For most of his adult life, Crosetti Brand terrorized and abused women, prosecutors said, until a brave 11-year-old boy stopped him for good.
Not yet a teenager, Jayden Perkins was forced to protect his pregnant mother from a vicious attack on March 13, 2024, in their Edgewater apartment. Jayden died of his stab wounds, but his mother lived to later gave birth to his younger sister and testified against their assailant, helping to put Brand, 39, in prison for the rest of his life.
Calling the slaying “exceptionally brutal,” Judge Angela Petrone sentenced Brand on Tuesday to the maximum possible punishment, a life sentence plus an additional 120 years in prison following an emotional hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
“You have taken away one of the greatest gifts God has blessed me with,” Jayden’s mother, Laterria Smith said in court. “He was a great kid. He saw what was happening and tried to help me.”
The sentencing in front of a courtroom full of family members closed the book on the case that drew scrutiny over safeguards meant to protect domestic violence victims and proceeded to trial at a pace nearly unheard of in a county where it can take years, or even a decade, for murder cases to resolve.
Brand, who has represented himself without the aid of an attorney, declined to attend the hearing in person and instead appeared via video conference, frequently objecting to the proceedings verbally and through the chat function.
“You going to give me life anyway so why the (expletive) am I sticking around?” Brand told the judge.
He exited the video call entirely as Petrone read his sentence.
During a nearly three-hour hearing, prosecutors played video of Jayden singing jubilantly to Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back” as well as audio recordings of Brand talking to his mother while incarcerated, making threats against the prosecutors and judge and plotting to influence Smith, the state’s key witness. The prosecutors detailed a long criminal history for Brand that includes attacks and harassment against Smith and other women.
“Lucky I’ve got these shackles on my ankles,” Brand said on one phone call, where he complained to his mother that he believed prosecutors gave him fake documents. “Beat the (expletive) out of you, dude.”
In fact, since he was 18, the middle-aged Brand has either served prison sentences or faced pending charges during all but 344 days, Assistant State’s Attorney Danny Hanichak told the judge.
“What this criminal never counted on was that one 11-year-old boy would put an end to Crosetti Brand’s terror,” Hanichak said.
A jury in June found Brand guilty of murder, attempted murder, home invasion and aggravated domestic battery after deliberating for less than 90 minutes following a nearly monthlong trial that involved more than 30 witnesses and some 300 exhibits.
Just a day after being released from prison, Brand barged into the apartment and began stabbing Smith with whom he had recently rekindled a relationship. When Jayden tried to intervene, Brand turned his knife on the boy.
Brand took the stand in his own defense, telling the jury that Smith attacked him because she was jealous of his involvement with other women in service of an amateur porn business he was trying to build.
The courtroom often crackled with tension during the trial, as distraught family members listened as witnesses gave harrowing accounts and Brand at times heatedly argued with the judge and prosecutors.
Tuesday’s hearing was no exception, as the proceedings were briefly halted when Jayden’s father appeared to threaten Brand’s mother, shouting out her address during his statement to the court. He later apologized after Petrone cut him off and prosecutors ushered him out of the room.
“That’s my baby,” Christopher Perkins said, sitting at the witness stand.
He took a shot a Brand’s non-appearance, saying: “I know you in this building somewhere, boy.”
Brand has racked up multiple convictions for battering Smith, threatening her and her mother and violating orders of protection, court records show.
He has also been convicted of battering other women.
Brand was sentenced to 16 years in prison in a November 2015 attack on another woman, who had recently ended a relationship with him, according to court documents.
He was released on that case in October of 2023 and began seeing Smith, until she tried to break it off as he grew more controlling, she testified.
He texted and called her relentlessly, she said, until he landed back in prison for violating the terms of his release when she reported the harassment.
But the Illinois Prisoner Review Board made a controversial decision to release Brand on March 12, 2024, the day before the attack.
Records also show that Smith sought an emergency order of protection against Brand after that incident, but it was dismissed on the day she was attacked.
The board’s decision led to the resignation of two members and spurred Gov. JB Pritzker to create a new position on the board.
