violent,” Salazar said. “For too long, our prisons have been plagued by staff abuse toward incarcerated individuals, with little to no recourse.”
It’s intended to strengthen transparency and accountability around conditions in the state’s correctional facilities, including when abuse is alleged and deaths occur. But the final version is narrower than lawmakers intended.
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A key provision of the bill will expand the state Commission of Correction, which is supposed to oversee the management of prisons and jails throughout the state. It currently has three full-time members.
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The agreement will add two new part-time members to the commission, with a requirement that one of them be formerly incarcerated.
Lawmakers had sought to add six new members to the commission and require them to be from various backgrounds, but Hochul was opposed to that idea. The governor appoints all members of the commission.
“The governor will appoint these commissioners, and she will own whether they are able and willing to actualize the potential of the (commission) to fulfill its self-stated mission of providing ‘a safe, stable and humane correctional system’ — or not,” said Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, a Democrat from Brooklyn who authored that part of the bill.
Several other provisions are intended to increase transparency both before and after a violent or fatal incident occurs.
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Each prison will be required to install surveillance cameras that record video and audio at all times. They’ll be installed in all areas except showers, individual cells and medical treatment rooms; footage will be kept for at least five years.
When a death occurs in a prison, any existing video of the incident will have to be disclosed to the state attorney general’s office within 72 hours. The state will have a strict 48-hour deadline to give public notice of a death after the next of kin is informed.
Another provision will require autopsy reports sent to the Medical Review Board at the state prisons agency to include photographs and post-mortem X-rays. Microscopic slides can be made available upon request.
That agency, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, will also have to conduct a study of deaths in state prisons over the past decade as part of the deal.
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Each of those provisions began as separate bills but were ultimately combined into one piece of legislation that Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly approved at the end of this year’s legislative session in June.
It’s their answer to the brutal deaths of Robert L. Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility in December of last year and Messiah Nantwi at Mid-State Correctional Facility in March.
Both men died after they were beaten by correction officers in similar incidents at those prisons, which are right down the road from one another in Oneida County. Their deaths resulted in criminal charges against the two sets of officers.
“I have been clear that there is more to do and I am grateful to the Legislature and the family of Robert Brooks for advocating for these reforms and working together to ensure that we could sign this important legislation to advance these reforms together,” Hochul said in a statement Friday.
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Brooks’ death received national attention after video surfaced of the beating delivered by correction officers while he was restrained in a medical room.
That video would not have existed if not for a function of the body cameras unknown to the officers, who hadn’t intended to record the incident: The cameras were left in standby mode, which automatically records video but not audio.
The officers involved were immediately terminated at the request of Hochul, who was outspoken about her desire to see them prosecuted.
The criminal case was brought by the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office and resulted in several plea bargains and a trial last fall. Only one of them — David Kingsley — was ultimately convicted of murder in Brooks’ death. He’s been sentenced to at least 25 years in prison.
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There was no video of the incident before Nantwi’s death, but prosecutors were able to build a case against several of the officers allegedly involved. That case is ongoing, but has already generated a guilty plea.
Nantwi died during a weeks-long wildcat strike involving thousands of correction officers across the state who walked off the job to protest work conditions including a long-lasting staffing shortage.
Democrats in the state Legislature pledged this year to continue pursuing legislation related to the state’s correctional system in the coming legislative session. That begins in January.
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