4 more Mid-State COs sentenced in Messiah Nantwi murder case

(USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect) – Four more Mid-State Corrections officers who took plea deals were before Judge Michael Nolan for sentencing on June 17.

Caleb Blair, Craig Klemick, Joshua Bartlett, and Nathan Palmer stood before the judge at Oneida County Court in Utica for their sentencing.

Nantwi, an inmate at Mid-State Correctional Facility, was brutally beaten to death on March 1, 2025, by a Correction Emergency Response Team to the point of unresponsiveness and beaten twice more, with his hands cuffed behind his back. After the death, a grand jury alleged corrections officers got together to plant evidence and submit false testimony.

Blair was charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy and first-degree offering a false instrument for file. Blair pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 11 years in state prison.

Klemick was charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree gang assault, second-degree gang assault, fifth-degree conspiracy, and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing and was sentenced to 1 and a 1/3 to four years in state prison

Nathan Palmer pleaded guilty to first-degree hindering prosecution and first-degree falsifying business records and was sentenced to two years in state prison.

Bartlett had pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution and falsifying business records in exchange for two years in state prison on stipulation that he testify, but during the lead-up to the Mid-State CO trial, revelations came out and sexual abuse charges unrelated to the Messiah Nantwi case were levied against him.

“The district attorney’s did not call you a witness, but that was due to your own behavior,” Nolan said. “At time of your plea, I told you that if I can’t go along with your plea then it can be withdrawn and we go with the original indictment.”

Bartlett was sentenced to his original two years in county prison and another year for the forcible touching charge, for a total of three years.

There is only one more Mid-State CO left for sentencing.

Thomas Eck, who pleaded guilty to offering a false instrument for file, will be sentenced to one year in Oneida County jail on July 7.