For the second time in three months, the office of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said it was recusing itself from investigating the death of a prisoner whom other inmates said had been brutally beaten by guards.
As occurred in the case of the earlier death, a special prosecutor will take over the inquiry into the death of Messiah Nantwi, 22, who died last week after being held at Mid-State Correctional Facility in central New York, Ms. James’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
The statement said the recusal was necessary because lawyers in her office were already defending five of the 15 corrections employees involved in the events that preceded the death in unrelated civil lawsuits.
Gregory S. Oakes, an assistant attorney general, said in the office’s request for recusal “that as many as nine corrections officers caused the death of Messiah Nantwi or committed acts that contributed thereto, and thereby committed a crime.”
Ms. James appointed William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney, as the special prosecutor. Just last month, Mr. Fitzpatrick brought charges against 10 officers in connection with the killing of another prisoner, Robert L. Brooks, in December. Six of the officers were charged with murder.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office said in a statement that Mr. Fitzpatrick had accepted the role as the special prosecutor and that he would not comment further “until the grand jury has taken action.”
A spokesman for Gov. Kathy Hochul did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The attorney general’s office is empowered to investigate deaths stemming from encounters with law enforcement authorities, including corrections officers. The office also typically represents state workers in litigation connected to their official duties.
Ms. James said in the statement that her office would “hand over all records from its ongoing preliminary assessment of the matter to the district attorney’s office immediately,” and that no lawyers in her office would represent the officers being investigated in connection with Mr. Nantwi’s death.
His death is the second in three months in which corrections officers have been accused of viciously beating a prisoner who later died, underscoring calls to root out what watchdog groups describe as a widespread, deep-rooted culture of brutality inside New York’s prisons.
Mr. Nantwi was the seventh prisoner to die as thousands of corrections officers have participated in strikes around the state to protest what they say are untenable working conditions and severe staffing shortages.
By Thursday, the prisoner death toll had risen to nine, and included two men who were known to be suffering from medical ailments before their health began to fail, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Hochul deployed more than 7,000 members of the National Guard to replace the officers. As of Wednesday, 2,500 prison guards had returned to work. Thousands more had their health insurances discontinued and 20 had been terminated.
On Tuesday, the governor said that 15 corrections employees had been put on leave in connection with the death of Mr. Nantwi at Mid-State, a men’s medium-security prison in Marcy, N.Y.
Mid-State is across the street from the prison where Mr. Brooks was beaten to death by guards in December.
Ms. Hochul said that “early reports point to extremely disturbing conduct leading to Mr. Nantwi’s death.”
On Sunday, The New York Times spoke with nine prisoners, including seven who agreed to be named, who said that Mr. Nantwi had been brutally beaten by prison guards before he died.
Mr. Nantwi, they said, became upset when the daily prisoner count was set to begin and left for the dorm’s shower area, where he began to cry.
One prisoner, Rodney Richards, said Mr. Nantwi appeared to be having a disagreement with the National Guard members who were filling in for the striking officers, and that he had initially refused to go to his cubicle. Several prisoners said he had recently stopped taking psychiatric medications.
By the time Mr. Nantwi returned to his cubicle, the Guard members had already alerted a group of corrections officers known as the “correctional emergency response team,” the prisoners said. They said that as many as 15 officers responded, some wielding batons, and moved against Mr. Nantwi.
Mr. Nantwi begged the prison guards to stop beating him, said Aaron Perry, 34, a prisoner whose cubicle was near Mr. Nantwi’s.
“He said, ‘I didn’t do anything,’” Mr. Perry recalled. “‘You’re really hurting me. Stop!’”
A person with knowledge of the matter said that there did not appear to be camera footage of the officers’ interaction with Mr. Nantwi, meaning that investigators would have to rely solely on the statements of the prisoners and the National Guard members.
Some of the prisoners said that the officers did not appear to be wearing body-worn cameras.
Members of the National Guard, the prisoners added, did not intervene.
After the beating, the prisoners said, Mr. Nantwi, who had been handcuffed, was dragged through a hall and down a flight of stairs, his face bloodied and swollen. Mr. Richards said Mr. Nantwi “was not recognizable.”
Michael Hummel-Parker, 32, another prisoner, said Mr. Nantwi was making gurgling noises — as if he could not breathe.
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