| In March 2015, a guard accused 24-year-old Jose Muniz, an inmate at the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York, of illegally possessing a shank.
The guard, 33-year-old Matthew Cornell, reported that Muniz, who was serving a sentence for attempted criminal possession of a firearm and attempted burglary, was caught carrying the weapon during a search.
Muniz contended he was innocent and that the weapon had been planted. On March 26, 2015, however, he pled guilty to attempted promoting of prison contraband. He was sentenced 1½ to three years in prison, to be served consecutive to the sentence he was serving for the weapon and burglary convictions.
In December 2016, the Cayuga County District Attorney Jon Budelman revealed that Cornell admitted planting a weapon on a different inmate at the Auburn prison. Cornell said that the inmate was a member of a prison gang, and he wanted him transferred to another prison to try to break up the gang.
Because of Cornell’s admission, the inmate involved in that incident was not charged with a crime. However, Budelman then asked a Cayuga County Supreme Court judge to vacate the convictions of Muniz and four other inmates, all of whom had pled guilty even though they claimed at the time that the weapons had been planted. Cornell was the guard who said he found the weapons in all five cases.
On January 19, 2017, Muniz’s conviction was vacated and the charge was dismissed.
– Maurice Possley
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