Relatives of an 8-year-old boy murdered by a Connecticut drug cartel and his mother are outraged as former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 2,500 people with drug-related sentences during his presidency , one of the men convicted in the killing.
Adrian Peeler was convicted of conspiracy to murder Leroy “BJ” Brown and his mother, Karen Clarke, in Bridgeport in 1999 He was shot and sentenced to 20 years in state prison. Prosecutors said Brown and his mother were assassinated to prevent the children from testifying in another murder case.
In December 2021, Peeler completed his state sentence but began serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison for dealing large quantities of crack cocaine.
News you can trust and daily fun, right in your inbox
See it for yourself — The Yodel is your go-to source for daily news, entertainment and light-hearted stories.
The federal sentence will keep him behind bars until 2033.
Clark’s brother, Oswald Clarke, said the reduced sentence came as a surprise to his family, who were angry and frustrated.
“I’m sick, I’m tired, I’m sick,” he told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a very shocking thing. My family is devastated by it. It’s like we’ve been traumatized all over again.
It’s unclear how Peeler, 48, came to Biden’s attention, and the former president has not publicly disclosed the specific reasons for the reduction of Peeler’s federal sentence. Emails and social media messages were left by former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and current White House Press Secretary Harrison Fields.
In announcing the clemency action on Friday, Biden said he was commuting the sentences of people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes, calling their sentences too harsh. The Democrat said he was seeking to undo “sentences that are disproportionately long compared to what they receive today under current law, policy and practice.”
The grand jury indictment against Peeler in the drug case did not mention the killings, saying only that he and others conspired to sell kilograms of crack cocaine.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who was the state’s attorney general when Brown and his mother were killed, said in Peeler’s clemency plea, “Someone messed up.” He and other political leaders in Connecticut, including Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, criticized the commutation.
“This was a deeply evil murder that changed our laws,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “It also underscores how we need to look at the pardon system to understand how to improve it.”
State Sen. Stephen Harding, the Republican minority leader, called the clemency “a slap in the face to all victims of violent crime and their families in Connecticut.”
Peeler’s attorney, Michael Brown, declined to comment on clemency. He said Peeler worked hard to rehabilitate himself in prison and was a different person than he was a quarter-century ago.
“This man has done a lot for himself and helped a lot of people while incarcerated,” Brown said.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut, which is prosecuting Peeler’s drug case, said Wednesday that they were not consulted or notified in advance about Peeler’s clemency. The office declined further comment.
Prosecutors say Peeler shot Brown and Clark at their Bridgeport home on Jan. 7, 1999, at the direction of his brother, Russell Peeler. The brothers wanted to eliminate Brown as a witness in the 1998 murder trial of Russell Peeler.
Brown identified Russell Peeler to police as Snead’s 1997 attacker, who survived. The boy, who was in Sneed’s car when he was shot, is expected to testify about the drive-by attack at Russell Peeler’s trial after he later attacked Sneed again and killed him in a barbershop Kill him.
Both Pillers were charged by the state with felony murder and murder and face the possibility of the death penalty. Although Adrian Peeler was the accused shooter, the jury only found him guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for that count and five years on the other charges.
Russell Peeler was convicted and sentenced to death for ordering the killing. In 2016, because the country abolished the death penalty, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He was also sentenced to 105 years in prison for Sneed’s killing.
In response to the killings, the state Legislature passed a law creating a new witness protection program that includes special protections for children.
Federal authorities say Russell Peeler ran a sophisticated crack cocaine-trading operation in Bridgeport whose top brass included his brother. Prosecutors said Adrian Peeler had a criminal record before the killings, including shooting an apartment with an automatic weapon where four young children were uninjured, escaping from a halfway house and assaulting A correctional officer.
In the federal drug case, Adrian Peeler pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. In 2021, a judge reduced the sentence to 15 years, citing revised sentencing guidelines aimed at eliminating the difference between sentences for people sentenced on powder cocaine charges and those incarcerated for drug charges.
“We’ve been trying to get this guy off the streets for years,” Oswald Clark said. “This is a major insult in every sense of the word, and the entire state of Connecticut should be shocked, appalled and embarrassed, and whoever is in power in the federal government should be embarrassed by what they have done.”
