Judge Denies New York Prison Chief’s Motion to be Dismissed from Case Related to Robert Brooks’ Murder
by Michael Thompson
Robert L. Brooks, Sr., 43, was murdered by guards moments after arriving at the Marcy Correctional Facility in New York in 2024. Both then and now, Daniel F. Martuscello III was the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) for New York. A subsequent lawsuit by Brooks’ estate named Martuscello, among other supervisors, as a defendant due to a policy of violence, personal involvement in the violence, and deliberate indifference. Martuscello attempted to be dismissed from the case, but the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York found all three arguments by the Plaintiff persuasive and denied the motion.
Martuscello has long been involved in a leadership role with the DOCCS. From 2012 to 2017, he was the DOCCS Deputy Commissioner for Administrative Services. That role made him responsible for the staff disciplinary system. From there, he rose to become the DOCCS Executive Deputy Commissioner in 2017, where he was second only to the Commissioner, before becoming Commissioner himself in 2023. In that role, he “sets policies, customs, and practices for []DOCCS and was responsible for ensuring the safety of individuals in []DOCCS custody.” [See: Dixon v. Farina, 2026 U.S. Dist. Lexis 35430.]
During that period, New York saw a rapid growth in prison Use of Force statistics. Between 2016 and 2024, Use of Force expanded from around 20 per 1,000 prisoners to 129 per 1,000 each year. This trend culminated into yet another murder by guards. If not for the accidental recordings of a small portion of the violence that were recovered by the DOCCS’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the guards might have successfully covered up their complicity in Brooks’ death. Instead, the state brought criminal charges against eleven “on-scene” guards despite the efforts of superiors who collaborated to file false reports that failed to mention the extreme violence. The reports instead focused on use of pepper spray, which is measured and recorded by DOCCS.
The victim’s destiny turned on a pin when another prisoner at the Mohawk Correctional Facility struck him as he slept with a lock tied into a sock. Brooks was sent to the hospital and his housing changed when he returned. But he threw up on the floor and was too sick to clean it up immediately, despite demands from a guard named Sherri Abreu. After a second demand, Abreu called on a prisoner nicknamed “Swift,” who was a member of the Bloods gang who received preferential treatment and favors for acting as an enforcer for guards on that wing.
Swift demanded Brooks clean it up. Brooks did. But he threw up again, later. That led to Brooks being attacked again, this time by several of Swift’s affiliates. Again, a lock-filled sock was used. An emergency transfer to the Marcy Correctional Facility for involuntary protective custody (IPC) followed. Due to the extreme violence that he endured at the hands of those assigned to protect him, less than 45 minutes after arriving at Marcy, Mr. Brooks was dead. The man “was beaten and choked to death, including while he was shackled, in a series of sustained and unprovoked attacks the twenty On-Scene defendants in the lawsuit committed and/or failed to stop or mitigate,” according to the Court’s summary of the events. Much of the violence occurred where there were no cameras, including the infirmary.
Commissioner Martuscello publicly claimed watching the video of Brooks’ beating made him feel “deeply repulsed and nauseated,” and that he recognized the need for institutional change. The public outcry and demands for reform as well as the commissioner’s comments led to 10,000 guards missing work for weeks while on an illegal strike. At least nine more prisoners died during the strike, including another who was beaten to death by guards in the infirmary, like Brooks.
Martuscello held quarterly calls with prisoner advocates in the two years prior to the murder. The advocates told him about the staff assaults. He certainly saw the ballooning Use of Force statistics. Just two months before Brooks’ death, he was warned about the presence of “beat-up squads” and urged to stop the systemic use of violence as well as close down the most violent units. The Marcy facility was one of those units.
PLN has previously reported that this culture of violence often found its way into areas where there is no video coverage. At least three of those involved in Brooks’ death had attacked another prisoner two months earlier. That victim was hospitalized for nearly two weeks with broken ribs, a punctured lung, and ligature marks around his neck. The New York Times also described events where the victims have been kicked, sexually assaulted, suffocated with plastic bags, and waterboarded. [See: PLN, Feb. 2026, p.56.]
The medical examiner’s preliminary determination found Brooks died of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.” He had also suffered fractures and soft-tissue injuries to his upper body, groin, neck, and head.
There is no doubt Commissioner Martuscello was aware of the culture of violence, especially at Marcy. A 2023 investigation by the Correctional Association of New York found that there was a “higher instance of staff abuse” at Marcy than other state prisons, and that there was “rampant physical staff abuse, especially in locations without cameras.”
Judge Ann Nardacci found that Commissioner Martuscello’s alleged behavior, including public comments and failure to discipline abuser, were deliberate indifference, noting that “Courts have concluded that notice of a substantial risk of harm is sufficient to plead a policy maker’s mens rea of deliberate indifference.”
Additional source: The Times Union
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