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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The death of a handcuffed man who was pummeled by New York prison guards was ruled a homicide in an autopsy report, lawyers for his family said Wednesday.
The report issued by the county medical examiner's office last week concludes that the cause of Robert Brooks' death in December was compression of the neck and multiple blunt impact injuries. The manner of death was determined to be homicide, according to the attorneys.
Body camera video shows corrections officers assaulting Brooks for about 10 minutes while he was handcuffed on a medical examination table at Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9. One officer uses a shoe to strike Brooks in the stomach, and another yanks him up by his neck and drops him back on the table.
Brooks was pronounced dead the next morning.
“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 of the autopsy report.
New York’s attorney general last month appointed Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick as a special prosecutor to investigate Brooks’ death. A grand jury is expected to hear evidence in the case.
More than a dozen correctional officers and two nurses were suspended without pay. One officer quit.
Brooks' son, Robert L. Brooks Jr., has sued the people implicated in the attack, as well as the head of the upstate facility at that time and the commissioner of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Gov. Kathy Hochul called for fast action in the criminal investigation in light of the medical examiner's homicide ruling.
“Those responsible for Mr. Brooks’ death must be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, and I recognize the need to build an airtight prosecution to ensure those individuals are brought to justice,” she said in a prepared statement.
