The Marshall Project - Summary
In 2023 (precise date unknown), The Marshall Project released a series of reports on misconduct by New York State correctional officers. Here are some of the highlights:
'How We Investigated Abuse by Prison Guards in New York'
"The Marshall Project examined 12 years of employee discipline data and hundreds of prisoner lawsuits. To report on how New York State prison officials discipline officers they accuse of abuse, The Marshall Project examined two primary data sets. We received one through public records requests to the state corrections agency. The other we compiled based on thousands of pages of court records released by the state attorney general's office."
"For the first set of data, we asked New York's Department of Corrections and Community Supervision for its database of discipline cases it brought against employees. These records had been hidden from public view under a decades-old secrecy law which the Legislature repealed in 2020. The department gave us...files itemizing cases it filed from Jan. 1, 2010, through mid-April of 2022."
"For our second set of data, we asked the New York attorney general's office for every lawsuit it settled -- or lost -- on behalf of the corrections department since 2010."
'We Spent Two years Investigating Abuse by Prison Guards in New York. Here Are Five Takeaways'
"The state fails to fire most corrections officers it accuses of violence against prisoners or covering up abuse.
"New York's prison system has failed to fire nearly all corrections officers it accused of attacking people in their custody. And guards often work in groups to cover up assaults by lying to investigators and in official reports..."
1) New York's discipline system favors prison guards
"Over 12 years, the New York corrections department tried to fire officers or supervisors the agency accused of physically abusing prisoners or covering up midconduct in more than 290 cases. But in only 10% of those cases did the officers get fired. That's despite the agency classifying the employees as threats to the safety and security of prisons. Some of the officers retired or resigned, but the vast majority managed to keep their jobs.
"Examples include a guard whom the state tried to fire three times in three years for using excessive force; an officer who broke his baton hitting a prisoner 35 times; and guards who beat up a prisoner so badly he needed 13 staples to close gashes in his scalp.
"The guards' union contract requires any effort to fire an officer to be subject to outside arbitrators, who have final say on whether guards lose their jobs. In abuse cases, arbitrators ruled in favor of officers three-quarters of the time. Arbitrators often said the state's evidence was insufficient or found prisoners' testimony unconvincing."
2) In many cases of serious abuse, officials didn't try to discipline the officers accused
"The Marshall Project identified more than 160 lawsuits where, under a court order or settlement, the state paid damages to people who said guards abused them. Records show that the department did not try to discipline officers in 88% of those cases, including some in which prisoners were permanently injured or even killed.
"Examples include a prisoner whose account of a beating at the hands of officers was so strong, a jury awarded him $1 million; a judge called it 'the strongest excessive force case' she'd seen in her career. In another case, where a man was killed by officers after allegedly refusing to clean his cell, the state agreed to pay his family $5 million. The agency did not try to discipline the officers in either incident.
3) A culture of cover-ups among guards makes it hard to hold them accountable
"Guards often work in groups to conceal violent assaults by lying to investigators and on official reports, records show. Then the officers file charges accusing prisoners of assaulting them.
"In three-quarters of the abuse cases where managers tried to fire officers, the department also accused them of a cover-up, often by acting in concert. The department tried to discipline guards for incidents in which one or more were accused of committing abuse while others lied to hide it, bringing a case, on average, every two months over 12 years.
"In about half of roughly 160 lawsuits that we examined, prisoners complained that after violent incidents, guards retaliated against them by filing false charges of assault and sending them to solitary confinement."
4) The corrections officers' powerful union has protected this disciplinary process
"A key reason prison officials find it so hard to get rid of guards is the contract the state signed with the officers' union in 1972.* This agreement gives the final say on firing an officer to arbitrators hired by the union and the state -- a system the union successfully kept in later contracts. Only a court can overturn arbitration decisions."
[* Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Attica uprising, in which numerous prisoners as well as guards were eventually killed (almost all by the state police), happened the year before -- 1971.]
"The union has significant political influence, especially in rural communities that are home to prisons and their workers. It has protected members' jobs even as the number of people incarcerated in New York has plunged by nearly half since 2010 and the state closed two dozen prisons."
5) Our investigation captures only a fraction of prisoner abuse
"Experts say the records reviewed for this investigation probably reflect just a portion of the violence guards inflict in New York's corrections system. Many prisoners do not file complaints because they fear retaliation or not being believed. And in most of the state's 44 prisons, officers do not wear body cameras,* which sometimes help prove abuse." [* Beginning around 2018, at Clinton Correctional Facility, c.o.s as well as sergeants were regularly seen sporting body-worn cameras. But within about a year, such use dropped off precipitously. As of early 2024, they've virtually disappeared.]
'How a "Blue Wall" Inside New York State Prisons Protects Abusive Guards' (by Joseph Neff, Alysia Santo, and Tom Meagher)
"BEACON, N.Y. -- The way the prison guards described it in their paperwork, there was a minor disturbance the day they took Chad Stanbro to a dental clinic at a regional hospital.
"Stanbro, a prisoner, had been sedated but became agitated during surgery, took a swing at a dentist and kicked a correctional officer in the stomach, they wrote. The guard and a colleague had quickly restrained him and had driven him back to Fishkill Correctional Facility, where, according to the senior officer's account, Stanbro had 'reported no injuries.'
"But critical details were missing -- including that Stanbro had been paralyzed during the incident. A third officer [Kristofer Leonardo] had rushed into the clinic's operating room and had knelt on Stanbro's neck until he couldn't move, according to later court testimony. That guard had asked his colleagues to leave him out of their reports, they acknoledged at trial, and they had done so.
"Even though Stanbro's injuries were obvious -- he could not walk or move his body from the neck down -- the officer who injured him avoided discipline. Stanbro, hwoever, was accused of assault, and after he left the hospital was put in solitary confinement. In July, a federal jury awarded him $2.1 million in damages.
"Such cover-ups are commonplace across New York State's prison system, according to a Marshall Project review of thousands of pages of court documents, arbitration records and officer disciplinary data.
"At Auburn Correctional Facility, west of Syracuse, guards kicked a man, called him a racial slur and broke three of his ribs in what a judge called a 'barbaric assault.' At Elmira Correctional Facility, near the Pennsylvania border, officers beat a handcuffed man and threw him down a flight of stairs, fracturing his skull. At Clinton Correctional Facility, near the Canadian border, guards kicked and punched a handcuffed man, breaking his rib. In all three cases, the staff members filed false reports to cover up the assaults, court records showed, and faced no discipline.
"The records illustrate how cover-ups can make it difficult to hold officers accountable for using excessive force. They also reveal a typical playbook: Guards often work in groups to conceal violent assaults by lying to investigators and on official reports, and then they file charges against their victims and have them sent to solitary."
"The Marshall Project found and analyzed lawsuits involving excessive-force incidents that the state lost or settled in the decade ending in 2020...Half of the roughly 160 lawsuits complain of guards retaliating against the incarcerated people they injured. A man at Sullivan Correctional Facility said guards beat his head against the floor and smashed his face with handcuffs. At Sing Sing Correctional facility, officers fractured a man's eye socket. In both cases, corrections employees charged the men with assault and sent them to solitary. The state paid a total of $56,500 to settle the two lawsuits, but it did not discipline any of the officers involved, saying investigators could not verify the allegations."
"In March 2020, Officer Aaron Finn handcuffed a prisoner at Green Haven Correctional facility and repeatedly smashed his head into a wall and steel bars.
"A body camera worn by Finn captured the attack, which left the prisoner, Melvin Virgil, limp and unconscious. Footage from another body camera shows a sergeant repeatedly demanding, 'Who applied handcuffs?' and then 'Nobody knows nothing now?' as a group of officers stand silently.
"Finn filed six misconduct charges that day against Virgil, who went straight to solitary confinement. The guard claimed in his paperwork that he had hit Virgil once after the prisoner had smashed one of his fingers with the handcuffs. Another guard wrote that Virgil had tried to kick the officers even after he was on the ground. Two other officers involved, including the sergeant who had earlier demanded answers, filed similar reports.
"But the videos show Finn smashing Virgil's head into the wall twice before taking him to the ground and ramming his head into the steel bars four times. At the moment when the officers claimed Virgil kicked at them, the video shows him losing consciousness.
"Weeks after the assault, investigators showed the video to two officers and gave them a chance to amend their reports. They declined. Corrections officials moved to fire Finn, but did not file disciplinary charges against the other officers.
"Finn resigned a year after the attack. In an unusual turn of events, he was later arrested in connection with the assault. He pleaded guilty, and in November was sentenced to three months in federal prison. He did not respond to requests for comment.
"Virgil, who was serving a sentence for sexual abuse, robbery and assault, sued Finn and his colleagues last year. The guards have denied the allegations and asked a judge to dismiss the case.
"Another prisoner had accused Finn of a similar attack in 2015, when he said the guard handcuffed him and smashed his head into a wall. Last year, the state paid $9,500 to settle that case.
"A comprehensive look at cases like Virgil's, in which guards appear to conspire to cover up violent incidents, was not possible until recently. New York required all discipline records for prison guards and police officers to be kept secret. But the Legislature changed the law in 2020, allowing The Marshall Project to obtain thousands of discipline records detailing allegations of miscnduct inside prisons.
"The records show that even when the corrections department attempted to fire officers for excessive force or for lying about it, the agency succeeded just 10 percent of the time.
"The officers' efforts to conceal the violent episode that paralyzed Stanbro were complicated by a major factor: The incident happened in a public hospital rather than an isolated prison.
"Guards from Fishkill, where Stanbro was serving a 10-year sentence for stealing a television and violating parole, drove him to a dental clinic for prisoners in August 2018. During a procedure to treat a dislocated jaw, he became agitated, tried to pull away and knocked over a monitor, according to court records. When he regained full consciousness, he later testified, a third officer, Kristofer Leonardo, was pressing a knee to his neck as the other guards held him down. The force on Stanbro's spine paralyzed him, medical and court records show.
"Afterward, the other guards would testify, Leonardo asked them for a favor: Keep his name out of their official reports.
"'He was an officer that I respected,' Officer Nadya Palou told the jury, explaining why she went along with the request.
"After Leonardo left the hospital, a security camera in the parking lot captured Palou and a colleague lifting Stanbro's limp body into a van to drive back to Fishkill. They stopped along the way to prop him up, Palou later testified.
"Before the officers returned to Fishkill, hospital staff had already called the prison to complain about the use of force, a corrections supervisor testified.
"The guards who drove Stanbro wrote in their official reports that he had climbed into the van himself -- they did not realize there was video showing otherwise. As requested, neither mentioned Leonardo in their reports.
"In the prison infirmary, a nurse and a captain accused him of faking his injuries, he testified. It was only after the nurse repeatedly poked his feet with a needle and got no response that the staff members called for an ambulance.
"A helicopter took Stanbro to Westchester Medical Center, the same hospital where Leonardo had knelt on his spine. He spent 12 days there.
"Leonardo, who had been escorting men from a different prison to the dental clinic, did not report that he had used force on Stanbro. His supervisor at Greene Correctional facility later learned of an internal investigation and ordered the guard to fill out the required paperwork. Leonardo wrote that he wrapped Stanbro in a bear hug and helped handcuff him after Stanbro had punched a guard. In court, Leonardo denied both the assault and the request that his name be left out of the reports.
"The guards' stories fell apart at trial. In a rare concession, two officers admitted to jurors they had lied, first by omitting Leonardo from their reports and then by saying Stanbro had walked himself to the van. The dentist testified that Stanbro had bever tried to punch him or the guards.
"State officials did not try to punish Leonardo. The agency said Palou resigned while disciplinary charges were pending, and the third officer was fined $3,000. None of the officers responded to several requests for comment.
"While guards regularly suffer no consequences for using excessive force on incarcerated people, the prisoners often leave the encounters not only injured, but also facing administrative hearings that can lead to harsh penalties. "After Stanbro was discharged from the hospital, the guards accused him of assault. He was given 40 days in solitary confinement. Still paralyzed, he was allowed to leave his cell once a day for physical therapy, he later testified.
"Several lawyers, advocates and former correctional managers said it is common practice for corrections employees to beat prisoners and then charge them with assault, even when the prisoners have suffered grievous injuries as Stanbro did.
"Guards at Adirondack Correctional Facility, west of Lake Placid, beat a man and fractured his rib. And a beating by officers at Southport Correctional Facility, which closed last year, left a man with permanent damage to his shoulder and eye. In both cases employees accused the men of assaulting them -- and supervisors put the men in solitary confinement. Both prisoners got the rulings reversed on appeal. They later sued and received six-figure settlements. Two Southport officers were suspended for a year for their actions. None of the guards were fired.
"Attacks by guards are almost certainly more common than the discipline records indicate, experts said. Officers exert an enormous amount of control over prisoners' lives, which deters incarcerated people from reporting abuse, said Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit prison monitoring group. Scaife said she often hears from people who say they are being mistreated but are afraid that reporting it will cause guards to turn on them.
"'It's like, "Oh, you want to do that to us? Watch all the ways we can make your life a living hell,"' she said.
"Kevin Ryan, a former prison investigator in New York, found the cover-up culture among guards and indifference from top managers so effective at thwarting his investigations that he eventually quit.
"'At some point, it just becomes a waste of time because nobody is going to tell you the truth,' said Ryan, who was a federal customs agent for 25 years before joining the corrections system in 2015.
"Ryan pointed to the case of Roy Harriger, who was convicted in 2015 of sexual abuse of a child. Harriger said a guard at Attica Correctional Facility beat him in the back of the head with a baton, leaving him paralyzed. The assault occurred sometime after a guard had picked him up at the sergeant's office on his cell block, and before he arrived unconscious at the infirmary.
"Ryan assigned three investigators to dig through records and interview staff members.
"The officers put up a united front, saying they knew nothing or that Harriger had fallen in the shower. Crucial records were missing. About a dozen staff members refused to be interviewed by state police. Ryan said he never determined which guard attacked Harriger. No one was ever disciplined for the assault, and no criminal charges were filed.
"Harriger sued. At trial, his lawyer asked the sergeant working in his cell block and the sergeant at the infirmary which officers escorted Harriger that day. Both sergeants testified dozens of times that they didn't recall and never tried to find out.
"The judge said she was appalled: the corrections department, which 'requires the completion of paperwork on just about everything that occurs in the prison system, somehow neglected to file any paperwork related to this incident,' she wrote.
"Citing the medical records, the judge ruled in November 2020 that the Attica staff's story that Harriger had fallen in the shower was a 'fabrication.' She awarded him nearly $2.4 million. He has remained in a wheelchair since the attack and can't straighten the fingers on his right hand, which contract like claws and dig into the flesh of his palm, according to court records.
"Such assaults and cover-ups are crimes, Ryan said, and his office referred more than a dozen cases to the State Police and [FBI]. Those investigations almost never resulted in criminal charges against correctional officers.
"The best way to get officers to break their code of silence, Ryan said, would be to pressure them under oath in a federal grand jury, where deceit results in criminal charges like perjury or lying to an FBI agent.
"'Then you separate the heard,' Ryan said.
"Four years after the neck injury, Stanbro was paroled, but he has struggled since he moved back to live with his family in Elmira. After surgery and months of physical therapy, he can now use his arms and hands. He can walk with a limp and is able to lift only light objects. Nerve pain regularly shoots down his back through his triceps to his fingertips, according to testimony and court records.
"'I used to be a big, strong kid,' he said in an interview.
"Stanbro had dealt with mental health problems and substance abuse before he was imprisoned; since the assault, anger and depression have consumed him, he said. He landed in jail in February after suffering a psychotic episode.
"He has said he is troubled that none of the guards were prosecuted for the assault and cover-up. He was interviewed by the State Police and the Westchester [DA's] office, which closed the investigation without filing charges.
"Stanbro said he is reluctant to wish incarceration on anyone, but he believes that the three officers should go to prison.
"'It's the only thing that anybody seems to be scared of,' he said. 'This is not revenge I seek; this is change.'"
'In New York Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Prisoners Rarely Get Fired'
"Shattered teeth. Punctured lungs. Broken bones. Over a dozen years, New York State officials have documented the results of attacks by hundreds of prison guards on the people in their custody.
"But when the state corrections department has tried to use this evidence to fire guards, it has failed 90% of the time, an investigation by The Marshall Project has found.
"The review of prison disciplinary records dating to 2010 found more than 290 cases in which the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision tried to fire officers or supervisors it said physically abused prisoners or covered up mistreatment that ranged from group beatings to withholding food. The agency considered these employees a threat to the safety and security of prisons.
"Yet officers were ousted in just 28 cases.* The state tried to fire one guard for using excessive force in three separate incidents within three years -- and failed each time. He remains on the state prisons' payroll."
[* That's 28 firings over 12 years; or -- on average -- a bit more than 2 per year. Out of a total 16,000 officers, just .175% -- or 1 out of every 571 -- were fired for misconduct.]
"An officer who broke his baton hitting a prisoner 35 times, even after the man was handcuffed, was not fired. Neither were the guards who beat a prisoner at Attica Correctional Facility so badly that he needed 13 staples to close gashes in his scalp. Nor were the officers who battered a man with mental illness, injuring him from face to groin. The man hanged himself the next day.
"In dozens of documented cases involving severe injuries of prisoners, including three deaths, the agency did not even try to discipline officers, state records show."
"The abuse by guards has not just left prisoners with lasting injuries. It has also exposed the corrections department to liability in legal cases. The state paid more than $18 million as a result of lawsuits alleging excessive force..."
"The case of Harold Scott shows how corrections department officials can struggle to fire guards they believe have brutalized prisoners.
"In June 2019, Scott had just begun a 90-day sentence at the Willard Drug Treatment Campus, in the Finger Lakes region, for violating parole after serving time for burglary and assault.
"He got into a dispute with a guard over the number of rubber bands in his dreadlocks. When the officer, Timothy Downs, slapped him in the face, Scott said, he hit the guard back. What followed was a 'criminal street gang-style beating,' investigators would later write, with guards punching and kicking Scott even after his hands had been cuffed behind his back.
"Doctors at a nearby hospital determined that Scott had life-threatening injuries, including a punctured lung, and put him into intensive care..."
"Guards' written reports said they stopped using force as soon as they handcuffed Scott. Investigators concluded that the reports were falsified and that the officers 'conspired and created a false narrative to cover up the beating,' noting that the documents were 'identical in important sections.'
"Officials decided to fire the officers..."
"The union challenged the firings in front of separate arbitrators..."
"In all the cases, arbitrators agreed that Scott had been attacked but said the evidence did not prove who did it. They did not find any guards responsible for the assault but ruled that three covered it up; those officers were suspended for at least six months. A fourth officer had previously agreed to a suspension.
"After his beating, Scott was accused of assault and violent conduct, and kept for months in solitary confinement. The incident left him with lasting injuries, he said in an interview. Scott, 44, has difficulty breathing and speaks softly, he said, because it hurts to talk.
"In December 2021, Scott filed a lawsuit against the officers he said beat him. In a voice as quiet as a whisper, he said, 'I want to be heard.'"
"The union has suceeded in protecting members' jobs even as the number of people incarcerated has plunged by nearly half since 2010 and the state shut two dozen prisons. The number of officers has fallen about 22%, leaving the state with about one guard for every two prisoners, among the highest staffing ratios in the country."
"When Karl Taylor, a prisoner at Sullivan Correctional Facility, died in 2015, his family sued, alleging guards had beaten him for refusing to leave his cell. The state settled during the trial for $5 million and agreed to install cameras at the prison, which is near Monticello...But the department did not file disciplinary charges against any of the officers involved. The agency noted that a grand jury did not indict the guards."
"The attack that prompted Nick Magalios to file his lawsuit began when officers at Fishkill Correctional Facility...yelled at him for hugging and kissing his wife hello during a visit, which prison rules allowed.
"Afterward, Officer Matthew Peralta, who had reprimanded Magalios, knocked him on the floor and kicked and punched him as another guard [Timothy Bailey] held him down and a third officer watched, according to testimony in the civil trial.
"Photos of Magalios taken that day, in September 2017, showed bruises on his back and knees. He said he needed surgery to fix a shoulder injured in the attack. The corrections department opened an investigation but, citing insufficient evidence, never filed disciplinary charges against the officers. They still work at Fishkill."
"State lawyers called Magalios's allegations 'a fiction.' Peralta and another guard [Bailey] testified that they had never interacted with Magalios, who was imprisoned in 2014 for burglary, and denied using any force.
"A federal jury awarded Magalios $1 million in 2021. Judge Cathy Seibel reduced it to $500,000 -- closer to previous jury verdicts for prison abuse in that court district. Both sides have appealed.
"Seibel wrote in an order that the officers lied repeatedly, and she called Peralta's testimony 'laughable.' She described the lawsuit as 'one of the strongest cases of excessive force I have seen in my years on the bench.'
"She urged corrections officials to deem the assault on Magalios 'intentional wrongdoing' to force the officers to pay damages themselves.
"'I cannot think of a more effective tool for deterring future misconduct,' the judge wrote. It did not happen. The Marshall Project found only two excessive force lawsuits in which officers had to contribute some of their own money; taypayers were on the hook for the rest.
"Magalios, who is now out of prison and runs a property management company, said in an intervew that he appreciated the jury's ruling in his favor but was frustrated that no guards were punished.
"'You can commit gang assault on an inmate,' he said, 'and there's no repercussions.'"
[Except, perhaps, public shaming.]