0
0
On October 7, 2025, a prosecutor told a jury that three former upstate New York prison guards on trial in the fatal beating of a Black handcuffed inmate took part in an act of “sheer, unimaginable brutality”.
Mathew Galliher, Nicholas Kieffer and David Kingsley are charged with murder and first-degree manslaughter in the death of Robert Brooks, whose beating by guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9 was captured in part on body-camera footage. The trio were among 10 corrections officers indicted in February on murder charges or for lesser crimes.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told jurors in his opening statement that they would view sickening videos of Brooks’ treatment by a group of guards, and that each of the defendants was involved.
“They no longer were corrections officers. They were a gang,” Fitzpatrick said in his opening statement. “They took turns — collectively and individually — of punching him, kneeing him, pepper spraying him, choking him, pinning him down, cuffing his legs”.
Brooks, 43, had been serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault since 2017 and was transferred to Marcy from a nearby lockup that night. The videos, which triggered widespread outrage, show officers striking him in the chest with a shoe, lifting him by the neck and dropping him.
Defense attorneys told jurors that prosecutors will not be able to prove their clients acted with malice or depraved indifference to human life, as the charges allege. The attorneys asked jurors to take careful note of their clients’ specific actions that night.
Six guards indicted in February have since pleaded guilty. Three more employees have agreed to plead guilty to reduced charges and are cooperating with the special prosecutor.
Both prisons are about 180 miles (290 kilometers) northwest of New York City.
