Cook County prosecutors on Monday rested their case against Crosetti Brand after calling more than two dozen witnesses who described for jurors harrowing accounts of an attack that killed an 11-year-old boy and seriously injured his pregnant mother.
Brand, 39, is standing trial on charges of murder, attempted murder, home invasion and aggravated domestic battery after prosecutors alleged that he barged into the Edgewater apartment of Laterria Smith and stabbed her multiple times, before turning his knife on her son, Jayden Perkins, when he tried to intervene.
Brand opted to forgo an attorney and represent himself, arguing during a brief opening statement that he was protecting himself during the alleged attack on March 13, 2024.
Throughout the trial, his defense strategy has been, at times, strange and variable, and his cross examination of his alleged victims has appeared to be distressing to them and family members watching in the gallery at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.
Now, with the state’s case wrapped after about three weeks of testimony, the trial moves to Brand, giving him the chance to call any witnesses or decide whether to take the stand himself. During proceedings before the judge on Monday morning, Brand indicated that he may testify in his own defense, a move that is often seen as risky because it opens defendants up to questioning by prosecutors.
In Brand’s case, it also posed a logistical issue, since he doesn’t have an attorney to ask him questions during direct examination.
“I’m not asking you to act like you have two personalities,” Judge Angela Petrone said, adding that Brand doesn’t have to question himself, jumping on and off the stand.
On Friday, prosecutors called their final witness, the Chicago police detective who was the lead investigator in the case.
Det. Michael Carroll took jurors through his team’s investigation, starting at the apartment in the 5900 block of North Ravenswood Avenue and continuing as they collected surveillance video, interviewed Smith and other witnesses and ultimately arrested Brand at his South Side home.
Through surveillance videos, detectives were able to track Brand – their primary suspect – leaving the Edgewater apartment and tossing a knife away, Carroll said.
Through video, they watched him enter the Bryn Mawr Red Line station, toss his shoes in a garbage can and take the train south to 47th Street.
Via cameras at a gyro shop near the 47th Street station, they saw Brand then throw out some clothes in another bin.
Carroll described the often painstaking work of tracking people through the city’s network of public and private surveillance systems. In one instance, detectives saw on video that a man dug into the garbage can and took the shoes Brand had previously thrown away at the 47th Street train station.
Carroll asked authorities who review CTA cameras to keep an eye out for the man.
They found him, Carroll said, and retrieved the shoes.
“I asked them to take custody of (the shoes) and buy him a new pair,” Carroll said.
Jurors also watched a video of Smith laying in a hospital bed with bandages throughout her body as she identified her attacker.
“That’s CO,” Smith said, pointing to a photograph of Brand while referring to him by his nickname.
Smith previously took the stand for hours, telling the jury that Brand harassed and threatened her in the weeks and months leading up to the attack.
Brand, who has a criminal history of abuse against Smith and other women, had recently rekindled his relationship with Smith in the months leading up to the stabbing, but she said she tried to break it off as Brand grew more controlling.
When they began seeing each other again, Brand was recently released from prison after he served time for a November 2015 attack on another woman who had recently ended a relationship with him, according to court documents.
After Brand showed up at her apartment as she tried to break off the relationship, Smith said she contacted the parole board, and he was sent back to prison.
But the Prisoner Review Board ordered Brand’s release. The next day, prosecutors alleged, he returned to Smith’s apartment for the fatal attack.
