Mom of slain Army vet due to testify at House hearings rails against DA Bragg
April 13, 2023
Madeline Brame, who is due to testify to a House Judiciary Committee
investigating Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, said the prosecutor went easy on
the four suspects in the 2018 killing of her son, US Army vet and
father of three Hason Correa.
The mom of a US Army veteran railed against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Thursday, calling the soft-on-crime prosecutor “not fit to be a dog catcher” for his handling of her son’s slaying.
Madeline Brame, who is set to be a witness at the upcoming House committee hearing on Bragg’s actions in Manhattan next week, told The Post that the DA went soft in the killing of vet Hason Correa within months of taking office last year.
“As soon as his office received it the whole case fell apart,” Brame said. “I would say to Alvin Bragg until he has to go to the morgue to identify his child’s dead body, or stand in the funeral parlor and lean over their caskets and see their child laying in the casket, he will never understand.
“And for him to take it so lightly, he is in the wrong business,” Brame added.
“He is not fit to be a dog-catcher, let alone an elected official.”
Correa, a 35-year-old married father of three and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, was fatally beaten and stabbed during a scuffle outside a Harlem apartment building.
Four siblings — Christopher, James and Mary Saunders, along with brother, Travis Stewart — were arrested by police and charged with murder and gang assault in the fatal incident.
Hason Correa was an Afghanistan war veteran and married father of three.
The case lingered in court until 2022 when Bragg was elected and took over as DA.
By year’s end, James Saunders pleaded guilty to gang assault and second-degree murder and was given a sentence of 20 years to life in prison — lower than the maximum sentence of 25 years to life.
Christopher was convicted of gang assault after a trial and was sentenced to 20 years to life, while Travis Stewart and Mary Saunders pleaded guilty to just gang assault. Stewart was sentenced to seven years in prison and Mary Saunders was released on the 14 months she had already spent at Rikers Island.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Thursday but noted that all four of the defendants were convicted or pleaded guilty, with two getting hefty prison sentences.
But Brame, who now chairs the non-profit advocacy group Victims Rights Reform Council, said she felt like prosecutors treated her and her family “like garbage.
Manhattan
DA Alvin Bragg, the subject of a House Judiciary Committee hearing next
week, inherited the murder case of slain US Army vet Hason Correa after
taking office in 2022 and cut plea deals with all four suspects,
including for murder.
“This is the atrocity, this is the horror,” she said. “And it’s not just me. There are hundreds and thousands of us that are experiencing the same trauma. We’re treated like garbage. It’s like the killer is the victim, and the victim is the killer.”
“We will never get our child back, but fair justice and closure is the least, the very least, that can happen.”
Brame also said that the controversial 2019 state criminal justice reforms, which prohibit judges from setting bail on misdemeanors and some felonies, is to blame for a fractured justice system.
“They need to put it through a shredder,” she said. “Shred it. Start over from the beginning. Go back to the drawing board. Stop tweaking it. Stop picking at the low-hanging fruit. Go to the heart of the matter.
“How could you possibly expect to let criminals go, violent people, go back out to the street with no services? To a shelter. No job. No education,” Brame said. “Criminals commit crime. Killers kill, thieves steal. Rapists rape, and child molesters molest children. That’s what they do.”
Christopher
Saunders pleaded guilty to gang assault and was sentenced to 20 years
in prison in the 2018 beating and stabbing death of US Army vet and
father of three Hason Correa in Harlem. 
James
Saunders pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and gang assault and
was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the 2018 beating and stabbing
death of US Army vet and father of three Hason Correa in Harlem.
Brame is among the witnesses expected to testify next week at a House Judiciary Committee Hearing in Manhattan investigating Bragg’s crime policies in the wake of his unprecedented indictment against former President Donald Trump over allegedly hush money payments.
Also slated to testify are Jose Alba, a Manhattan bodega worker who stabbed an assailant in self-defense but was initially charged with murder by Bragg’s office and victims advocate Jennifer Harrison, whose boyfriend, Kevin Davis, was killed outside a New Jersey nightclub in 2005.
“I only have one story,” Brame said of her upcoming testimony. “It’s a true story. It really, really happened.”
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