Marcy Correctional Officer Sentenced to 15 Years for Inmate Killing
In December, a grave incident took place at Marcy Correctional Facility. A former member of the prison staff was decreed a punishment of 15 years’ jail time this Monday, due to his involvement in a fatal assault of an African-American prisoner. This violent act, implemented by several correctional officers within the facility, was caught and documented via body-mounted cameras.
The officer, named Christopher Walrath, is listed among six other correctional officers facing serious accusations of homicide, charged due to their part in the demise of inmate Robert Brooks. The assault against Mr. Brooks happened at Marcy Correctional Facility on the 9th day of December.
Christopher Walrath accepted the charges against him and formally professed his guilt for committing manslaughter in the first-degree during May. This plea, registered under his name, took place before any other corrections officers who were involved in the killing had admitted fault or accepted a plea deal.
As part of the courtroom procedures, Robert Brooks Jr., the offspring of the deceased prisoner, made a profound statement. In a voice replete with the undertones of loss, he confided that he is not at peace and will never reach a state of being where he can claim to be okay.
The prison victim, Robert Brooks, was serving a 12-year tenure within the prison system for a conviction of first-degree physical assault. This sentence had been in execution since the year 2017. Mr. Brooks had just seen a shift from another nearby detention center to Marcy on the fateful evening of his victimization.
Documentation presented in video form reveal the extremities of the violence he suffered. The footage displays how Brooks was hit in his torso with a shoe, raised by his neck, and then released, causing him to crash down. During a subsequent interrogation, Walrath confessed to being part of Brooks’ brutal assault.
More alarming admissions were made by Walrath, he confessed to putting Brooks in a chokehold, and hitting the prisoner’s body and genitalia. His pronouncements were disturbing proof of the depths of brutality that Brooks was subjected to within the confines of the correctional facility.
While Walrath and five other guards who were implicated in Brooks’ death faced murder charges laid in February, additional prison staff also found themselves face to face with the legal system. Three more were indicted on charges of manslaughter in the aftermath of the grisly event, while one more faced the accusation of tampering with evidence.
Further, one of the correctional staff members entered a guilty plea in May for an attempted tampering of physical evidence in relation to the case. For the guards who refused to take plea deals, trials were slated to commence in the month of October.
The incident, however, was not an isolated one. The maltreatment that led to the fatal event involving Messiah Nantwi on the first day of March at another Marcy-incorporated facility, known as the Mid-State Correctional Facility, is currently under the microscope of investigators.
The enquiry has resulted in ten prison guards being indicted in the month of April, with the charges for two of these being as grave as murder. It is disturbing to note that both of these prisons are geographically located approximately 180 miles, or 290 kilometers, northwest of New York City.