The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. AP Photo: Mary Altaffer

An attorney for one of the corrections officers accused of falsifying jail records the night Jeffrey Epstein died said Tuesday that his client was prepared to defend the charges after having rejected a plea deal from Manhattan federal prosecutors.

Montell Figgins, who represents defendant Michael Thomas, told reporters that the offer from prosecutors was "not something he wanted to do," and criticized authorities for targeting individual employees, rather than addressing "systemic failures" at the federal Bureau of Prisons.

"We believe that charging Mr. Thomas is not the right resolution in this matter," Figgins, of Figgins Law, said outside of a Manhattan federal courthouse following an arraignment Tuesday afternoon.

"They chose instead to indict Mr. Thomas and charge him with four counts in an indictment, which Mr. Thomas is fully prepared to defend, and we look forward to our day in court," he said.

Thomas, a veteran corrections officer at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of conspiring to defraud the government and falsifying records, alongside co-defendant and fellow MCC employee Tova Noel.

Noel's attorney, Jason Foy, said he hoped to reach a "reasonable resolution" to the case.

Both Thomas and Noel were released Tuesday on $100,000 bond, which would be secured by two co-signors, and were ordered to turn over their firearms. They are next expected to appear in court Nov. 25.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday morning unsealed a 20-page indictment stemming from the Aug. 10 death of Jeffrey Epstein, the Manhattan and South Florida-based financier who was found hanging in his MCC jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

According to the filing, Noel and Thomas failed to conduct mandatory checks the night of Aug. 9 to Aug. 10 and then repeatedly submitted records falsely claiming that they had.

Guards discovered Epstein's body in the early hours of Aug. 10, and the city medical examiner later determined that Epstein had died by suicide. However, an expert hired by Epstein's brother has claimed the death was more consistent with homicide by strangulation.

"As alleged, the defendants had a duty to ensure the safety and security of federal inmates in their care at the Metropolitan Correctional Center," said Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. "Instead, they repeatedly failed to conduct mandated checks on inmates, and lied on official forms to hide their dereliction."

Epstein was transferred to suicide watch following an apparent suicide attempt July 23 but was moved back to special housing a week later. To safeguard against further attempts, he was assigned to the cell closest to the corrections officers' desk.

Guards at the jail are required to conduct institutional counts of inmates in each housing unit and perform rounds in the special housing unit every 30 minutes to ensure that every inmate is alive and counted for.

According to the indictment, no counts or rounds were conducted between 10:30 p.m. Aug. 9 to 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10. Instead, prosecutors said, Noel and Thomas sat at their desk, browsed the internet and milled about the common area.

When Epstein was discovered at 6:30 a.m. Aug. 10, Noel told her supervisor that she and Thomas failed to complete their 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. rounds. According to the indictment, Thomas tried to take the blame for his colleague, saying, "I messed up, she's not to blame, we didn't do any rounds."

Epstein was transferred to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Both the indictment and public statements from the U.S. attorney's office Tuesday fully endorsed the medical examiner's finding that Epstein had committed suicide by hanging. But prosecutors also publicly laid out, for the first time, details about how security at the special housing unit functioned on the night of Epstein's death.

MCC's special housing unit, or SHU, the indictment said, is divided into six separate tiers on the jail's ninth floor. Each tier, the filing said, features eight cells, capable of holding two prisoners each.

According to the indictment, access to the SHU is controlled by a locked door that can only be opened by a guard at MCC's control center on the first floor. A second locked door can only be accessed by guards who are assigned to the SHU and carry keys while on duty.

According to the indictment, Epstein's cellmate had been moved out of MCC on Aug. 9 for a "routine, pre-planned transfer." Despite instruction from the prison's psychology staff, no new inmate had been assigned to Epstein's cell in the other man's absence.

Prosecutors said that Noel and Thomas, the only two officers working the overnight shift, were required to conduct five institutional checks and then complete corresponding paperwork to verify the counts. The indictment said that surveillance video of MCC showed Epstein returning to his cell following an attorney visit. Noel and an unnamed officer, the filing alleged, never conducted the required count at 10 p.m., when Epstein and his fellow inmates were locked down in their cells for the night.

The two guards nonetheless completed their report without ever entering the tier in which Epstein was housed.

"As confirmed by video obtained from the MCC's internal video surveillance system, this was the last time anyone, including any correctional officer, walked up to, let alone entered, the only entrance to the tier in which Epstein was housed until approximately 6:30 a.m. on August 10," the indictment said.

According to the filing, Thomas replaced the unnamed officer around 10 p.m. as the only other guard on duty in the SHU. Prosecutors alleged that, following the shift change, Noel and Thomas submitted two fake slip counts and signed 75 entries falsely certifying that they had conducted their rounds at the required 30-minute intervals.

"Completing rounds to verify inmate counts and certifying the accuracy of logs are important tasks to ensure the safety and security of institutions and the well-being of inmates," Guido Modano, the special agent in charge of the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General, said.

"Those who shirk their duties but falsely state they have completed them place the institution, fellow employees, inmates and the public at risk," he said.

In a press release, prosecutors said Noel and Thomas surrendered to authorities around 10 a.m. Tuesday morning. Both face multiple counts of falsifying records and conspiring to defraud the government by impeding the functioning of MCC.

Thomas, who has served as a corrections officer since 2007, faces six counts in total, and Noel, who has worked at MCC since 2016, was charged with four counts in the indictment.

Foy told a federal magistrate judge that his client had "fully cooperated" with the investigation and had been in communication with authorities since Aug. 14.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York.

The public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office is handling the prosecution, with assistant U.S. attorneys Rebekah Donaleski and Nicolas Roos assigned to the case.

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