Analysis: Attack on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at Republican Convention misrepresented facts

A speaker at the Republican National Convention who sharply criticized the handling of the cases of her son’s killers in Manhattan received the loudest boos of the evening when she mentioned the name of District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

However, an analysis by the Daily News found that its report omitted important elements of what actually happened.

Madeline Brame took the podium as one of the keynote speakers at the RNC’s “Make America Safe Again” evening, which also featured speeches from former GOP candidates Nikki Haley, Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis.

Brame’s son, Army Sgt. Hason Correa, who served as a grenade launcher in Afghanistan, was stabbed and beaten to death in the lobby of an apartment complex on W. 152nd Street in Harlem in October 2018, court records show.

Four people were arrested, charged and convicted in connection with the murder of 35-year-old Correa, which occurred four years before Bragg took office. But in her speech denouncing the prosecutor who tried Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, Brame falsely claimed that her son’s killers had gotten off scot-free.

“The four attackers responsible for his death were initially brought to justice, but that changed with the election of District Attorney Alvin Bragg,” Brame said, sparking cheers from the crowd and applause from the former president.

“Suddenly, the gang assault and murder charges against two of the insane killers responsible for my son’s death were completely dropped. I later learned that Alvin Bragg often drops dangerous criminals and reduces their sentences. He wants to empty the prisons and put dangerous (felons) back on our streets every day.”

James Saunders, the stabbing man, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and gang assault in October 2022 and was sentenced to 20 years to life in February 2023, case records show. A jury convicted Christopher Saunders of gang assault in November 2022, and he was also sentenced to 20 years to life at his sentencing the following December. The Saunders men were on the run for a year before being arrested.

Travis Stewart pleaded guilty to attempted gang assault in May 2022 and was sentenced to seven years in prison the following month.

Mary Saunders, who turned herself in the morning after the incident, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in May 2022 and spent 14 months in prison. Her involvement came after she discovered that a friend of Correa and his father, Wesley Correa, had been hit with a glass bottle, court records show.

After tending to her friend’s wounds, Saunders went back to her building, where Correa and his father confronted her, her siblings and Stewart and a struggle ensued. Prosecutors said in 2022 they found no evidence that she knew her brother was carrying a knife during the fight or that she intended to kill the deceased sergeant.

Prosecutors acknowledged that Brame was unhappy with the outcome of Mary Saunders’ case. In a May 2022 brief, they told the court, “We have attempted to explain the reasons and show Ms. Brame the video compilation of the incident,” and assured her that the murder trial against Saunders’ brothers would proceed.

Brame, the chair of the Victims Rights Reform Council who has made several unsuccessful bids for office, is one of a small group of crime victims’ relatives who Republicans have repeatedly put in the spotlight to discredit Democrats as “soft on crime.” She was subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in April and, after Trump’s impeachment in the summer of 2023, to testify before Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch Trump ally, who was investigating Bragg’s crime policies.

After Bragg’s speech, New York politicians defended the prosecutor. Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal wrote that Bragg’s name drew the loudest boos because he is “the only prosecutor so far who has been able to hold Trump accountable for his crimes.”

“I feel deep sympathy for the grieving family members. I can only imagine how much they are suffering. We certainly have more work to do to make Manhattan safer. But some facts: Thankfully, major crimes here are down 10% in the last two years. Shootings are down 38%,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine wrote on “X,” formerly known as Twitter.

“The number of murders per capita in Manhattan and New York is lower than in almost every other Republican state in the United States. In many cases, it is twice as high. And just to be clear, all of the people involved in the heinous murder of Sergeant Hason Correa were fortunately convicted in court or pleaded guilty.”

The prosecutor has been one of Trump’s top online targets, with the Daily News exclusively reporting last month that the Bragg building was inundated with a barrage of death threats and racist hate mail in the wake of the historic conviction.

The ex-president was found guilty on May 30 of 34 felony counts brought by Bragg’s office. A jury concluded that he falsified business records to hide unfavorable information about his past from voters. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 18 if his pending attempt to overturn the conviction fails.

A spokesman for Bragg declined to comment.

Originally published: July 17, 2024 at 12:43