More than 100 People Dead in NY Prisons Since Guards’ Murder of Robert Brooks; Legislature & Governor Have Done Nothing to Address this Crisis
(New York) – Today, the jury returned verdicts in the trials of Matthew Galliher, David Kingsley and Nicholas Kieffer for the murder of Robert Brooks, an incarcerated person, at Marcy Prison. Kingsley was found guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree assault; the others were found not-guilty. Previously, six others pleaded guilty to manslaughter and other charges. Jose Saldaña, Director of the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP) and a survivor of 38 years in New York State prisons, released the following statement:
“Carrying on the legacy of slavery, prison staff have been brutalizing and even killing incarcerated Black people with no accountability since long before I was locked up in 1979. Just in the last decade, they beat to death Leonard Strickland, Samuel Harrell, Karl Taylor … The brutality goes beyond physical assaults…