Connecticut prison inmate J'Allen Jones was suffering a mental health crisis in 2018 when correctional officers struck him multiple times, stripped him naked, put a spit bag over his head and sprayed pepper spray at his face shortly before he died.
Video of the series of events was released Friday by a state judge in Hartford overseeing Jones’ family’s lawsuit against eight officers and a prison nurse, following a years long legal battle and after both sides agreed to certain redactions.
The Department of Correction had sought to keep it sealed since 2019, saying in part that its release could present security problems because it shows the physical layout of the prison and staffing patterns.
But Jones’ family, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and local NAACP officials called for publicly releasing the video, saying transparency was needed in Jones’ death.
“The events in the video are as disturbing as the events in the video of George Floyd’s death,” Ron Murphy, a lawyer for Jones’ family, wrote in a court document, referring to the man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
Jones, 31, from Atlanta, was serving a 10-year sentence for robbery at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of New Haven when he died on March 25, 2018.
Correction officers had been trying to take him to a medical unit in the prison at the time to get treatment for his mental illness.
Portions of the 52-minute video show Jones handcuffed behind his back — and later with his legs shackled — as officers hit his legs and torso with their knees and fists, after he refused a strip search.
At one point, an officer pins him down on a bed with a knee on his back while others hold him down.
Jones — who was having a schizophrenic episode, according to court documents — is heard yelling at this point, much of it unintelligible.
He repeatedly shouts, “In the blood of Jesus Christ!” At one point, he tells officers, “I command you ... to uncuff me now!”
Officers, meanwhile, tell Jones numerous times to stop resisting and to calm down. One officer tells Jones they're just trying to help him.
About 17 minutes into the video, Jones appears to start having trouble breathing after the spit bag was placed over his head and he was pepper sprayed.
Nearly five minutes later, Jones appears to be unconscious as officers struggle to hold him up and put him in a wheelchair.
At around the 24-minute mark, an officer requests a nurse to evaluate Jones.
“Right now he's just being dead weight, and I just want to make sure he's OK,” the officer says, talking to the video camera held by another officer.
Minutes go by before life-saving measures are started.
About 28 minutes into the video, a nurse starts performing CPR and an officer orders someone over the radio to call 911.
An ambulance crew doesn't arrive until more than 43 minutes into the video.
Jones was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Hours after Jones' death, the Department of Correction put out a brief statement saying that Jones had become “non-compliant and combative with staff and then became non-responsive.”
It did not say anything about officers striking Jones but noted that there were no immediate indications that excessive force was used.
It said life-saving measures were performed and he was brought to a hospital.
The medical examiner’s office determined that the cause of Jones’ death was “sudden death during struggle and restraint with chest compression and pepper spray exposure in person with hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”
It ruled his death a homicide, although that designation does not necessarily mean a crime was committed.
In January 2019, a state prosecutor investigating Jones’ death determined that no crimes were committed.
An internal Correction Department investigation found that excessive force was not used.
But the eight officers and nurse violated policy by not recognizing for more than seven minutes that Jones was in medical distress — although not intentionally, the investigation report said.
Punishment of one-day suspensions without pay were handed down to the nine staff members, Correction Department records show.
