New York Officer Pleads Guilty in Fatal Beating of Inmate Robert Brooks

One of the 10 corrections officers charged in connection with the vicious beating death of a prisoner in central New York last year pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter on Monday.

The officer, Christopher Walrath, 37, agreed to a plea deal offered by the prosecution, under which he will spend 15 years in prison and receive five years of post-release supervision.

He is the first officer to take a plea deal in connection with the killing of the prisoner, Robert Brooks, 43, who was beaten to death in December at Marcy Correctional Facility, a state prison in Marcy, N.Y., near Utica. The attack, which took place while Mr. Brooks was handcuffed, was recorded by officers’ body-worn cameras. Mr. Brooks was Black and all the officers seen attacking him appear to be white.

During an appearance Monday morning before a judge in Oneida County Court, Mr. Walrath confirmed that he improperly left his post and joined the attack on Mr. Brooks in three separate areas of the prison. He said that he beat him in the groin and placed him in a chokehold, both acts that are prohibited by departmental guidelines.

Mr. Brooks was declared dead at a hospital in Utica the day after the beating.

William J. Fitzpatrick, the Onondaga County district attorney and the special prosecutor in the case, told reporters on Monday that the attack on Mr. Brooks, who had arrived at the prison just 30 minutes earlier, appeared to have been a sort of violent initiation into life at Marcy Correctional Facility.

He called the attack a “welcome to Marcy,” and said it was “emblematic of the problems here and throughout the system.”

Mr. Fitzpatrick said he would continue to prosecute the other nine officers, who have been charged with a range of crimes, including murder, manslaughter and tampering with evidence.

After the attack, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered that the prison employees involved be fired. By Monday, 13 people had been suspended without pay as a step toward termination, according to New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Seven more, including Mr. Walrath, had resigned.

“Nothing in his story exonerates the other defendants,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said of Mr. Walrath after the hearing.

Mr. Walrath will be officially sentenced on Aug. 4. His lawyer declined to comment.

In a statement, Robert Brooks Jr., Mr. Brooks’s son, called Mr. Walrath’s guilty plea “one important but modest step on the long road to justice for my father.”

“Now, Mr. Walrath’s life is in the hands of prison officials,” said Mr. Brooks’s son. “This must be a terrifying prospect for him and his family, knowing what staff is capable of, and how little the system values the lives of incarcerated people.”

“I pray that Mr. Walrath has the opportunity in prison to rehabilitate himself and come out a better man,” he added. “This is what every single person in prison deserves, but it was viciously taken away from my father.”

The attack was recorded by body cameras worn by four Marcy officers. Footage from the cameras, which was made public by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, captured the beating in disturbing detail.

The video showed officers wearing boots kicking and punching a shackled Mr. Brooks in the groin and chest, choking him, and pinning him onto an infirmary examination table while they punched him.

In the footage, his face is covered in blood and his body appears to be limp.

The killing of Mr. Brooks was a grisly episode in a broader crisis in the state prison system, which has been plagued by violence. Earlier this year, thousands of officers spent weeks engaging in an unlawful strike that spread chaos through the prisons.

During that period of unrest, in March, another prisoner, Messiah Nantwi, 22, was killed in a prison across the street from the one in which Mr. Brooks died, in what nine inmates interviewed by The New York Times said was a beating by corrections officers. Fifteen corrections department employees were put on leave as part of an investigation into his death.

Mr. Brooks was serving a 12-year sentence for first-degree assault at the time of his death. He had pleaded guilty in 2017 in the stabbing of a former girlfriend in Monroe County, according to court documents and prison records.

Mr. Brooks had been serving his sentence at Mohawk Correctional Facility, a short drive from the Marcy prison, until the day of the attack. Both are medium-security facilities.

He was moved to the Marcy prison for his own safety after he was involved in altercations with other Mohawk inmates, Mr. Fitzpatrick said.