As rain pounded the streets of Utica and thunder boomed in the distance, 12 jurors continue deliberations in the Jonah Levi case while countless people waited for their verdict.
The trial of Jonah Levi, one of four corrections officers on trial for his alleged involvement in the murder of inmate Messiah Nantwi, continued into the seventh day as the jury’s deliberation continued. On the sixth day, closing statements were given and the jury was given its instructions.
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.
Levi is 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.
Over the course of the trial, witnesses and experts have given their testimonies under oath, from Nantwi’s cellmate who witnessed his friend’s beating death, to one of Levi’s coworkers and the paramedic who worked on Nantwi on the way to Wynn Hospital, and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.
Judge Michael Nolan encouraged the jurors to take their time when deliberating and that there was no set time that they had to return a verdict.
“It could be 10 minutes, it could be 10 hours, it could be 10 days,” Judge Nolan said during jury instructions on March 30.
There is no way to determine how long it will take the jury to find a verdict.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Jury continues deliberation in Jonah Levi murder trial
Reporting by Casey Pritchard, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
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