New York prison guard says he cleaned up blood of fatally beaten inmate in plea
A New York corrections officer admitted in court Wednesday he cleaned up blood from the fatal beating of an inmate that was captured on bodycam videos in an attempt to conceal evidence.
Nicholas Gentile pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempted tampering with physical evidence in the Dec. 9 beating of Robert Brooks at the Marcy Correctional Facility. Publicly released video of the assault, which shows officers beating Brooks while his hands were cuffed behind his back, sparked condemnation and calls for reforms.
Gentile, 36, was among 10 guards indicted in February in connection with Brooks' death. Six officers were charged with second-degree murder. Gentile was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with physical evidence.
Under questioning from the judge and a prosecutor, Gentile acknowledged he knew about the assault by fellow guards, cleaned up Brooks' blood and failed to document it.
Under a plea agreement, Gentile was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge, meaning he can avoid prison time if he resigns his job and obeys the law. He also waived his right to appeal.
He declined to make a statement in court.
One former officer charged with murder in the assault, Christopher Walrath, pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter earlier this month.
Three other prison workers have reached agreements but had yet to enter those pleas, according to prosecutors.
Brooks began serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault in 2017 and was transferred Dec. 9 to Marcy, a prison about 180 miles (290 kilometers) northwest of New York City.
Special prosecutor William Fitzpatrick has said Brooks was beaten three times that night, the last of which was the fatal attack caught on bodycam footage. Brooks, 43, was declared dead the next day.
Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney, also is prosecuting guards in the fatal beating of Messiah Nantwi on March 1 at another Marcy lockup, the Mid-State Correctional Facility.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
16 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Echo Valley: Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney star in the plot-twist thriller of the year
There are few plot devices more pleasing than a surprise whose shock value mellows into pure karmic satisfaction, and Echo Valley delivers the toe-wriggler of the year. This pensive, riveting Apple TV+ thriller performs a sort of narrative jiu-jitsu on its audience – using the weight of an early, straightforward twist as leverage in a second, more elaborate one, which cumulatively leaves the viewer breathless and giddy on the mat. Directed by Britain's Michael Pearce (of Beast and Encounter) and written by Mare of Easttown creator Brad Inglesby, Echo Valley would make a persuasive answer to the question 'in a Taken-like crisis, what if it fell to the mum, rather than the dad, to sort everything out?' By that I don't mean that this is a film in which Julianne Moore rampages around rural Pennsylvania cracking Albanian skulls. Rather, Moore's stoic single mother, horse trainer Kate Garrett, uses a particularly maternal set of skills – foresight, forbearance, meticulous planning, sound character judgement, and an ability to call in the perfect favour from her friendship circle at just the right moment – to extricate her troubled adult daughter from a hellish predicament. Said daughter Claire (Sydney Sweeney) is a drug addict, and her habit has yoked her to two undesirable men. One is her boyfriend and fellow user Ryan (Edmund Donovan); the other is the couple's reptilian dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson, resplendently hideous), to whom the pair find themselves $10,000 in debt. With no hope of recouping the sum from Claire, Jackie tails the girl to her mother's shiningly bucolic and seemingly successful farm – which he decides to treat, via threats of violence and ruin, as an enormous, hay-strewn ATM. To his eyes, this woman clearly has money to spare. We know better, however: in a dry yet tender cameo, Kyle MacLachlan pops up as the successful former husband still shovelling four-figure cheques into this sun-dappled money pit which has come to stand for everything his ex holds dear. Echo Valley opens with half an hour of relatively low-key scene-setting drama that also delicately sketches in Kate's grief for her late female partner: enough to invest the more suspenseful remainder with enough emotional weight to make it really smack. As Claire, who in bomb terms is less shell than site, the often glamorous Sweeney has been pointedly cast against type. But Claire's complex mother-daughter relationship with Kate – strained well beyond breaking point, yet still determinedly, impossibly unsnapped – is deftly handled by both actresses. In a brilliantly underplayed early scene, the two go swimming at an idyllic local lake, which later serves as a nexus for various murky developments. Kate watches her girl playing happily with some younger children, and Moore's unspoken anguish – if this is her now, why can't it be her always? – vibrates silently through the moment. Inglesby wittily repurposes such modern plot-wreckers as mobile phone tracking and instant messaging into real dramatic assets, while as a director, Pearce is a savvy stylist who knows exactly when to rein things in: imagine Jacques Audiard with a cricket conscience perched on his shoulder whose only job is to say 'steady on'. The outrageous yet methodical nature of Kate's rescue plan for her daughter is, therefore, an ideal fit for him. Echo Valley is nothing like a conventionally air-punchy film, but you can't help but cheer the whole enterprise on.
BBC News
31 minutes ago
- BBC News
Norway: Doctor Arne Bye jailed for raping and assaulting patients
A court in Norway has sentenced a doctor to 21 years in prison for the rape and sexual abuse of dozens of women, in a case that has shocked the Scandinavian GP Arne Bye has been convicted of 70 counts of rape and sexual assault. He was also convicted of 82 counts of abusing his position as a doctor, Norwegian media all of the offences took place during medical examinations that Bye carried out on his patients while he worked as a physician in the small town of Frosta - a tiny community of fewer than 3,000 residents, near Trondheim on the west coast of was also banned from practising medicine and ordered to pay compensation. Warning: this story contains details some may find court had deliberated over a lengthy indictment, which included allegations spanning nearly two decades relating to 94 women, according to Norwegian pleaded guilty to some of the crimes, and was also acquitted on a number of the the court in Trondheim on Friday, Judge Espen Haug said the case was "very serious" and described Bye's actions as "absolutely unacceptable". "The defendant's actions happened in a place and setting where people are supposed to feel safe," Judge Haug said. "His actions have undermined public trust in the health service as well as doctors in general."The 55-year-old defendant stood on his feet, appearing calm and unmoved as the maximum sentence was handed courtroom was then asked to sit as it took more than an hour for the judgement to be read authorities had first alerted the police to concerns about Bye in August 2022, and he was charged a year had secretly installed a camera in his office, Norwegian media reports. Police uncovered the scale of his offences after reviewing hundreds of hours of of women, reportedly aged between 14 and 67, from the small, rural community came forward. The earliest complaint dated back to 2004, the most recent from to the case had been the methods Bye used for medical four months, the court heard details of non-consensual touching and inappropriate pelvic examinations conducted by act constitute rape under Norwegian law, which makes a distinction between penetrative and non-penetrative was also shown to have used non-medical equipment, such as a deodorant, during these exams, with no justification for doing defence attorneys had sought a lower sentence of around 17-18 years as Bye had pleaded guilty to the rape of 21 told public broadcaster NRK that they were satisfied with the verdict, and would review the outcome before considering any lawyer also said he would take some time to read the verdict properly before considering whether to you have been affected by any issues in this report, help and support is available at BBC Action Line.
The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Another ex and alleged victim of Sean ‘Diddy' Combs testifies about ‘freak-offs'
The federal sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs resumed on Friday with testimony from a former girlfriend and alleged victim, identified as 'Jane'. The woman, described by prosecutors as a single mother who met Combs in 2020, testified on Friday that Combs denied requests that escorts wear condoms during the drug-fueled sexual encounters with male escorts at hotels known as 'freak-offs' or 'hotel nights', which she claims Combs orchestrated and watched as she took part. Jane told the court that she asked Combs at least twice if an escort could wear condoms, but said that Combs 'guilt-tripped me out of it … He didn't want to see a rubber while he was watching.' Combs, 55, was arrested in September 2024 and faces federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Jane began her testimony on Thursday and told the court that she began dating Combs in 2021, and that their relation ship was loving and passionate. However, she described a turning point in their relationship in May 2021, when Combs revealed his sexual fantasies involving other men and role-playing. She said that, wanting to please him, she agreed to go along with the idea and that within hours she was in a Miami hotel room watching Combs's assistants set up for a group sex encounter. 'That night really opened a Pandora's box for our relationship,' Jane testified. 'It set the tone for our relationship going forward … It was a door that I was unable to shut.' Jane testified that after that point, 90% of her sexual encounters with Combs included other men while Combs watched, masturbated and directed the sex acts. When the prosecutor asked if she wanted to have sex with the others, Jane replied: 'No … just Sean.' She said she repeatedly told Combs, in person and in writing, that she no longer wanted to participate in these sexual encounters, but he pressured her, and she felt 'obligated'. Jane told the court how she became financially dependent on Combs, who paid her rent and would send her money. She said that at times, when she voiced discomfort with the sexual encounters, he threatened to stop paying her rent. On Friday, Jane testified that she feared losing her home if she refused to participate in the so-called 'hotel nights' or 'freak-offs'. On the stand, she read aloud texts from 2023 in which she told Combs that it felt like the sexual encounters were 'the only reason you have me around and pay for the house', adding that she was 'doing things that make me disgusted with myself'. In other messages, Jane told Combs that she felt she had to perform for him and regretted ever participating in the encounters, writing: 'Ever since I opened Pandora's box, I haven't been able to close it.' Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion 'I don't want to keep feeling like that,' she wrote, telling Combs that she wanted them to 'talk like adults and figure out where we're going from here'. Combs replied: 'Girl, stop.' Jane recalled crying at least twice during the encounters with Combs and male escorts, and said that Combs appeared offended and 'disgusted' by her display of emotion. While Combs's lawyers have acknowledged his history of domestic violence, they argue that the women participated in the 'freak-offs' consensually and they maintain that Combs is not guilty of sex trafficking or racketeering, or of operating a criminal enterprise. So far, Jane's testimony has echoed that of Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, who dated Combs on and off from 2007 to 2018 and testified last month. Ventura told jurors that she was subjected to years of physical and emotional abuse during the relationship. She alleged she was coerced, through violence and blackmail, into taking part in the so-called 'freak-offs', which she said were orchestrated and directed by Combs and involved drugs and male sex workers. During cross-examination, Combs's attorneys sought to portray Ventura as a willing participant in the 'freak-offs', framing the encounters as part of a 'swingers lifestyle'. If convicted on all counts, Combs could face life in prison. The Associated Press contributed reporting
