Beating death of Marcy prison inmate Robert Brooks ruled a homicide
The death of a man brutally beaten by corrections officers at an upstate New York prison late last year has been ruled a homicide in an autopsy, lawyers for his family said Wednesday.
Robert Brooks, a 43-year-old Black man, was punched, kicked, choked and manhandled by multiple officers while he was handcuffed on a medical examination table at Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9, body camera video shows.
He was pronounced dead the next morning at a hospital in Utica.
According to a report issued by the Onondaga Medical Examiner's Office last week, the cause of death was compression of the neck and multiple blunt impact injuries. The manner of death was determined to be a homicide, the family's lawyers said.
'I think what this does is rule out any argument that there was some other cause of death other than what we saw on video,' family attorney Stephen Schwarz said.
In a statement released through Elizabeth Mazur, who's part of the team representing the family, Brooks' loved ones added that the 'autopsy report [confirmed] what was already clear: Robert Brooks's violent death was a homicide.'
Early in January, Attorney General Letitia James recused herself from the case and named Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor to investigate Brooks' death.
A grand jury will hear evidence in the case.
On Tuesday, the Rochester Police Accountability Board organized an event at East High School in Rochester designed to highlight the need for police accountability and transparency.
The event — 'How Many More? A Call for Change, Action, and Accountability' — brought together dozens of community members, including Brooks' father, Robert Ricks, according to local NBC affiliate WHEC.
'My hope is [people] can go to jail and come out better than they were when they went in,' he said at the meeting.
Brooks was serving a 12-year sentence for stabbing his girlfriend in 2016.
Marcy Correctional, a medium-security facility housing just over 800 inmates, is located in Oneida County, about seven miles west of Utica.
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