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Chicago Jury Spares Andre Crawford, Convicted of Killing 11 Women on the South Side, From the Death Penalty

The jury found Crawford eligible for death, but the vote was not unanimous, so he received life in prison. Victims' relatives called the outcome unjust.

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Illustration of a person seated alone on a bench in a dim courthouse hallway on a snowy evening. Not an actual scene from the case.

Andre Crawford was convicted of killing 11 women on Chicago's South Side between 1993 and 1999. On December 18, 2009, the jury that found him eligible for death spared his life.

A death sentence required a unanimous verdict, and two jurors refused to sign one, the Chicago Tribune reported, so Crawford, 47, was sentenced to life in prison. He showed no reaction as Judge Evelyn Clay read the jury's finding. "It only takes two killings to be eligible for death. It was 11. What kind of justice is that?" said Rena Carlock, the sister of Patricia Dunn, one of the victims. Cook County prosecutors said in a written statement that they were disappointed. "But we must respect their decision," they said.

The same jury had convicted Crawford on December 10 after about 10 hours of deliberation, finding him guilty of 11 murders, nine rapes and the attempted murder of a woman who survived. The women he killed were Patricia Dunn, Rhonda King, Angela Shatteen, Shaguanta Langley, Sonji Brandon, Nicole Townsend, Cheryl Cross, Tommie Dennis, Sheryl Johnson, Constance Bailey and Evandre Harris. A joint Chicago police and FBI task force began investigating the killings in the city's Englewood area in 1999. About a year later, Crawford was arrested on an unrelated matter, gave a DNA sample and made video-recorded confessions. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed his convictions in 2013.

The Chicago Tribune reported that two jurors refused to sign a death verdict, while NBC Chicago reported that victims' relatives blamed a single holdout.

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