The Illinois Parole Board makes a deadly mistake
And a family pays a terrible price for it:
An 11-year-old Chicago boy died Wednesday [March 13] as he tried to protect his pregnant mother from her knife-wielding ex-boyfriend who was released from prison a day earlier.
Crosetti Brand, 37, is accused of stabbing the boy in the chest and the 33-year-old woman before he was arrested for the heinous killing of Jayden Perkins, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Brand had been paroled Tuesday from the Stateville Correctional Center, where he was serving a 16-year sentence for home invasion and aggravated assault. …
Perkins’ 5-year-old brother was also present and witnessed the attack. …
The mother, who had a “lifetime” order of protection against Brand, dated the felon more than 15 years ago, Chicago Police Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti said. …
The alleged child killer had been previously paroled last year in October.
However, Brand was reasserted in February after “he threatened the female victim via text – and also showed up at her home,” Foxx said.
The mother and baby are in critical condition but are expected to survive. I assume that the murderer, Brand, thought he’d killed them too. It also appears that he’d been trying to kill this woman, or wanting to kill her, for many years – perhaps fifteen.
The article is so poorly written that it’s a bit hard to follow, but I supplemented it with this one from three days ago:
The chair of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board and a board member have resigned over backlash for granting the release of a man who fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend’s young son less than 24 hours after he was freed.
Board chair Donald Shelter and board member LeAnn Miller stepped down on Monday in the wake of 11-year-old Jayden Perkins’ murder on March 13, according to CBS 2. …
… Smith had begged for an order of protection against Brand just last month.
At the time of the filing, Brand was doing 16 years behind bars for home invasion and aggravated assault.
A Cook County judge scheduled a hearing about the order for March 13, according to CBS 2.
Both parties were expected to attend, with Brand being notified about the hearing in prison.
Miller, however, wrote a report that approved Brand for parole on the 12th — and Smith and her son were attacked just hours before the hearing was supposed to take place.
Both the Illinois Department of Corrections and the Illinois Prisoner Review Board subsequently claimed they did not know about the protection order hearing, CBS 2 reported.
But emails obtained by the outlet indicated that the Department of Corrections knew about the hearing as early as Feb. 22.
This is confusing as well. The previous article said she had a “lifetime” order of protection against Brand. Which was it?
My prior experience, however, is that such orders are worthless when someone really wants to kill somebody. All they do is allow the person who obtains the orders to call the police if the threatening person appears, and have that latter person arrested and perhaps reincarcerated.
This guy wanted to kill this woman and appeared at her home when she was leaving with her children; no protection order would have helped her in this case. Keeping Brand in prison much longer would have helped her, but since he didn’t have a life sentence he couldn’t be kept there indefinitely. However, he certainly could and should have been kept there as long as possible. I can’t find an article that says how much of his term he had already served and how close he was to release even without being paroled; that seems as though it’s an important fact, as well.
I used to work with battered women who were living in shelters, back in the days before the internet. It was easier then for people to move and keep their new addresses secret. I don’t know whether this woman attempted to do that or not, but the internet makes it more difficult to be successful at hiding, although not impossible.
And here’s a little more information:
According to police, Smith has an order of protection against Brand.
Brand was out on parole when the incident occurred. He was serving a 16-year sentence for a home invasion and currently has three orders of protection violations against him, according to police. ABC News has reached out to Brand’s legal team.
Chief of Detectives Antoinette Ursitti, in a March 15 press conference, said Brand had been “paroled and placed on electronic monitoring last October. While he was on parole, he threatened the female victim via text and also showed up at her home. He was sent back to prison in February for this parole violation.”
RIP Jayden Perkins. You were a hero.
IMO a protection order isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
The kid tried to be a hero and that is commendable, sadly he didn’t live.
The Marxists don’t want criminals in jail so this is the price society is going to pay.
Skip:
The Marxists don’t want people in prison but this guy actually HAD been in prison for many years and was even sent back there recently for threatening her. The problem is when a person hasn’t yet murdered anyone, how long can you keep that person in prison? It’s actually quite a dilemma. But this guy showed no evidence of having abandoned his desire to hurt this woman, and I think he should have served as much of his sentence as possible.
Long ago, when I worked with battered women, I felt the best solution was for the woman to move far away. That meant relocating and sometimes leaving family and friends, which is very difficult. But if the situation is bad enough, that can be the only way to stay alive.
RIP. Brave little guy.
Images of Jayden Perkins:
https://search.brave.com/images?q=Jayden%20Perkins
What a beautiful kid. The lights were on. What a loss. It is to weep.
Paper is poor protection from a bullet, a knife or a fist.
All honor to Jayden Perkins who died protecting his mother and unborn sib.
May Angels sing him to his rest.
As the government increasingly fails to do its basic duty, citizens have to step up. It’s astounding that this kid had the courage to face his mother’s attacker, but he was the only thing that could come between them. This is exactly the sort of thing lefties want. They want chaos. They’re getting it. Sad. God bless this child.
huxley thanks for the link
She’d have done better to be armed, even if that meant moving to a saner state.
God bless the hero child, who did his best with what he had.
Neo – these days the recommendation should be move to a red state, get a firearm, and learn to use it. I’m pretty sure no one in you old profession would make that recommendation. I know my sister (a retired social worker) wouldn’t.
Forget it Jake, it’s Crook County.
Lived in Chicago ten years. It’s like a video on infinite replay. Heinous crime, protests, emotions, vows to “do something”, the emotions die down and the incident forgotten then repeat. These elected government officials were voted in. The voters never change who is voted in. I’ve just seen too many pious words without actions to match. Sucks to be them
Shotguns are cheap, easy to use and effective. They are legal in Chicago. After he threated her she should have kept one close at hand. One slug in the chest and her son would be alive.
William:
No – unless she carried the shotgun with her wherever she went, which I doubt you’re suggesting. From the description I read, the murderer knew exactly what he was doing. He knew she took her kids to school (or the bus stop? Don’t know which) at 8 AM and he appeared at the threshold of her front door as she was leaving. That’s how he timed the attack for a moment of great vulnerability.
Wendy Laubach:
Even if she had been armed (and I think that would be a good suggestion for someone under the sort of threat she was under) it might not have helped her, for the reasons I stated in my comment above this one. If he was lurking nearby and suddenly appeared and suddenly stabbed her, it would be a very difficult thing to defend against even if armed. You’d have to see him coming and either be holding the gun in your hand already or be a quick-draw expert like in the old Westerns.
The problem for women is the “concealed carry” purse. Many of those use a zipper or sticky stuff to keep the gun in place on the outside of the purse. In order to get to that gun you have to do some fiddling around while the guy is coming at you! A small can of pepper spray on your key chain may be a better immediate defense.
The question really is about the ethics of the judiciary. Was the judge guilty of some minor personal offense that maybe an opposing attorney used to threaten him? Was the judge just . . .
Was the judge guilty of some minor personal offense that maybe an opposing attorney used to threaten him? Was the judge just . . .
==
The parole board was responsible for this travesty.
So sad, so maddening. And so many important details missing from the articles. As a (former) career criminal prosecutor, I know there are many factors to consider in this type of situation.
The first thing that I want to know is, were his prior serious convictions for home invasion and aggravated assault related to this particular victim? If not, were those crimes similar to his stalking of this woman? As to the current victim, was she notified, pursuant to the protection order or for any other reason, 1) that there was a parole hearing scheduled, and 2) that the offender was, in fact, released and on the street again. We have had laws in Pennsylvania for years now that mandate that victims be notified that post-conviction hearings of various types are scheduled, and files can also be “red-flagged” that victims must be notified in advance if possible of an offender’s release.
Secondly, I’d want to know if the offender, when released back on parole in October, were conditions imposed on his parole that were specific to this prior victim of his? Did the parole reports acknowledge the existence of a protection order? Did the parole officer assigned to follow the offender when he was released have knowledge of the protection order/the obsession this guy had with this particular woman? Did anyone consider releasing this guy with an ankle bracelet?
It’s a huge problem that the criminal justice system consists of many different institutions that all follow different procedures and that are controlled by different political entities. The actions of these institutions are often opaque to each other. Add in human error and the result can be unbelievably stupid.
Here, back in October, the offender was released from custody, presumably by the parole board. While out, he was arrested because he committed new offenses involving the victim. Perhaps this violated parole conditions, perhaps this violated a protection order, and maybe, he was also charged with new crimes that weren’t specific to a protection order.
So when he appeared most recently against the parole board, they ideally would be considering the fact that there was a protection order, and that the offender had victimized this woman just a few months ago, soon after his release in October. What information did these individuals have about all the circumstances? Note that the articles say that emails show that the Department of Corrections was notified of the protection order, but doesn’t say that the Parole Board was also notified.
Maddening and sickening.
What would have helped her, and her child, is if she were armed and shot him dead.
‘He just needed killing’, as the Texas saying goes.
Here’s hoping the prison population’s view on child killers runs true.
Art+Deco: Yes they are. I’ve always believed parole boards should bear repercussions for bad releases.
David:
See this.
RigelDog:
Yes, a lot of the information we need to understand how this guy was let out just isn’t in the articles I’ve seen.
If you look up Senator Jason Plummer, Illinois 55th District, on Facebook, he gives a detailed account of what fat cat lefty Pritzger has been doing/destroying to the prisoner review board since he became governor. He appointed cronies, without approval, who immediately began wildly more often releasing violent criminals. The Oblahma daughters’ “god” mother being one of many. Senator Plummer lays the multi-year facts out in two thread reader app threads he has linked.
I once knew a judge who sat on the state parole board. Lazy, corrupt, unethical, and most of all self-servingly greedy.
Note, Crosetti Brand is guilty of one murder, two attempted murders, and has a mess of priors. He is also facing supplementary charges in this one (home invasion &c). In a sane world (which appellate judges do not want us to have), the Illinois legislature would be acting within its proper discretion to set sentencing formulae which would prescribe an automatic capital sentence in his case.
“David:
See this.”
Yes Neo, I understand that a weapon will do you no good if you are not ready to use it.
That being said, a person in her situation should be as paranoid and nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, always, ALWAYS expecting the bad guy to pop up out of nowhere. Does that mean leaving your apartment with pistol in hand? Yes. Yes it does. Is that a terrible way to have to live your life? Yes. Yes it is. Because we have failed to observe the saying I quoted: ‘He just needed killing’.