By Christine Dempsey
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
HARTFORD, Conn. — A Hartford Superior Court judge on Friday approved the release of an edited video showing the last half-hour of an inmate’s life before he died following a confrontation with correction officers.
Hartford Superior Court Judge Claudia Baio ordered that the prison video showing the events leading to J’Allen Jones death on March 25, 2018, be made public at state Superior Court in Hartford, writing the “redacted Exhibit A shall be publicly available for viewing.”
The video is a key part of a wrongful death lawsuit that the plaintiffs, Jones’ girlfriend, Lynnette Richardson and his mother, Jessica Jones, filed against more than a half-dozen state Department of Correction officers and a prison nurse at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown. It shows correction officers pushing Allen, hitting him and delivering blows with their knees because he was not cooperating with their attempts to conduct a routine strip search, court documents said. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ron Murphy, said Jones, who appeared to be experiencing a schizophrenic episode, never hit or threatened to strike a correction officer.
WARNING: This video contains graphic content that may be disturbing to some viewers.
Lawyers with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General lost their battle to keep the video sealed when Baio ruled on Oct. 16, 2025, that it should be made public. But there was a caveat: Any information that could pose a safety or escape risk if made public — such as the location of doors or cameras — should be blurred, the judge ruled, as should Jones’ genitalia. Jones was naked because correction officers forcibly removed his prison scrubs for the search.
In November of 2025, the plaintiffs objected to what Murphy called over-editing. Some of the blurred areas obscured the correction officers hitting Jones, he said.
On behalf of the plaintiffs, Murphy agreed on June 1, 2026, to an edited version of the video with less blurring, and the video was sent to Baio for review.
The video shows correctional officers struggling to restrain Jones. In the video, Jones made repeated and sometimes incoherent statements, invoking Jesus Christ.
About 12 minutes into the encounter, officers placed a spit hood over his head while repeatedly ordering him to stop resisting and later applied leg irons.
Throughout the video, officers told Jones they were trying to get him help and urged him to relax and stop resisting. One correctional officer reported in the video that Jones was resisting “in all directions” and that staff used control techniques to maintain him.
Officers were heard coughing and requested medical staff multiple times. A nurse checked on Jones during the struggle and officers later prepared to move him.
About 23 minutes into the video, Jones was placed in a wheelchair with the hood still over his head, his ankles secured in leg irons, while an officer carried a clear plastic shield. He was then strapped to a bed.
Shortly afterward, a nurse determined Jones was unresponsive. A nurse appeared to check for a heartbeat with a stethoscope before beginning chest compressions. CPR continued for the remainder of the video, about 24 minutes.
‘In some ways...worse’ than George Floyd video
In an Oct. 5, 2024, motion to make the video public, Murphy said the video is as bad as, if not worse than, the bystander video that showed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn. on May 25, 2020, which triggered protests and led to widespread changes in how police do their jobs.
“The events in the video are as disturbing as the events in the video of George Floyd’s death,” Murphy wrote, adding, “But in some ways, the video of J’Allen’s death is worse, as the defendants struck J’Allen repeatedly, violently threw him down twice, sprayed him twice directly in the face with pepper spray while his face was covered by a safety veil — all while J’Allen was naked, handcuffed behind his back, shackled at his ankles, hogtied, and having a schizophrenic episode in the psych ward of a Connecticut prison.”
The legal filing also said that “The video is so disturbing that Captain (Robert) Hartnett, who was the lead investigator for Department of Corrections, believes releasing the video would pose a safety and security concern to the Department of Corrections because the general public ‘would be’ ‘inflamed’ and ‘incensed’ by the video showing J’Allen’s death.”
According to filing, Harnett, who is no longer listed as a state employee, said during a deposition that the video shows:
- Correction officers holding Jones down, “when you can hear J’Allen having difficulty breathing;”
- Images of Jones “flopped over to the side” in a wheelchair while “unconscious;”
- Images of “the 7-minute delay before the onset of CPR” and of “a period of inaction...while Mr. Jones was undergoing a medical emergency.”
Still, after his internal investigation, Harnett determined that the COs did not use excessive force. He cited prison rules that permit correction officers to use force to maintain order.
He did find, however, that the staff waited too long to get Jones medical help — seven minutes and 16 seconds to be precise, according to his report.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner listed the cause of Jones’ death as “sudden death during struggle and restraint with chest compression and pepper spray exposure in person with hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”
The manner of death is listed as a homicide.
Murphy released a statement following the release, saying “the video speaks for itself” and that he found it difficult to watch “the painful death of another human being.”
“I’m not going to make any substantive comments right now. What I will say is I hope everyone who chooses to watch the video does so with an open heart, remembering that J’Allen Jones was a father and a son and that his family grieves every day. I also hope that people contact their elected officials to make their voices heard if, after watching, they believe changes need to be made,” Murphy said.
DeVaughn L. Ward, the Office of Correction Ombudsman, said in a statement that had the incident occurred today, the Office of the Inspector General and the Office of the Correction Ombuds would both have authority to conduct independent reviews.
Upon learning about this incident, Ward said his office conducted an inquiry and that many of the officers involved are no longer employed by the Department of Correction, and the prosecutor who declined charges has since retired.
“But those facts do not erase the need for public accountability,” Ward said in a statement. “It should not take this many years for a family, or the public, to receive answers about why a person died in state custody, or why the state spent years defending conduct that the public had not been able to fully see for itself.”
“This video is painful to watch, and it raises serious questions about force, restraint, medical response, transparency, and accountability inside our correctional system,” Ward added.
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