Immediately after the retaking of Attica, Governor Rockefeller appointed New York deputy attorney general, Robert Fischer to head an investigation committee that would focus on finding evidence of possible criminal conduct. Fischer’s investigation led to the indictment of 42 inmates on 1289 counts but one guard. Fischer’s investigation is notable mostly for its reputation as woefully inadequate. His investigation was questioned both at the time and in 1975 by Bernard Meyer, the deputy general who succeeded him and led the investigation into a potential cover-up of the occurrences at Attica. Meyer found that there “was no intentional cover-up”, but did find that Fischer’s investigation committed “serious errors of judgement” and criticized the…show more content… Because of this only 2 investigators were initially (until Spring of ’72) assigned to examining the retaking of the prison even though 39 people were killed and 89 people were wounded during this stage of the riot. Because the investigation was “woefully understaffed” in Meyer’s words, this resulted in delaying both the investigation and prosecution of the retaking of the prison, which meant that the grand jury was only presented with evidence suggesting the prisoners’ guilt until a whole year after the process started. In addition to this, Meyer found that widespread allegations of the brutality were “neglected” and that the evidence gathering process was so poorly carried out that it was almost impossible to determine criminal liability in shooter cases. There was an investigation into the events at Attica in between the Meyer report and the initial investigation. The McKay report was conducted by an independent civilian committee appointed by Chief Justice of the New York Appeals Court, Stanley Fuld. Despite the McKay Report not being used to influence prosecution, it did interview every single Attican guard, 1600 prisoners, and many others who had knowledge of Attica’s events or participated in
