By Hudson Crozier
The mentally ill repeat offender charged with killing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, has a father and brother with their own criminal histories, according to prison records and one of their relatives.
Decarlos Brown Jr.’s brother, Stacey Brown, 33, is currently serving a 36-year sentence in North Carolina for murder and other crimes, while Decarlos Brown Sr., 52, served prison and probation time for theft and weapons convictions between 1990 and 2014, a state criminal database shows. The younger Decarlos Brown, who has been arrested more than a dozen times, brought national scrutiny toward Charlotte’s approach to crime after police said he randomly stabbed Zarutska, 23, to death on a public train on Aug. 22.
The elder Decarlos and Stacey Brown both “have a record of being in jail and stuff,” Jeremiah, another of Decarlos Brown Sr.’s sons, told The New York Post. It is unclear whether Decarlos Brown Jr. and Stacey Brown are related through one or both parents. (RELATED: Democrat DA Pushed Racial Equity As Crime Spiked Before Horrific Train Stabbing)
Stacey Dejon Brown poses for a mugshot after the October 2012 murder of Robert Heym in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. (Image credit: Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office)
Stacey Brown’s 2014 sentencing stemmed from three incidents, beginning when he and an accomplice used bricks to break into vehicles in July 2012, according to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office. Three months later, Brown shot a 65-year-old man in the back with a shotgun after he and two others robbed him. Brown and one accomplice found the man the next day to rob him again, and when he resisted, Brown shot him dead.
Brown pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, robbery with a dangerous weapon, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, and breaking or entering a vehicle, the district attorney’s office said. He also served probation for a 2010 conviction of assault or threats against the government, North Carolina’s prison database shows. Brown has been given 44 infractions in prison, including for assaulting someone with a weapon, setting a fire, theft of property and lock tampering.
Decarlos Brown Sr., meanwhile, was convicted of possessing a weapon on school grounds in 1990 and has two convictions of possessing stolen goods in 2012 and 2014, according to the database. He served three months in prison for the third offense.
The Brown family’s troubling history casts an even darker shadow over Decarlos Brown Jr.’s background as he faces local and federal charges over Zarutska’s murder.
After serving five years in prison for armed robbery, his mother obtained an involuntary commitment order through the court system because “he started saying weird things” and became increasingly “aggressive,” she told local media. He was later charged with misusing the 911 system after police said he made phone calls claiming a substance was controlling his body.
A judge released Brown from custody in January on a “written promise to appear” despite his checkered criminal and mental health record. Seven months later, Zarutska bled to death on the floor of a light rail train in Charlotte with a stab wound to her throat, police said.
Brown told his sister after his arrest that he lashed out violently because Zarutska was reading his mind, the sister told CNN.
“Iryna Zarutska was a young woman living the American dream — her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday when announcing federal charges against Decarlos Brown Jr.
“We will seek the maximum penalty for this unforgivable act of violence — he will never again see the light of day as a free man,” Bondi said.
In the early 20th century, states enacted laws imposing long sentences on habitual offenders, keeping career criminals in prison in their prime reproductive years or even for life. They did this not just to incapacitate criminals and deter crime, but also to prevent habitual criminals from reproducing and having kids who would go on to commit more serious crimes. For example, “’habitual offender’ laws in California, Vermont, and Colorado…passed successfully in 1923, 1927, and 1929, respectively. These laws imposed sentences long enough to functionally bar reproduction” by the habitual offenders, notes a progressive web site that is ideologically opposed to long sentences for repeat offenders.
Criminals frequently commit more crimes after being released. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that violent offenders returned to crime after being released, at a 63.8% rate over an 8-year period. Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4).
But criminals released at an advanced age do tend to commit crimes less frequently than those released at a younger age, and tend to commit less serious crimes than those released at a younger age (arrests of elderly people after they were released from prison are often for minor offenses such as shoplifting).
A 2014 study in the American Economic Journal found that early releases of prison inmates raised the crime rate. When El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell by more than 90%.
