Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Monday installed a new top leader at the upstate prison where 14 corrections workers have been implicated in a fatal attack on an inmate that was captured on video.
After a visit to the prison, the Marcy Correctional Facility, Ms. Hochul said she had directed the state’s corrections commissioner to immediately replace the acting superintendent with a permanent superintendent from another New York prison.
The governor’s order came three days after footage of the deadly beating of the man, Robert L. Brooks, was made public by the state attorney general’s office as part of an investigation that could lead to criminal charges.
In releasing the footage on Friday, Letitia James, the attorney general, described the behavior it showed as “shocking and disturbing.” Ms. Hochul sounded a similar tone in a statement issued after she visited the prison.
“As I stood in the room where Robert Brooks was killed, I was once again heartbroken by this unnecessary loss of life and further sickened to think of the actions of depraved individuals with no regard for human life,” she said. “Mr. Brooks and his family did not deserve this.”
The governor had previously directed the corrections commissioner, Daniel F. Martuscello III, to begin the process of firing the 14 employees — 13 officers and a nurse — implicated in Mr. Brooks’s death. Thirteen have been suspended without pay, officials said; one has resigned. Several of the officers have been previously accused in lawsuits of physically abusing other inmates.
Ms. Hochul, continuing to try to contain the fallout from the Dec. 9 attack, said on Monday that Bennie Thorpe, who had been superintendent at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, would take over as the Marcy prison’s top leader. He is replacing Danielle Medbury, the first deputy superintendent, who has been acting superintendent.
Superintendent Thorpe, a 25-year veteran of the prison system, began his career as a corrections officer and rose through the ranks while working at various facilities, including Sing Sing and Bedford Hills in Westchester County. He was named superintendent at Shawangunk, a maximum-security prison, in September.
Ms. Hochul announced a series of other steps, including accelerating the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on additional cameras for the state’s prisons.
In an interview on Monday, Stanley Richards, president of the Fortune Society, a organization that helps formerly incarcerated people re-enter society, praised Ms. Hochul for acting quickly to improve conditions at the Marcy prison and across the system.
“The steps that she laid out are the steps we need to take,” he said, though he added that “the hard work” would be ensuring real change so that “people in custody and staff are safe.”
Jennifer Scaife, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a watchdog group, also welcomed the governor’s moves. Ms. Scaife said Mr. Brooks’s death and the video of the beating had created “a watershed moment for New York State” that “cast a harsh light on the grim realities of life within our state prisons.”
Mr. Brooks, 43, was declared dead at a Utica hospital early on Dec. 10, officials have said. The Onondaga County medical examiner’s office is conducting an autopsy and will determine the cause and manner of his death.
In court filings last week, State Police investigators said that “preliminary findings” from the medical examiner’s office showed “concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another.”
The videos released by Ms. James’s office show officers appearing to choke Mr. Brooks, who was handcuffed and shackled during the attack, at several points and forcefully picking him up and pushing him down by his throat.
The footage was captured by body-worn cameras belonging to four of the officers. The videos do not include sound; the cameras do not record audio unless activated by an officer. It is unclear whether the officers knew the cameras were running during the attack.
The attack and death came to light on Dec. 15, when Mr. Martuscello said that an unnamed inmate had died after a “use of force” by staff members at the prison, in Marcy, N.Y., about 50 miles east of Syracuse.
Mr. Brooks was identified as the victim the next day. He had been serving a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty in Monroe County in 2017 to first-degree assault in the stabbing of a former girlfriend, according to state prison records and local news reports.
State prison records show that he had been serving his sentence at Mohawk Correctional Facility, about a 15-minute drive from the Marcy prison. Both are medium-security facilities. He was moved on the day of the attack and arrived at the Marcy prison shortly before the attack began. Officials have not said what prompted the move.
On Monday, the attorney general’s office said it was aware of another recent death of a Marcy prisoner, Elijah Tripp, and that its Office of Special Investigation was conducting a preliminary assessment of the matter.
Mr. Tripp, 32, who had been held in a mental health unit at the prison, was found unresponsive in his cell just before 3 p.m. on Nov. 11, a corrections department spokesman said. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead an hour later, the spokesman said.
Shortly before Ms. Hochul announced the measures she planned to take in response to Mr. Brooks’s death, several hundred people gathered outside her Manhattan office to demand that those involved in the attack be prosecuted.
Some of those who attended the rally had served time in state prisons and spoke of the brutality they had seen there. Rarely, they said, were the officers responsible held to account. The difference in this case was that Mr. Brooks’s last moments had been filmed.
Peter Anekwe, 60, who spent 25 years in prison in New York after being convicted of robbery, said that, while he was incarcerated, he had witnessed “multiple instances” of what had happened to Mr. Brooks.
“It’s unfortunate that someone had to lose their life for the catalyst to begin,” Mr. Anekwe said. “But, you know, at least it allows that his life not be lost in vain.”
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