Man sentenced to 20 years for brutal Essex County jail attack in 2021
A former detainee at the Essex County Correctional Facility, who was convicted for his participation in a chilling attack on a fellow inmate, was sentenced to 20 years in state prison that will run consecutive to his existing sentence for a prior crime.
Byad Lockett, 22, of Newark, took part in the near-fatal beating of Jayshawn Boyd while being held in the jail in September 2021, along with six other assailants.
Lockett's sentences add up to a total prison term of 32 years, according to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, which announced the judge's decision Wednesday.
Lockett must serve 17 years of his sentence related to the attack on Boyd before he will be eligible for parole under New Jersey's No Early Release Act.
He was convicted by a jury in June, along with co-defendant Darryl Watson. Both were found guilty of attempted murder, second-degree aggravated assault and weapons offenses for the attempt on Boyd's life, which was captured on the jail's surveillance camera as it played out for two minutes, according to earlier reports.
At the end of that trial, a third detainee, Isaad Jackson, was convicted on weapons charges, but jurors could not agree on pending attempted murder and assault charges in his ruling.
All seven assailants were recorded kicking, punching and stomping on Boyd before the attack reached its climax as one of the detainees dropped a microwave oven on Boyd's head, NorthJersey.com reported one month after the attack.
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The incident led to a lawsuit against the county, its corrections commissioner, County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, his chief of staff, the jail's director, its warden, its mental health director, and a slew of corrections officers and health workers employed at the facility.
At the same time, the attack galvanized rallying cries to reform the jail after previous allegations of mistreatment, which included the death of an inmate officials declined to identify.
Although Boyd survived the attack, he spent months in a coma and sustained brain damage, said statements from prosecutors and an attorney for his family, Brooke Barnett, who claimed in her lawsuit that Boyd's chances of returning "to ordinary functioning [are] virtually non-existent."
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In an amended complaint filed in April 2022, Barnett said her client, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was arrested on two separate occasions in 2020, as a result of violent altercations with his family during psychotic episodes.
But despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia and having accepted a plea deal for time served, he was remanded to the Essex County jail in September 2021 for failing to appear at his sentencing, a copy of the lawsuit states, and was placed in the jail's "C-Pod," alongside detainees allegedly known to be violent criminals.
Exactly two weeks later, he would be pulled from the floor of the jail. His limp body had been bloodied and beaten with a mop, a drink dispenser, a water jug and the microwave, long after he'd lost consciousness, as seen on the surveillance footage.
In their announcement of the convictions released in June, Essex County prosecutors said the only corrections officer assigned to the C-Pod saw the attack, left the unit for his safety and called for backup. But advocates for jail reform say members of the jail's staff were remiss in their duty and left Boyd nearly to die.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Essex County jail NJ attack: Newark man sentenced to 20 years
