Republished with permission from New Jersey Monitor
A state corrections officer has pleaded guilty to beating a man at a Woodbridge sex offender treatment facility — an attack his family described as “a gang-style assault” in a wrongful death lawsuit they later filed against the state.
Giuseppe Mandara, 55, of Brick, pleaded guilty Tuesday to aggravated assault for attacking Darrell Smith, 50, who died of a stroke five days after the Aug. 23, 2019, incident in a housing unit at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center. The beating occurred after Smith took peanut butter, bananas and sugar leftover from breakfast out of the kitchen, where he worked, according to the family’s lawsuit and Mandara’s attorney, Stuart Alterman.
Mandara agreed to give up his job under a plea agreement, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
The agreement also bars him from any future public office or employment. Mandara was a correctional officer for 20 years, Alterman said. State payroll records show his annual salary reached $106,577 this year, although he hasn’t gotten a salary since last year because he was suspended without pay in July 2023.
Mandara faced as long as 10 years in prison when a state grand jury indicted him in June 2023. Then, he was charged with second-degree official misconduct for abandoning his keys and radio and using excessive or unlawful force, a crime that carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and up to $150,000 in fines. The grand jury declined to indict Mandara on homicide charges.
The Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday that prosecutors will recommend a four-year prison sentence.
But Alterman said he instead expects Mandara will get probation because the plea agreement includes “a presumption of non-incarceration,” which is typically reserved for first-time offenders convicted of third- and fourth-degree crimes. Sentencing is set for Jan. 31.
Alterman said Mandara was a longtime officer who otherwise had a “flawless record.”
“He engaged in a fight with the inmate and perhaps was overzealous when engaging in the fight,” Alterman said. “The evidence does not demonstrate that he did anything more than strike the inmate, and the precipitant behavior was, in fact, the inmate using his position in the kitchen to commandeer materials which are normally known and used for making alcoholic beverages, or hooch, as they call it.”
A family photo of Darrell Smith (Amanda Brown for New Jersey Monitor)Smith’s family did not respond to a request for comment.
But last year, they told the New Jersey Monitor that Mandara was one of multiple officers who taunted Smith with homophobic slurs and then jumped him in two separate attacks over one weekend, kicking, punching, slamming, and stomping him until he was unresponsive and catatonic. The officers dragged Smith to an area that was a blind spot for the facility’s surveillance cameras, the relatives said.
After the first assault, prison staff put him in solitary confinement and withheld medical treatment from him for so long that by the time they took him to a hospital, he was brain dead, his relatives said.
Their lawsuit remains ongoing.
Smith was incarcerated in the prison’s special treatment unit, where residents who have served their criminal sentences remain locked up under civil commitment because they’re considered to be not ready for reentry.
Drew Skinner, executive director of the public integrity and accountability office overseen by the attorney general, said the guilty plea shows that the state won’t ignore or condone abuses of people in state custody.
“The defendant violated the trusted position he held and will be held accountable,” Skinner said.
