A former corrections officer was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday for his role in the death of a Black inmate whose beating by a group of guards at an upstate New York prison was captured on bodycam videos.
Christopher Walrath was one of six guards charged with murder in the death of Robert Brooks, who was pummeled at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9. Walrath pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in May under the first plea deal among the guards charged with murder.
Brooks had been serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault since 2017 and was transferred to Marcy from a nearby lockup on the night he was beaten. The videos show Brooks being struck in the chest with a shoe, lifted by his neck and then dropped.
Tampering with evidence gets a 1-year conditional? That person should see the same sentence that the evidence they tampered with led to. If they were tampering with the murder charge evidence, they’re in there for the full 15.
This is like someone dying during commission of a robbery. Everyone involved gets the murder charge.
Two things:
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Bodycam… you are being filmed you idiot! Did you just forget after a while!? Blows my mind whenever we get footage filmed by the culprit.
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In any case: good! Some minimal justice. Can’t wait for the inevitable follow up article about him.
Most of the murderers were not wearing them at all. Only 3-4 of them were wearing them, and they didn’t activate them. The evidence of their cold blooded murder in the hospital was from automatic recordings.
The Times Union first reported in December that the body cameras worn by those four correction officers were passively recording portions of the incident even though their devices had not been activated to record. Investigators were able to retrieve the video footage from those four devices because of a function on the Axon cameras — unknown to the officers — that recorded video when the devices were turned on even if they had not been activated.
The body cameras did not catch the 2 other times they beat the victim in the ingress area and just outside of the hospital that some of the murderers later admitted to.
What did Brooks do to piss these guys off? According to the special prosecutor, Nothing. Literally nothing:
Our investigation further revealed that there was no provocation by Robert Brooks that would have precipitated any physical response whatsoever, never mind the physical response that was inflicted upon him,” Fitzpatrick said. “The fact of the matter is, he did absolutely nothing.”
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