More New York Guards Suspended After Another Prisoner’s Fatal Beating
New York prisoner Messiah Nantwi, 22, was fatally beaten by guards at the Mid-State Correctional Facility on March 1, 2025, in plain view of at least nine prisoners as well as National Guard troops deployed during a wildcat guard strike. That strike began weeks earlier, coinciding with discipline of 16 Marcy Correctional Facility staffers, including 10 who were indicted in the death of prisoner Robert L. Brooks, as reported elsewhere in this issue. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.9.]
The prisoners who witnessed what happened to Nantwi said his mental illness was apparently triggered by the presence of the National Guard troops. He was sobbing and fled into a shower area. When Nantwi refused their order to return to his cell, they called guards who then arrived and beat the prisoner until he was “unrecognizable,” according to one of the prisoner witnesses. None of the troops intervened, they added.
Nantwi went into custody of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) in May 2024 to serve a five-year sentence for a weapons conviction stemming from a 2021 South Bronx shootout with cops. He was also indicted in a killing during a 2023 scuffle between rival gangs in Harlem. Fellow prisoners said he was prescribed psychiatric medication that he had stopped taking just before he was killed.
On March 4, 2025, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) put 15 DOCCS employees on leave as the agency investigated the incident, saying that “early reports point to extremely disturbing conduct leading to Mr. Nantwi’s death.” She also placed some blame on the ongoing strike, which has seen seven prisoners die, including Nantwi. Prisoners blamed at least two of the deaths on delays in medical care caused by the strike. DOCCS Commissioner Daniel Martuscello said that the guards’ walkout “cannot continue.”
“I will not allow these horrible acts to define us,” he said. “It is time for this to end.”
The nonprofit Legal Aid Society, which represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal proceedings, called on Martuscello and DOCCS to release footage from body-worn cameras of guards involved in Nantwi’s death. It was this same type of footage that revealed the casual brutality to which guards treated Brooks before he died. State Attorney General Letitia James (D), who is legally bound to represent DOCCS employees, recused herself from both the Brooks and Nantwi cases.
Sources: CBS News, CNN, New York Times, Utica Observer-Dispatch
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