Former New York prison guard pleads guilty in connection with inmate's beating death
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A former upstate New York prison guard pleaded guilty Friday for his role in what prosecutors called a coverup of the beating death of inmate by fellow guards.
Joshua Bartlett entered guilty pleas to hindering prosecution and falsifying records, both felonies, in connection with the March 1 death of Messiah Nantwi at Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, near Utica. Bartlett appeared for a hearing in Oneida County Court in Utica, where sentencing was set for August 8.
Ten correction officers, not including Bartlett, were indicted in connection with the fatal beating. Two of the 10, Jonah Levi and Caleb Blair, are charged with second-degree murder. All 10 have pleaded not guilty. Bartlett is the first guard to plead guilty in connection with the case.
Nantwi died from injuries he sustained in a series of beatings by guards that began in his room and continued even when he was lying handcuffed on the floor of the infirmary, the indictment says.
Bartlett was accused of helping other guards cover up what happened, including filing a false use-of-force report.
Bartlett was beaten after an emergency response team was called to Nantwi's room to help National Guard members who became concerned when he involved himself in another inmate's effort to obtain medication and was resistant during a headcount, according to prosecutors. The National Guard was deployed to Mid-State and other prisons because of an unauthorized, three-week strike by guards who were upset over working conditions.
The situation was resolved by the time the response team arrived. Nantwi objected to being handcuffed for no apparent reason and grabbed Bartlett's vest, with several guards immediately raining blows on his head and body using their fists, batons and boots, the indictment said. The attack intensified when Nantwi bit the hands of two guards, prosecutors said.
Nantwi became unresponsive and guards transported him toward the infirmary, but he was assaulted a second time in a stairwell, according to prosecutors.
Nantwi died several months after Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at the Marcy Correctional Facility near the Mid-State prison. Six guards were charged with second-degree murder in Brooks' December 9 beating. One of those guards pleaded guilty earlier this month to first-degree manslaughter under a plea deal.
Another three prison employees were charged with manslaughter in the Brooks case and an another officer pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of attempted tampering with physical evidence.
Bartlett was among 18 guards, including the 10 who were indicted, who either resigned or were suspended after Nantwi's death. Prosecutors have said several guards who weren't indicted agreed to cooperate with authorities.
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At his ongoing trial, Sean Combs has been accused of physical or sexual violence by seven women. His lawyers call them bitter opportunists. Prosecutors call them victims of Combs' criminal racket. Here's what each of these seven women told the jury, and why it matters legally. Over the past month, seven women have taken the stand at the Manhattan trial of rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs to tell chilling personal stories of physical and sexual violence. Two are Combs' ex-girlfriends, three are his former employees, and two were on the periphery of his multimillion-dollar media, entertainment, and lifestyle empire. Defense lawyers call them jealous, or bitter, or greedy. They say all seven women were with Combs by choice and are now out for what one attorney termed "a 'Me Too' money grab." Prosecutors call them victims and say their stories are the heart of the trial. Here's how the testimony of these seven accusers has turned the tables on Combs, building a case for federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges that could imprison him for anywhere from 15 years to life. Cassie Ventura, his first sex-trafficking accuser R&B singer Cassie Ventura was celebrating her 21st birthday in Las Vegas when Combs, who had signed her to his Bad Boy Records label the year before, surprised her with the kiss that started their relationship. She told the jury that hundreds of times over the next decade, from 2008 until 2018, Combs forced her to meet him at luxury hotels, to dress up in wigs, heels, and lingerie, to take handfuls of drugs, and to have sex with male escorts as Combs filmed and masturbated to the dayslong performances. "I want you to be glistening," she said Combs would tell her as he watched, ordering Ventura and sex workers with names like "Jewels" and "The Punisher" to apply ever more baby oil. These so-called "freak off" performances were first revealed in Ventura's quickly settled 2023 lawsuit. (Combs paid Ventura $20 million.) Ventura's allegations have since been corroborated at trial by freak off videos she'd saved over the years, by hotel records, and by testimony from eye-witnesses, including sex workers. One exotic dancer told jurors he witnessed Combs beating Ventura twice during freak offs in Manhattan between 2012 and 2014. "Bitch, when I tell you to come here, come now, not later," the dancer recalled Combs saying during one of more than a dozen beatings recounted at trial by witnesses and Ventura herself. Prosecutors say Ventura was sex-trafficked, meaning coerced into crossing state lines to participate in commercial sex acts (commercial because they involved paid sex workers). They say the violent, 2016 InterContinental hotel hallway video is unavoidable proof that she was sex-trafficked by force. They will likely argue that other evidence, including her unprofitable record deal and Combs' threats to publicize her freak-off tapes, proves she was sex-trafficked by means of fraud and coercion as well. They will likely also argue that from Ventura's vantage point at the center of the Combs empire, she also witnessed multiple crimes that support the racketeering charge. These include not just sex trafficking, but narcotics sales, forced labor (she was never compensated for her mixtape, a producer testified), extortion (she says Combs threatened to release freak off videos) and kidnapping (she says that when she was 22, he forced her to stay at an LA hotel until the bruises on her battered face healed enough to be hidden by makeup.) The defense has challenged Ventura's credibility by pointing to her lawsuit windfall, to the many times she left the Combs relationship only to freely return, and to the years of texts and emails in which she expresses her love of Combs and the freak offs. But Ventura described being trapped in a cycle of drug addiction, financial and emotional dependency, and fear. And yes, also love. "I would do absolutely anything for him," she told the jury, explaining why she agreed to the first freak off at age 22. "And it never stopped, our whole relationship." "Jane," his second sex-trafficking accuser "Jane," a recent ex-girlfriend of Combs, testified that on their first date at a Miami hotel in 2010, she fell "pretty head-over-heels for Sean." The date lasted five days, she told the jury. Over the next four months, she said, Combs slowly introduced her to his sexual preferences. He loved baby oil and drugs that kept them up day and night. He loved it when she dressed in lingerie and "high stripper heels." He'd play pornography and tell her to fantasize about the men on screen. "Do you like what you see there?" she said he'd ask her of these men. "Do you want that?" Then one night in 2021 at his Miami mansion, as the pornography rolled, he told her, "I can make this fantasy a reality if you'd like that." She loved him, she explained, and agreeing made him so happy. So she said yes. Jane said she soon realized she'd opened up "Pandora's box." Gone were the romantic trips and dinner dates of their first four months. Combs wanted freak offs — by now he was calling them "hotel nights" — nearly every time they saw each other over the next three years, up until his arrest in 2024. "It was just a door I was unable to shut," she told the jury. Jane's testimony has so far described some of the elements of sex trafficking. She said she reluctantly crossed state lines, traveling from the East Coast to Miami to Los Angeles, to engage with paid sex workers. But her testimony, which continues next week, has yet to show that Combs sex trafficked her using force, fraud, or coercion, as the indictment requires. She instead described intensive psychological and financial pressure. She said she agreed to hotel nights because she loved him, and because he'd moved her to Los Angeles from the East Coast and was paying rent and other costs for her and her child. And when she told him she no longer wanted to do hotel nights, he would brush her off, or make what may or may not rise to the level of a coercive threat to withdraw that financial support. "If you want to break up, that's fine," she testified he'd tell her. "Do you need, like, what, three more months in the house? Because I'm not about to be paying for a woman's rent that I'm not even seeing." Prosecutors have said Combs defrauded Jane by promising romantic dinners and trips, only to renege and persuade her into another hotel night. They have also said Combs was brutally violent with Jane, though it's unclear how they plan to draw a link between that violence and sex trafficking by force. Meanwhile, the defense will likely use hundreds of affectionate and erotic texts between Jane and Combs to argue that she is a bitter ex who willingly suffered any demands and violence, and who continues to have her expenses paid by Combs in return. Asked late Friday who is currently paying her rent, Jane answered, "Sean is." Prosecutors have also hinted that Jane is a witness to obstruction of justice, one of the underlying crimes they can use to prove the racketeering charge. "You will hear him try to manipulate Jane into saying she wanted freak offs," Emily Johnson, an assistant US attorney, told the jury during May 12 opening statements, describing a phone call recorded after Ventura's lawsuit was filed. "You will hear him interrupt Jane when she pushes back," Johnson said. Prosecutors have also said he made a point of paying for Jane's housing — even after his arrest. "Mia," his rape accuser "Mia," a former Combs employee, told the jury about a night 15 years ago, when she slept in the employee bedroom at his Los Angeles mansion. She woke up with Combs on top of her, she said, telling her, "Be quiet." "It was very quick, but it felt like forever," she said, her voice breaking into quiet, gasping sobs. Mia, like Jane, testified under a pseudonym to protect her privacy. She told the jury that Combs raped or sexually assaulted her at least four times throughout her eight years working as his personal assistant and as an executive for his short-lived movie company, Revolt Films. As with Jane and Cassie, Mia described in dozens of texts and social media posts struggling with her financial dependence on Combs and her fear of his violent nature, even as she spoke warmly of him. Mia supported the Ventura sex-trafficking claim. She said she saw Combs throw Ventura to the ground and "crack her head open." But Mia was not herself sex-trafficked, according to prosecutors — she is instead a racketeering witness. Mia's testimony may be used to support an underlying racketeering crime of forced labor. She told the jury that Combs made her work as many as five days in a row with little or no sleep. Combs was a volatile boss who stole her phone and passport during arguments that turned violent, she said. Her testimony may also support an underlying crime of bribery and obstruction of justice. Mia told the jury that Combs' bodyguard, Damion "D-Roc" Butler, called and texted her repeatedly in the weeks after Ventura's lawsuit, spinning the "Puff and Cass" relationship as normal, and offering her "a gift." Capricorn Clark, his kidnapping accuser In her testimony, Capricorn Clark, Combs' former personal assistant and marketing exec, supported the Ventura sex-trafficking charge, describing Ventura as docile, trapped, and frequently subjected to beatings. During one beating, Clark said, Combs stopped briefly to warn her, "If I jumped in he was going to fuck me up, too." Clark is primarily a racketeering witness. Her testimony supports the underlying crimes of kidnapping and extortion. Clark said Combs was so enraged by Ventura's brief 2011 romance with rival rapper Kid Cudi that he forced Clark at gunpoint to ride with him and a bodyguard to Cudi's nearby house in Hollywood Hills. "He just said get dressed, we're going to go kill this —" and here he used the N-word. Cudi — whose given name is Scott Mescudi — told the jury that he arrived home to find his dog locked in the bathroom and a table full of Christmas presents unwrapped and rifled through. Clark also corroborated trial testimony by Ventura and her mom, Regina Ventura, concerning what prosecutors call a $20,000 extortion threat. The mom said she wired Combs the money after he threatened to release explicit sex tapes of her daughter. Dawn Richard, death-threat witness Former Danity Kane singer Dawn Richard testified to a brutal 2009 beating at Combs' rented Los Angeles mansion that supports both the Ventura sex-trafficking-by-force allegation and racketeering. Combs punched, kicked, and dragged Ventura during a fight over her not cooking him breakfast quickly enough, both Ventura and Richard told the jury. The next day, Combs called Ventura and Richard into his studio and locked the door. Inside, he tried to explain the incident, gave them some flowers, and what Richard said she considered to be a death threat. "He said that what we saw was passion," Richard testified. He told them, "he was trying to take us to the top, and that, where he comes from, people go missing," if they talk to the police, she said. "And then he gave us flowers." Prosecutors may call what happened next inside the studio extortion, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, all underlying racketeering crimes. Kerry Morgan In her testimony, Kerry Morgan supported the Ventura sex-trafficking charge, describing two times she saw Combs beat Ventura, whom she called her best friend from their teenage modeling years. Once was when Ventura took too long in the bathroom during a 2013 Jamaica vacation. Morgan said Combs dragged a screaming Ventura outside by the hair and flung her down onto some paving bricks. For about 30 seconds, "I thought she was knocked out," Morgan testified. Morgan also supported the racketeering count by describing a $30,000 hush-money payment she received from Combs. In return for the money, Morgan said, she signed a non-disclosure agreement that barred her from talking about a 2018 assault she said happened earlier that year in Ventura's Hollywood Hills house. Combs was desperate to learn "who Cassie was cheating on him with," she testified. Combs let himself into Ventura's apartment, she said. "He came up behind me, and choked me when I got away, he boomeranged a wooden hanger at my head," giving her a concussion, Morgan said. Bryana "Bana" Bongolan, who says Combs dangled her over a balcony Bryana "Bana" Bongolan, a marketing director, told jurors she and Ventura are longtime friends. They shared a lot of drugs over the years, she said — including cocaine, ketamine, and GHB. They also shared trauma, she told the jury. She once saw Combs throw a knife at Ventura, who she said threw it back. "I'm the devil and I could kill you," she testified Combs told her in 2016, seemingly at random, when she and Ventura were with him on a Malibu beach. Combs, she said, gave no explanation for the threat. Bongolan's most important testimony — feeding the prosecution's argument that Combs stood at the head of a violent, criminal "racket" — described him picking her up and holding her over the railing of a 17th-story balcony in September 2016. "You know what the fuck you did!" she said Combs kept shouting as he hoisted her into the air. Asked if she knew what he meant, she testified, "I still have no idea." On cross-examination, defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland highlighted inconsistencies between what Bongolan has said in a $10 million lawsuit, in her interviews with prosecutors, and in her testimony. The defense lawyer also leaned into the defense contention that Combs' accusers have financial reasons to falsely implicate him. Westmoreland questioned Bongolan hard about her and Ventura's lawsuits against Combs. In one example, Bongolan's ongoing lawsuit accuses Combs of violent sexual assault, an allegation not made in her June 4 testimony — though Bongolan did tell jurors that Combs' hands cupped her breasts before he hoisted her up from under her arms. "It means a lot for you to become a ten-millionaire soon, doesn't it?" Westmoreland asked Bongolan, who answered, "I care about justice." Read the original article on Business Insider
