* From March…

As Chicago’s top cop announced charges Friday against a convicted felon accused of brutally stabbing his ex-girlfriend and killing her 11-year-old son, Police Supt. Larry Snelling repeatedly said the attack “should’ve never happened.”

But questions remained over what should have been done to prevent the attack, including why Crosetti Brand, 37, was released from the Stateville Correctional Center on Tuesday after having been sent back to prison earlier this year for menacing the pregnant woman while on parole.

The next day, Brand allegedly forced his way into the woman’s Edgewater apartment, stabbed her repeatedly, then stabbed her son Jayden Perkins when the boy came to her aid.

The woman had repeatedly asked for help from authorities in the weeks before the attack, including seeking an emergency order of protection that was denied by a Cook County judge. […]

In the meantime, the woman sought an emergency protection order. During a Feb. 21 hearing, the woman told Judge Thomas Nowinski that Chicago police didn’t let her file a report when she called about Brand. Instead, they told her to get a protection order. “They asked me, do I have one currently,” she said, “and I told them no.”

At no time during the hearing did the judge ask questions about the alleged texts or Brand’s visit to the home, according to a transcript.

Nowinski decided against issuing an order, even though the woman testified under oath that she had previously sought one against Brand in 2009.

* Yesterday…

A man suspected of fatally stabbing his wife Tuesday in Portage Park had already been facing charges for allegedly choking and attempting to kidnap her last month, but he was released on GPS monitoring, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

Hours after the Tuesday stabbing, the suspect, 57, was found dead inside a car a block away.

An off-duty detective witnessed the stabbing about 2:25 p.m. in the 5600 block of West Leland Avenue and suffered a gunshot wound while trying to intervene, according to a preliminary statement from Chicago police. […]

The man was previously charged in a separate attack against his wife on Oct. 9 — the same day he was served with an emergency order of protection she had sought, court records show.

Prosecutors filed a petition that day to have him held in Cook County Jail pending trial, but it was denied by Judge Thomas E. Nowinski. Nowinski instead released the suspect on GPS monitoring, ordered him to refrain from possessing weapons and forbade him from visiting his wife’s home, work or school.

According to her petition for the protective order, the second the woman had sought against her husband this year, she said he grabbed her as she was walking to the bus, tried to cover her mouth to stop her from screaming and attempted to knock her unconscious.

Judge Nowinski, who serves in the court’s Domestic Violence Division, is Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County Iris Martinez’s former chief of staff.

* And before anyone pops off in comments, every major group that works with domestic violence survivors in this state supported the SAFE-T Act because it gave judges and prosecutors far more power to keep abusers behind bars until trial.

…Adding… From The Network, an anti-domestic violence advocacy organization…

Yesterday, a woman was stabbed to death by her husband in Portage Park, who then injured an off-duty police officer before taking his own life. According to media reports, the man was previously charged in a separate attack against his wife in October and prosecutors filed a petition to have him held in Cook County Jail pending trial. However, Judge Thomas E. Nowinski denied the petition and released the individual on electronic monitoring. Now, the woman is dead and a police officer is injured.

Judge Nowinski was also at the center of the tragic murder of 11-year-old Jayden Perkins by Crosetti Brand in March. A few weeks prior to the murder, Nowinski refused to issue an order of protection to Jayden’s mother, who was told by Chicago Police to seek order of protection after Brand sent threatening text messages and appeared at Perkins’ home.

Today, The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence is calling on Chief Judge Timothy Evans to reassign Judge Thomas Nowinski from the domestic violence division and ensure Nowinski no longer presides over any domestic violence cases.

“Judge Nowinski’s failure to protect the community has now resulted in two tragic, preventable murders,” said Amanda Pyron, President and CEO of The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence. “He has repeatedly shown he does not have the judgment necessary to keep survivors safe, and at a minimum he must be reassigned. When survivors go to the courts for protection, that protection must be effective. Judge Nowinski has failed in that duty, and allowing him to continue to hear domestic violence cases sends the wrong message to survivors across Chicagoland.”

“We also strongly encourage the Pretrial division to review procedures for domestic violence screening to ensure that judges have all necessary information to accurately understand risk, including recent petitions for orders of protection,” said Pyron. “The failure to provide correct information in this case proved lethal.”

…Adding… One of the judge’s longtime friends (who I also know well) wanted to get this into the record…

This is an awful tragedy. If there were tools to perfectly predict human behavior pretrial with zero error, they would be used to prevent these sorts of tragedies.

The facts of this case are that the defendant was served an order of protection to stay away from the victim at the hearing and placed on GPS monitoring. The petition to detain filed by the prosecution stated no history of orders of protection, no prior arrests for assault or threats, and no weapons used.

There are metrics used to assist in risk assessment on whether defendants should be held pretrial, and this defendant had very low pretrial risk assessment scores. He had a 1 for Domestic Violence Screening, no flag for violent criminal activity, and a 2 out of 6 on criminal activity scale. He had no prior convictions or supervisions in his background and no prior arrests for domestic battery based on what was presented in court.

Illinois Appellate Court precedent clearly states that judges must consider GPS and must issue the least restrictive conditions of release. If someone has no background and low scores from pretrial, and without other incidents, detention has routinely been reversed by the appellate court.

The role of protecting the community from violent offenders while also respecting the constitutional rights of the accused is complicated, especially in this modern era. Every case has different facts and must also be viewed in context with hundreds of previous cases that set precedent for the judiciary, public safety professionals, and the attorneys involved in these matters.

The person claims that the office of pretrial services and the state’s attorney claimed there was no history of orders of protection and no prior arrests for assault, harassment, or threats. The judge, he said, doesn’t recall anything brought up by the prosecutors, particularly not a threat to choke her. The state’s attorney didn’t appeal the decision.