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Killing of Messiah Nantwi
2025 killing by prison guards in New York, US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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On March 1, 2025, prisoner Messiah Nantwi was beaten to death at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in Marcy, New York, by corrections officers who were part of an emergency response team.
On April 16, 2025, two guards connected to Nantwi's death were charged with murder.[1] Overall, 10 prison guards were criminally charged in connection with Nantwi's death.[2]
Fifteen staff members from both the Mid-State Correctional and Marcy Correctional Facility and its neighboring Marcy Correctional Facility were either placed on leave or suspended.[3]
Ten of the correctional officers who were involved in the beating death of Nantwi were directly employed by the Mid-State Correctional Facility, while the other five were employed by the Marcy Correctional Facility, but were working at the Mid-State Correctional Facility at the time of Nantwi's death.[3]
Two of the five Marcy officers were charged with manslaughter.[4] The two prison guards who were charged with second-degree murder were directly employed by the Mid State Correctional Facility.[2][3] Five people would be charged with first degree manslaughter.[2] Two sergeants at Mid State Correctional Facility were each charged with second-degree manslaughter after being accused of doing nothing to stop the assaults while supervising the area where Nantawi was beat to death.[2] Of the 10 officers charged, six were accused of assaulting Nantwi, while the other four were only accused of making an effort to cover-up the incident by doing things such as filing false reports and participating in a plot which included planting a makeshift knife and cleaning up blood in Nantwi’s prison cell in an attempt to destroy evidence.[2] Six of them would also be indicted on gang assault.[4] Eight of them would be indicted for conspiracy, four for tampering with physical evidence, and nine for using a false instrument for filing a report.[4] As of August 2025[update], one officer, Nicholas Vitale, has pled guilty to offering a false instrument for filing and two others, Joshua Bartlett and Nathan Palmer, pled guilty to hindering prosecution and falsifying business records. Four additional unindicted officers also accepted plea offers.[5][6]
On June 17, Mantwi's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the officers, the supervisor of the prison, and commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.[7]
This killing occurred during the 2025 New York corrections officers' strike.
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