On March 1, 2025, 22-year-old Messiah Nantwi was brutally beaten to death by a gang of 15 pigs at Midstate Correctional Facility. Five of the COs pleaded not guilty while the others took plea deals and agreed to snitch to save their own skin. Jonah Levi was on trial last week for his role in the murder and, on Wednesday, was convicted of charges ranging from manslaughter to gang assault and planting evidence.
One officer kicked Nantwi in the face with a two-step running head start, “like he was making a punt in a football game”
– messiah Nantwi’s cellmate
Prison guards across the state were in the middle of an unauthorized work stoppage, demanding fewer restrictions on using solitary confinement to torture inmates. NY Governor Kathy Hochul dispatched the National Guard to fill in for some of the absent COs, and prisoners faced increased lockdowns due to the short staffing caused by the illegal strike.
On the day he was murdered, Messiah, or Messi as other prisoners called him, was taking a shower when an institutional lockdown and count was called. According to someone who knew him at the time, he had just received the devastating news that his sentence had been extended and was crying in private, which led to him missing count.
Three National Guard pigs found Messiah in his cell after count and called the Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT) to antagonize him further. Also called the beat up squad, CERT is a riot gear-clad group of goons with batons and shields, who routinely intimidate and beat prisoners labeled as “unruly.” This is the same gang of pigs that murdered Robert Brooks in December 2024.
These thugs then accosted Messiah in his cell while some National Guardsmen stood watch outside. Three CERT members were in the room and then five more entered. They claimed that Messi was being combative and that they feared for their safety because he was holding a pencil, so they entered his cell, punched his cellmate in the ribs and proceeded to savagely beat Messi until he stopped moving, at which point they dragged him down the stairs, hog-tied, to an ambulance that was waiting outside. According to eyewitnesses who reached out to Dare to Struggle, they forced Messiah’s cellie to clean up his blood.
Jonah Levi’s trial was the first trial of the case. Caleb Blair, Craig Klemick, and Michael Iffert will go on trial on May 4, and Thomas Eck will go on trial on June 4.
In Levi’s trial, jurors heard from Levi’s former colleague Nathan Palmer, who was heard calling Messiah racial slurs during the assault, testified that Levi “curb stomped” Messiah and repeatedly kicked his head into a locker “like a football” while other pigs beat him with batons. Levi kept kicking Messiah even after the others supposedly told him to stop. Palmer testified that at that point, Levi asked a National Guardsman about a knife that he planted in Messiah’s cell. He was also seen on camera dapping up one of his fellow pigs after murdering the 22-year-old.
Messiah was not just murdered, he was lynched. The depraved violence and abuse he suffered is rampant in prisons. The prison system thrives off of keeping its captives silent and fearful of retaliation for speaking up about the daily terrors inflicted upon them. These gangsters with badges are only on trial for murder because Messiah’s fellow prisoners refused to be “good inmates” and spoke the fuck up at great risk to themselves, bravely exposing the story to the NYTimes, and suffering torture at the hands of COs as retaliation.
Levi’s conviction is a victory, but we need to keep the pressure on the judge and the Special Prosecutor so they go as hard on killer COs as they do on Black and Brown youth. Every one of these murderers belongs behind bars at best. Only a combination of current and former prisoners speaking up about the brutality they endured, on the one hand, and people on the outside expressing their support in the streets, on the other, can force these judges and politicians to actually punish these monsters.
Dare to Struggle wants to hear from any current or former prisoner, as well as their loved ones, who wants to come forward with their own stories of prison brutality. We support the righteous struggles of incarcerated rebels against their oppressors.
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