Striking correction officers and their supporters stage a protest along Route 9W near Greene Correctional Facility state prison last week in Coxsackie.

The more we learn about what happened to Robert L. Brooks on the night of Dec. 9 at Marcy Correctional Facility, the more we are sickened. On Thursday, after the arraignment of a group of correction officers on charges of murder, manslaughter and more, Onondaga County District Attorney William J. Fitzpatrick revealed that the beating that left Mr. Brooks choking on his own blood was actually the third pummeling he had sustained after arriving at the facility outside Utica.

Mr. Brooks had done nothing to provoke the torment, the prosecutor said, a statement that makes it hard to come to any other conclusion than the men who targeted him were merely trying to show a newly arrived inmate who was in charge at Marcy.

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It is worthwhile for New Yorkers to come at this question from another angle more than two months after the homicide, at the end of a week that has seen

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