Maia Nehme, Contributing Photographer

A judge on Friday ordered the Connecticut Department of Corrections, or DOC, to release video footage of the death of J’Allen Jones, a man who was killed seven years ago by correctional officers in a Connecticut prison.

Jones, then 31, was restrained, pepper sprayed, beaten and killed by officers at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown after refusing to comply with a strip search on March 25, 2018.

According to the October 2024 motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to release the footage of Jones’ death for public access, Jones was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was being transferred to the psychiatric ward for in-patient treatment at the time of his death. 

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner declared Jones’ death a homicide the day after his death. No correction staff were ever charged in the case. 

Jones’ family and attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union have been campaigning for release of the video recordings — which were submitted as evidence in the ongoing trial — since 2020. In October 2024, they filed a motion for public access, arguing that the footage is a judicial document that should be available to the public. The motion sought to overturn a 2019 protective order that mandated that the videos be sealed due to DOC safety and security concerns, according to the document.

On Friday, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Claudia Baio ruled that the majority of the video recording, which shows the “chain of events” that led to Jones’ death, cannot be sealed. 

Public interest in the video, she ruled, overrides the DOC’s claim that releasing the footage will risk security at the correctional facility. 

“I applaud Judge Baio’s ruling ordering the release of the J’Allen Jones video,” DOC ombudsman DeVaughn Ward wrote in a statement to several news outlets. 

“The public has a right to see what happened inside that prison—and to understand why the State of Connecticut has spent seven years defending a homicide committed by correctional staff,” Ward wrote. 

“I’m thrilled, especially for his mom,” Barbara Fair, a criminal justice and prison reform activist with Stop Solitary CT, said about the video’s release. 

The judge’s decision requires the DOC to share a “version of the recording” in a format accessible to the public via the online court system by the end of October. The judge granted the DOC permission to make certain edits given their previous concerns that the video displays the layout of the correctional facility and “security procedures” that they do not want the public to see.

The DOC will be permitted to blur doors and door numbers, metal detectors and the faces of staff members not named as defendants in the case. The DOC may also mute radio transmission between officers containing content that “raises legitimate security concerns such as relaying information related to access to various areas.”

Baio also ruled that Jones’ genitals and buttocks be blurred out to “protect the dignity of the decedent,” according to the decision.

Andrius Banevicius, the DOC public information officer, wrote that the department “is in the process of reviewing the court’s decision in order to determine the appropriate course of action.”

Banevicius did not clarify if the DOC intends to meet the two-week deadline set by Baio for the video release. 

The ombudsman will also have to review the decision and the video before any further action can be taken in the case. 

“My office will review the video upon its release to determine whether the Department of Correction should revisit its disciplinary determinations in this matter,” Ward wrote in his statement.

The Garner Correctional Institution is located in Newtown, Conn.