Just days before his trial was to begin, Mid-State CO Craig Klemick has entered a guilty plea for his role in the death of inmate Messiah Nantwi, according to court documents.
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.
Klemick was charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy, and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing. He was set to go before Judge Michael Nolan on May 4, alongside Caleb Blair.
Special Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick’s Office offered Klemick the chance to plead guilty to first-degree offering a false instrument for filing for his part in the death of Nantwi in exchange for 1 and a 1/3 to four years in state prison.
On May 1, before Judge Michael Nolan at the Oneida County Courthouse, Klemick took the plea deal according to court records.
This leaves Caleb Blair the sole corrections officer from Mid-State Correctional Facility on trial on May 4. The final Mid-State CO to go on trial is Thomas Eck on June 4.
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Mid-State CO pleads guilty days before trial in Nantwi death
Reporting by Casey Pritchard, Utica Observer Dispatch / Observer-Dispatch
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