A 55-year-old man awaiting trial on murder and other charges died in a holding area at a Manhattan courthouse on Monday, according to officials and court records. He was the second person to die in Correction Department custody in the past week, officials said.
The man, Terrence Moore, had a seizure before a scheduled court hearing, a department spokeswoman said. Staff members at the courthouse immediately provided first aid until emergency medical workers arrived, but he was pronounced dead just before 5 p.m., the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Moore had been held most recently at an infirmary unit at the Rikers Island jail complex, officials said. He had been at Rikers since January 2023, when he and another man were charged in the killing of a 74-year-old woman in her Upper West Side apartment.
His death came less than week after that of Ramel Powell, 38, who was pronounced dead at Rikers shortly after 2 a.m. last Wednesday, officials said. Mr. Powell had been in jail since July 2023 and was awaiting trial on assault charges, court records show.
The deaths were reported to the federal monitor overseeing Rikers and to New York City’s Board of Correction, the state attorney general’s office, the state Commission of Correction and the city’s Investigation Department, officials said. The causes were being investigated.
The correction commissioner, Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, expressed her condolences to the families of both men, referring to the deaths as “tragic” in separate statements.
Deaths in custody are among the problems plaguing the city’s troubled jails, which a federal judge is considering placing under the control of a receiver in a bid to stem the persistent violence, dysfunction and mismanagement at the Rikers complex and other lockups.
The number of such deaths has plunged since reaching a recent peak of 19 in 2022. There were nine deaths in Correction Department custody in 2023 and five last year. Despite the decline, lawyers for incarcerated people say the city is unable to keep detainees safe.
A spokeswoman for the Legal Aid Society, which is pressing for an outside entity to take control of the jail system, declined to comment on the deaths, saying the organization did not have enough information about them.
Mr. Powell, who was accused of slashing a man during a confrontation on the Lower East Side in an attack that was captured on video, wore a surgical mask when he appeared in court about two weeks ago, Bernard Seidler, a lawyer representing him in the case, said.
“He said he did not want to catch anything,” Mr. Seidler said, adding that he did not have information about what had caused Mr. Powell’s death.
Glenn Hardy, a lawyer for Mr. Moore, also said he did not have information about the cause of his client’s death. Mr. Hardy said he was aware that Mr. Moore had been at an infirmary unit, but he did not know why or what medical condition he might have had.
Mr. Moore was convicted of murder as a teenager and served about 30 years in prison before being released in 2017, according to Mr. Hardy and state prison records.
Mr. Hardy said that in the two years he represented Mr. Moore, he had been “engaged” in the case and had not given “anybody any trouble.”
“In many ways, he was an ideal client,” Mr. Hardy said.
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