Jul. 27—ROCHESTER — News that a parole board had granted convicted murderer David Brom work release privileges prompted many to hold as true two mutually opposed ideas.
In general, they approved the idea that juveniles convicted of serious, even heinous crimes should be shown leniency; yet they questioned whether it should apply to this case in particular, to someone who brutally killed his parents and brother and sister with an ax when he was 16.
While clearly not intentional, Brom has become the poster child for a new law enacted in 2023 when the DFL controlled both the statehouse and governor’s mansion in St. Paul.
News stories have focused on how the law gives juvenile offenders a chance for review and redemption after they serve 15 years or more of a sentence. But how did it apply specifically to Brom, a person who was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences?
Each life sentence carried a minimum of 17 years in prison, meaning that Brom was not eligible for release until 2037 under the old law.
But under the new law, offenders convicted of three or more consecutive life sentences are granted review after serving a minimum of 30 years. Brom had already served 37 years of what was supposed to be, at a minimum, a 52.5 year sentence. The new law changed Brom’s parole eligibility date to Feb. 17, 2018.
During his trial in 1989, Brom’s defense argued that he was mentally ill and not responsible for the deaths he caused. But the jury rejected that defense and convicted him on four courts of first-degree murder.
At the time, Judge Ancy Morse called the case an “extreme and monumental tragedy” involving a “seriously mentally ill boy driven to despair by a sick mind.” She sentenced Brom to three consecutive life terms. The fourth count, the one involving his sister Diane, was made a concurrent sentence.
Correction officials note that the new law does not compel the board to grant parole or work release, only to consider it.
In an interview, Paul Schnell, the state’s commissioner of corrections, said the parole board on which he serves as chairman voted 6-1 to deny Brom parole but to approve a “step down” status that granted Brom work release on July 29, which could eventually result in parole.
Schnell said work release is a form of custody. Brom will be placed in a halfway house with around-the-clock staffing and will be subject to GPS monitoring. He will be permitted to go out and seek work under tightly circumscribed parameters. He can also be granted limited passes over time to become involved in faith communities, for example.
Any violations of Brom’s work release conditions could result in disciplinary action, including the revocation of those privileges. For example, if Brom, on his way home from work, were to take an unauthorized detour to a convenience store to buy a candy bar, that could be the basis for disciplinary action, he said.
Schnell said he has seen Brom a number of times in his role as commissioner. In 2022, he approved of Brom’s parole from his second life sentence, so he could begin serving his third life sentence.
Schnell said he is aware of how public reaction to Brom’s new freedoms is being shaped by revulsion to his crimes. He recalled a comment from a legislator who stated that there are “some things for which people should never be able to be released.”
Yet, it is the job of lawmakers to set public policy, which informs a parole board what factors to consider or weigh in granting parole or not.
“And that’s what we do. That’s largely looked at through a correctional lens, not through this lens of the horrific nature of this offense. And there is no disputing the horror of this crime,” Schnell said.
And except for one minor infraction, Brom has been an “utterly model prisoner” during his 37 years of incarceration, he said. When he moved Brom to the correctional facility in St. Cloud, an intake facility, it was so Brom could be a mentor to other prisoners.
Schnell said there are prison staff who began their careers when Brom began serving his sentences and have known him for decades.
“You talk to many of those staff, and those staff were saying stuff to me, like, ‘I’ll just tell you that David Brom, if he were to be my neighbor, based on my experience with him, so be it,'” Schnell said. “That’s just based on the fact that, you know, they see and experience him.”
Yet for others, it is the very pitiless, grisly nature of the crime that outweighs and blots out any other consideration. State Rep. Duane Quam, a Republican from Byron, said Brom’s work release was a direct result of the law Democrats passed in 2023. He urges lawmakers to revisit it. Giving Brom new freedoms undermined the basic cause of justice, Quam said.
“The Democrats’ law allowing the release of an ax murderer completely undermines the very concept of a sentence being relational to the crime and sends a troubling message to the victims and the public,” he said.
“This case is especially painful for our community, which still remembers the trauma of those horrific events. I’ve heard from constituents who are shocked that such a brutal act no longer warrants permanent removal from society under current law.”
Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson said there is room for such a law, but questions its application in the Brom case. He was among the first law enforcement officers on the scene and witnessed the horrific nature in which Brom’s victim died.
In an interview, Torgerson recalled that in searching a room of the Brom house that night, a notebook was found in which Brom laid out his plan to kill his family. From the point of view of the prosecutor, this put to rest the defense’s contention that the family’s murders were the result of an alter ego or depression, but clear evidence of pre-meditation.
Torgerson said it was hard not to see the intentionality in the way in which Brom’s parents and siblings were attacked. There were upwards of 60 wounds on the four different individuals, a majority congregated around the head and torso.
Forensically, it’s a signature pattern for someone who knows his victims and is trying to protect his identity. By going after their vision, by trying to blind them, “they want to take away their vision, so they don’t see what they’re doing,” he said.
In a statement soon after news broke regarding Brom, Torgerson acknowledged that it is his understanding that Brom has done remarkably well in prison. Brom understands the severity of his crimes, is remorseful and has apologized to everyone involved.
Still, Diane and her brother Ricky would likely be parents and productive members of society if not for Brom’s actions.
“I cannot stop what is in motion, and I, we as the public, must trust the parole board’s decision and hope Mr. Brom is ready for his transition in his life,” Torgerson said. “I’m very pleased to hear that, but it is still hard for me to accept and forget the sights and smells of what I saw that Thursday evening in 1988.”