Ten prison guards in New York were charged on Wednesday in connection with the fatal beating of a 22-year-old inmate last month.

Two of the guards were charged with murder. It is the second time this year that a group of correctional officers in the state was indicted for a death behind bars.

A prisoner at the Mid-State Correctional Facility, Messiah Nantwi, passed away on March 1 from injuries that he sustained in a series of beatings by guards. The indictment says the beatings began in his room and continued even when he was lying handcuffed on the floor of the infirmary.

Four of the guards were accused of participating in a cover-up that included filing false reports, planning to plant a makeshift knife, and cleaning up blood in Nantwi’s room in order to destroy evidence. The other six were charged on Wednesday and accused of assaulting Nantwi.

After Robert Brooks was fatally beaten at the Marcy Correctional Facility, Nantwi’s death came several months later. Other prison employees have been charged, and six guards have pleaded not guilty to murder charges in Brooks’ death.

Many state prisons struggled to function during a three-week wildcat strike by guards upset over work conditions, the Utica-area facility being one of them. This forced the governor to send National Guard Troops to maintain the operations.

Incarcerated people complained that services and conditions declined during the walkout. The indictment notes the guards had little training on how to deal with prisoners.

Caleb Blair and Jonah Levi, who were mid-state guards, are charged with second-degree murder. Three others, Craig Klemick, Thomas Eck, and Daniel Burger, have been charged with first-degree manslaughter. They are accused of doing nothing to stop the assaults while supervising.

The indictment said Levi and Blair were part of an emergency response team called to Nantwi’s room to help National Guard members.

After the hearing, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said at a news conference that the inmate drew the Guard members’ concern when he interjected into another inmate’s effort to acquire medication and was against partaking in a prisoner headcount.

According to Fitzpatrick, the situation fixed itself by the time the response team arrived. Before entering Nantwi’s room, the correctional officers spoke with the Guard members for only a few seconds.

The indictment says that when the officers first entered the room, Nantwi’s hands were raised. He objected to being handcuffed for no apparent reason and grabbed a guard’s vest.

Many guards immediately rained blows on his body and head using their fists, batons, and boots. According to Fitzpatrick and the indictment, the attack escalated when Nantwi bit Blair and Eck on their hands well after the guards began assaulting him.

As he became unresponsive, Nantwi was being transported by guards toward the infirmary. He was assaulted a second time in a stairwell and “dumped in a holding cell at the infirmary and further assaulted” by Blair, the indictment says.

Fitzpatrick added that some guards on the team turned off their cameras, and some were not wearing the mandated body cameras.

The next morning, guards met at a local diner to coordinate a false narrative, an attempt at an “amateurish and ineffective” cover-up, Fitzpatrick said.

The indictment alleges part of the cover-up consisted of taking a weapon that had been confiscated in an unrelated incident and planting it in Nantwi’s room.

Ferrone was seen discussing the weapon on a bodycam hanging up in the men’s room at the infirmary, it says. He “uttered an expletive” when he spotted the camera.

Fitzpatrick said six correctional officers agreed to cooperate with the investigation, in addition to the 10 guards. Four will plead guilty to misdemeanors, and two will plead guilty to felonies.

According to prison officials, all 10 of the guards charged on Wednesday have either been suspended without pay or resigned.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered the commissioner to start the termination process for the workers involved in Nantwi’s death.

Last May, Nantwi entered the state prison system. He had been serving a five-year sentence for second-degree criminal possession of a weapon related to an exchange of gunfire with police officers in 2021. While the officers were uninjured, he was shot multiple times.

According to prosecutors in Manhattan, Nantwi shot and killed Jaylen Duncan, 19, on a Harlem street in April 2023. He shot and killed Brandon Brunson, 36, the following evening at a Harlem smoke shop after an argument.