The trial of Caleb Blair, one of the corrections officers allegedly involved in the death of Messiah Nantwi, began and May 4, with a guilty plea.
At the Oneida County Courthouse in Utica, Caleb Blair pleaded guilty in the ceremonial courtroom before Judge Michael Nolan for his role in the death of Messiah Nantwi.
Nantwi, while incarcerated at Mid-State Correctional Facility, was brutally beaten to death on March 1, 2025, by a Correction Emergency Response Team to the point of unresponsiveness and beaten twice more with his hands cuffed behind his back. After the death, a grand jury alleged the corrections officers got together to plant evidence and submit false testimony.
Who is on trial in the death of Messiah Nantwi and why
Blair stands charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy and first-degree offering a false instrument for file.
According to an indictment, at around 11 a.m. March 1, 2025, a request for assistance was broadcast by the National Guard, resulting in a response from the Mid-State Corrections Emergency Response Team. The Guard was in place at the prison to supplement striking corrections officers.
Special Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick said in April 2025 a grand jury found that Nantwi was told to return to his room, and refused before finally going back to his cell.
Two minutes after the call, the indictment said the defendants entered Nantwi’s room and began to beat Nantwi. To Fitzpatrick’s knowledge, none of the CERT team members were wearing mandated body cameras.
The indictment said Nantwi was beaten to the point of being unresponsive and dragged toward the infirmary and down three flights of stairs. The grand jury alleged that during this trip, Nantwi was assaulted again in the stairwell.
How did Messiah Nantwi die?
Even after two assaults and with his hands cuffed behind his back, Nantwi was placed into an infirmary holding cell and assaulted again, according to court documents. The indictment said he was struck in the cell by Corrections Officer Caleb Blair.
“As a result of the numerous beatings by defendants and their fellow corrections officers, incarcerated individual Messiah Nantwi died due to massive head trauma and numerous other injuries,” the indictment reads.
Fitzpatrick said there are “fragments” of Nantwi’s entrance into the infirmary on a body-worn camera and that there was enough to be able to name the individuals involved.
“It seems many of the officers intentionally either turned off their cameras, placed them in an area of concealment, or simply looked the other way,” he explained.
A call for an ambulance was made at 11:36 a.m., and at 11:47 a.m., Nantwi was declared dead.
According to the indictment, Nantwi was left unattended in the holding cell and no one checked on him, thus demonstrating ” … a depraved indifference to the life of incarcerated individual Messiah Nantwi.
The indictment says after Nantwi was taken away by ambulance, Sgts. Francis Chandler and David Ferrone ordered the defendants into Building 3. There, Levi “ … pleaded” for all those assembled to omit him from their 2104A reports — a report made after an incarcerated person dies in custody to determine who was there, what force was used, what force was witnessed.
How the cases have progressed in the death of Messiah Nantwi
Nicholas Vitale, Joshua Bartlett, Nathan Palmer, Daniel Burger, David Ferrone, Francis Chandler, Adam Joseph, Donald Slawson, Frank Jacobs, Michael Iffert, and Craig Klemick have all pleaded guilty to lesser charges, with some, like Chandler, pleading to second-degree gang assault to avoid a trial for a second-degree murder charge.
Klemick was supposed to go to trial with Blair, but pleaded guilty just days before his trial to a lesser charge and avoiding a possible conviction of first-degree manslaughter.
Jonah Levi went to trial on March 23 and was charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy and first-degree offering a false instrument for file. He was found guilty of all his charges, save for second-degree murder.
Other correction officers facing trial in death of Messiah Nantwi
There is one more corrections officer going to trial.
Thomas Eck was charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, two counts of fifth-degree conspiracy, first-degree offering a false instrument for file and tampering with physical evidence. He will go before Judge Natwi on June 4 for jury selection.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Jury selection begins in trial of Mid-State CO Caleb Blair
Reporting by Casey Pritchard, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
