J’Allen Jones died in prison after more than a half-dozen corrections officers stripped him naked, placed a hood over his head, pepper-sprayed him and pinned him to a bed, according to a video that was released Friday after a lengthy court battle.  Jones, a 31-year-old Black man, can be seen on the graphic video wheezing and begging for water before he became unresponsive and a team of nurses and corrections officers began performing CPR. Although the state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, the state’s attorney declined to move forward with criminal charges.  The medical examiner’s report cited the struggle involving pepper spray, restraint, chest compressions, asthma and blunt trauma in the cause of death. The video was released on orders from the Hartford Superior Court after years of advocacy and a lawsuit filed by Jones’ family in August 2018.  The state, through Attorney General William Tong’s office, actively fought the release of the video in court, but the judge decided to unseal it after attorneys for the family, the ACLU and the Connecticut Examiner, a news organization, pushed for its release.  Jones was incarcerated at Garner Correctional Institution on March 25, 2018, when officers transferred him to the mental health unit within the prison for monitoring. A statement from the Chief State’s Attorney in 2019 said “Jones had been having mental health difficulties.” They told him he needed to submit to a strip search. When he resisted the search, officers forced him onto the bed and stripped off his clothes, the video shows. J’Allen Jones, who died in Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown on March 25, 2018, is shown here in a cell a few minutes before his death in a frame from a video released by the Judicial Department on Friday. Credit: CT Judicial Department Jones was yelling, often about the “blood of Jesus Christ,” and other sometimes incoherent phrases. A report from the Department of Correction says that one officer gave Jones several knee strikes to the thigh. In the video, officers tell Jones they are trying to help him, to keep him from hurting himself. They put a hood over his head, meant to protect officers from being spit on, and pepper-sprayed him. Later reporting revealed Jones was asthmatic, a condition officers said they had “no idea” existed. In the video, Jones appears to struggle to breathe as several officers hold him down. He is shackled by the feet and handcuffed. J’Allen Jones, who died in Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown on March 25, 2018, is shown here being restrained in a cell a few minutes before his death in a frame from a video released by the Judicial Department on Friday. Credit: CT Judicial Department According to the report, it took 7 minutes and 16 seconds before the staff realized that something was wrong. Then they lifted him by the arms and placed his limp body into a wheelchair. The video shows that the hood over his head was bloodied. Officers rolled him naked down the hallway to another room, where they began CPR.  Ron Murphy, one of the attorneys representing Jones’ family, did not comment on the ongoing lawsuit against the state. But in a statement, he encouraged people to watch the video and to call their elected officials to express their thoughts on how Jones was treated. “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,” Murphy said. “I also hope that people contact their elected officials to make their voices heard if, after watching, they believe changes need to be made.” Barbara Fair, a criminal justice advocate and executive director of Stop Solitary CT, criticized the state during an interview Friday for the length of time it took to release the video. Jones’ mother wanted to know what happened to her only child, Fair said. “You made this mother suffer for over eight years just to get to this place, when you know you were wrong. You refused to take accountability. It’s been hard for her,” Fair said. DeVaughn Ward, who was appointed in 2024 as the state’s first correction ombudsman, which is meant to serve as independent check on the state’s prison system, said the release of the video highlights the need for even more transparency in the state’s prisons. In 2025, Ward asked state lawmakers to pass a law that would allow his office or the Office of the Inspector General, which is responsible for investigating any deaths in state prisons, to publicly release video footage of such incidents. Ward said that proposal was narrowed so only the chairs of the legislature’s judiciary committee and the family members of people who die in prison could view such footage. But he said Jones’ cases showed why more public access is necessary. “Transparency is not about assigning blame before the facts are known. It is about public trust,” Ward said. “When someone dies in state custody, the public deserves timely, independent answers, and families deserve a process that does not require them to fight for years simply to have the truth seen.” “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,” Ward said. “Transparency is not about assigning blame before the facts are known. It is about public trust,” he added. “When someone dies in state custody, the public deserves timely, independent answers, and families deserve a process that does not require them to fight for years simply to have the truth seen.” Sharonda Carlos, the Department of Correction’s interim commissioner, issued a statement following the video’s release. In it, she expressed sympathy for Jones’ family.  “Any loss of life in our facilities is a tragedy that we feel deeply, and our sympathy remains with Mr. Jones’ family and loved ones,” the statement reads.  Carlos also described several steps that she said the DOC is taking, including “enhanced mental health training” and the creation of “multidisciplinary resource teams trained to build healthier facility environments.”  “Many individuals come under our supervision with serious preexisting medical and mental health conditions, and we work to address these conditions early to prevent situations from reaching crisis levels,” the statement added. “We are continuously looking to enhance the support we offer individuals experiencing mental health challenges, including hiring additional staff to provide counseling and mental health treatment.” In a written statement released Friday, Tong did not directly address his office’s role in keeping the video from the public eye. “What happened to Mr. Jones is a tragedy. For any human being, this is difficult and painful to watch,” Tong’s statement said. Fair said she’d seen still images of the video and couldn’t bring herself to watch the whole thing. It’s nearly an hour long. “What I’m sure it would show me is the inhumanity and the barbaric manner that we treat people as though they’re not even human,” Fair said. ...read more read less