Yesterday, Hartford Superior Court Judge Claudia Baio was expected to issue her final ruling on whether to seal or publicly release footage of the 2018 death of J’Allen Jones, a 31-year-old man who suffered from schizophrenia and died while in Department of Corrections (DOC) custody. The hearing ended without a determination, but it did show a newfound willingness by DOC to consider accepting a limited release of parts of the footage.
“We were hoping to get a verdict today,” said Jessica Jones, J’Allen’s mother, who drove up from Georgia to attend today’s hearing. “I’m very disappointed.”
Jones, who has still never seen the footage of her son’s death, has been fighting since 2020 to overturn a 2019 protective order that stipulates the footage remain sealed. Jones wants the footage publicly released for the purpose of processing her grief, clearing her son’s reputation and holding DOC personnel accountable for their actions. DOC has fought against its release, citing staff safety and prison security concerns.
The hearing, which began around 10 a.m., lasted until the court’s closure at 5 p.m. Prior to the hearing, prison reform and civil rights advocates gathered outside to show support for the family, wearing t-shirts bearing J’Allen’s face and holding signs. Barbara Fair, founding member of Stop Solitary CT, said releasing the video to the public would be the first step towards accountability.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in this case, but [I] at least [hope] she’ll let us see the video, because why spend so much time investing millions of dollars in video, and yet the DOC can decide, ‘Oh, I don’t want to show this one because we beat a man to death,'” said Fair. “I think what’s most important is that the judge and everyone else needs to know that that was somebody’s son, that was somebody’s dad; His life mattered, and you just can’t erase somebody’s life, and then nobody be held accountable, and we just go on like nothing happened.”
Fair was one of several J’Allen supporters who noted the similarities of his case to that of Robert Brooks, a New York inmate who died last year in Marcy Correctional Facility following a beating by several corrections officers. Kevnesha Boyd, a former mental health therapist for DOC, compared the case to that of Carl “Robby” Talbot, a mentally ill man who died in 2019 at New Haven Correctional as a result of police brutality. This year, the state settled with Talbot’s family for $3.5 million. Boyd, who worked with Talbot, said that his death was the reason she stopped working for the DOC.
“It feels like the exact same case; a young man with known mental health issues, who does not have the treatment that he deserves,” said Boyd. “The other parallel is Robby also had breathing conditions, so did J’Allen. So it’s like, if we have this information of people in their medical record, why are we not doing anything with it, in regards to restricting pepper spray and chains and these kind of things? So it’s extremely triggering and emotional, because it feels like deja vu.”
J’Allen’s death occurred in Garner Institute on March 25, 2018, after he was moved from his housing unit to the facility’s medical ward to be put on mental health observation. In a lengthy incident report penned by DOC Capt. Robert Hartnett, Jones was said to have been acting strangely and hadn’t taken medication in five days.
Upon entry to a cell in the medical unit, officers attempted to conduct a strip search on J’Allen, which he refused. In an ensuing struggle, officers struck him several times, covered him with a spit-mask, pepper sprayed him twice, and eventually injected him with a mix of Benadryl and antipsychotic and anti-anxiety drugs to sedate him. He was then placed in a wheelchair to be moved to another room, when a nurse took his vital signs and found no pulse. DOC officials reportedly attempted CPR several times to no avail, and J’Allen was taken in an ambulance to Danbury Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Per Hartnett’s report, J’Allen was unresponsive for 7 minutes and 16 seconds before CPR was first administered. In addition to schizophrenia, J’Allen was also an asthmatic. An autopsy ruled the cause of death as homicide, but DOC personnel have repeatedly asserted that all of their conduct was done by the book. J’Allen’s family does not accept this, and vocalized their belief that prior statements released by the DOC and the Attorney General’s Office, which is representing the DOC’s nine defendants, mischaracterize J’Allen.
“I think the video should be made public, for two reasons,” said Jones, through tears. “I want the world to see what happened to my child, he did not deserve this. The press releases I have read are false, misleading and lies. The second reason is that I need to see how my son died; I’m a grieving mother my heart aches everyday. I cannot see this video because of this protective order. Please make them accountable, and make them pay for what they did to my child. Please release the video.”
J’Allen’s fiancee, Lynette Richardson, also called past statements “false and misleading,” and said it’s important to release the video, “to protect the legacy and reputation of J’Allen.”
Jones and Richardson were joined by a chorus of public commenters asking for the video’s release. Fair, Dan Barrett, an ACLU lawyer, Alexander Taubes, a lawyer representing CT Examiner, which filed a motion to intervene earlier this month for the purpose of requesting the video’s release, Boyd, DeVaughn Ward, DOC Ombudsman, Diane Lewis, a Hartford based advocate, and Ivelisse Correa-Brown, of BLM 860, all requested its release.
After public comments, Assistant Attorney General Terrence O’Neill called DOC Deputy Commissioner William Mulligan to the stand. O’Neill quizzed Mulligan on his background and experience, most notably his experience submitting a determination in Jan. 2025 in Mustafa vs. Byars. The case centered on another inmate of Garner Institute, and similarly involved a request for the unsealing of prison footage. Ultimately, that request was partially accommodated; the plaintiffs were allowed the ability to view the footage, but it was not released for public distribution. O’Neill presented Mustafa vs. Byars as an example to follow in J’Allen’s case.
“At the conclusion of that trial, there was a motion on the part of the ACLU to see the video and have it released publicly,” said Mulligan. “So the declaration related to that case was to identify safety and security issues that I have in my capacity with the release of that video, and some other options that may be available that may narrow the scope of the release, that may satisfy the public need versus the safety and security issues relevant to the DOC.”
Mulligan, who testified to having reviewed the J’Allen footage four times, said the footage could be split into three phases. The first phase shows J’Allen being escorted by two officers from his housing unit through the halls of Garner and entering the medical unit. The second shows J’Allen being assessed by a nurse, then taken to a cell within the medical unit, and shows the entirety of the struggle between J’Allen and officers. The third phase shows J’Allen being escorted from the medical unit to the admitting and processing area where he is strapped down and loaded into the ambulance by EMTs.
Mulligan shared his concerns with each portion of the video, and said that the first and third portions pose heightened security risks as viewers would be able to identify door and room numbers, hear radio transmissions required of officers to open doors, identify the locations of various staff facilities, officer placements, and metal detectors, as well as identify the location of cameras or locations in which cameras are absent. Essentially, Mulligan argued that the release of the first and third portions of the video would allow viewers, and possibly inmates, to gain intimate knowledge of the prison’s layout, potentially allowing prisoners to plot an escape route. Mulligan ultimately recommended only a limited viewing of the second portion of the video.
“The incident itself, should it become public, staff still have to do their job, so I would be concerned for negative interaction of any of the staff that were involved in that incident and the population,” said Mulligan. “We’re in the business of trying to avoid incidents and I would certainly have to look to take mitigation steps to limit those staff members interaction with the population until such time as I felt comfortable with their safety.”
After O’Neill concluded his examination, Jones’s attorney, Ron Murphy, cross-examined Mulligan. His line of questioning dug into the strict measures already taken to limit and supervise communications between inmates, who would not be privy to any public viewing of the footage (though Mulligan noted they may be able to see it on TV if it were to be broadcasted), and outsiders, who would have to communicate prison layout information gleaned from the footage to inmates. Murphy used Mulligan’s testimony to argue the unlikelihood of the information aiding any inmate escapes by asking him about the prison’s security measures, questioning how the footage might show anything the prisoners don’t already know, and prodding Mulligan into reluctantly agreeing that video editing could potentially alleviate his concerns.
“The basic premise that I have put forth, is for the things that you articulate as concern, that actually rise to the level of being a real concern, an inmate at Garner would have to be informed of the information that you have labeled as a concern, by someone who saw the video,” said Murphy. “I’m not advocating for this, but if Judge Baio were to decide that, ‘Yeah the presence of metal detectors in the video rises to the level of a concern’, we could redact that section of the video, right?”
“I don’t know what the capabilities are of whether we could or not,” said Mulligan.
“Assume that we could it cut it out of the video, or assume that we could block it out, that would take care of your concern, right?” asked Murphy.
“It would,” said Mulligan. “If you could tell me that the video starts with the escort, and all through the first portion and the third portion, there’s no doors, there’s no radio communication, there’s no camera locations, there’s no metal detector locations, staff are all blurred out, then I would not object to the release of that section.”
After Mulligan’s cross-examination, Baio asked for the two sides to present their closing arguments. O’Neill stated his belief that the precedent set in Mustafa v. Byars “strikes an excellent balance” between public need and DOC safety, and submitted a brief in support of it. Baio asked Murphy whether or not he would like the opportunity to submit a brief in response, to which he said yes, and Baio subsequently provided him a deadline of Sept. 19 by which to do so. Baio then asked Murphy, hypothetically, whether or not his client would agree to the limited public release of only the second portion of the video.
“I just have two arguments, one which is why it’s not an issue, the imagined fears articulated by DC Mulligan are just that, they’re imagined,” said Murphy. “On the issues of relevance, they’re extremely relevant; I represent the estate of a human being who has been labeled as someone who resisted during this account. Our position could not be any more opposed from their position, and anybody looking at this video, if they see the whole thing, would say ‘Yeah, something happened in that cell.'”
Murphy went on to argue that the fact that DOC has suddenly conceded to a limited release of any portion of the video at all, after years of fighting any such release, goes to show that they know they’re in a losing position. He argued that they could have only submitted the second portion of the video into discovery, but chose to submit the entire video, and as a result should be compelled to release it in its entirety.
“The defendants submitted the entire video, the entire video is in the clerk’s office, not just Phase 2!” exclaimed Murphy. “They could have said, ‘You know what, we’re just going to submit Phase 2 as our exhibit,’ but they didn’t! So now the whole issue is; does the common law and the First Amendment permit them to make a concession now, at the last minute, because they knew they were going to lose this hearing if they didn’t make any concessions, to try to keep it out of the public domain when they chose to submit the video?”
Ultimately, Baio told the two sides to work over the next two weeks on providing the court with a copy of the video that will play, as the video submitted into discovery was incompatible with the court’s computers. Baio told O’Neill that he would have a deadline of Oct. 10 to file a brief in response to Murphy’s.
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J’Allen Jones (may he rest in peace) was brutally murdered by DOC staff because he was incarcerated, mentally ill and, during a psychotic episode, would not submit to a strip search–a degrading and abusive practice which has been normalized behind prison walls. Mr. Jones’s life was snuffed out by staff because, like all the other incarcerated people in DOC’s care, he was not seen or treated as a human being–a partner, son, father, friend–whose life mattered. The highly punitive, dehumanizing and all too often lethal carceral system we subject over 2 million human beings to every day must be scrapped and replaced with a response worth of a civilized society.