“I wish I could do something to fix Mr. Winslow’s trauma that he’s experienced,” Judge Susan Crawford said, referring to the Langdon Street attacker who brutally beat a female UW-Madison student in a random assault on the street.
Dane County Judge Susan Crawford gave a short sentence to the violent “Langdon Street Attacker,” a repeat felon who randomly beat and dragged a 19-year-old UW-Madison student down the street after grabbing her from behind, leaving her wounded on a snow bank with a broken jaw and damaged eye socket. Crawford’s sentence ensures that Jerome Winslow will be free in just a few years.
During the sentencing, Crawford waxed on with sympathy for the attacker. “I wish I could do something to fix Mr. Winslow’s trauma that he’s experienced,” she said, describing his impoverished childhood.
The brutal attack of the teenage student was caught on surveillance video played at Winslow’s sentencing; you can see him drag the victim down the hill, and at the end, the images become clearer.
In 2019, Crawford sentenced Winslow, a habitual criminal and repeat felon, to just seven years behind bars. She also threw out sexual assault and false imprisonment charges, accepting a plea deal. That’s less than half of the incarceration time that the prosecutor wanted.
That’s even though Winslow previously pointed a gun at the head of another UW student on the Whitewater campus.
In the Langdon Street Attack case in Madison, the prosecutor, Matthew Moeser, asked for 17 years behind bars, a sentencing video shows. The maximum sentence was 44.5 years. Winslow faced 80.5 years in prison before the plea deal, the criminal complaint documents.
Crawford, a liberal who has argued for leniency for sex offenders for years, is running against former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, who is a former District Attorney and current Waukesha County Judge, for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Dozens of law enforcement leaders all over the state have endorsed Schimel; Crawford is supported by the Dane County Sheriff, who has refused ICE holds for violent criminals and sex offenders.
Susan Crawford told the Langdon Street Attacker, Jerome Winslow, to ‘Grow Up’
Bizarrely, the very liberal Crawford’s comments at the “Langdon Street Attack” sentencing imply that she thought that going substantially under the state’s prison sentence request was somehow a tough sentence. She also told Winslow, then 23 years old, that he needed to “grow up” and “grow out” of his penchant for “violent conduct,” the sentencing video shows.
In contrast, the prosecutor, Moeser, slammed Winslow’s “excuses attempting to normalize this behavior.” Moeser continued: “Mr. Winslow did not care one bit about this victim,” adding that the attacker also lied to the police. “Year after year,” he engaged in criminal behavior, according to Moeser.
According to Wisconsin corrections records, Winslow’s mandatory release date is on 4/11/2030 because he’s also serving a three-year once-stayed sentence for the separate Jefferson County armed robbery.
In that robbery, Winslow pointed a gun to the head of a UW-Whitewater student during a drug deal on that campus, court records show. He also has a history of violence toward women.
Winslow’s past violent conduct included a previous conviction for felony battery to a police officer (he head-butted an officer); a domestic violence-related conviction; and battery and criminal damage to property convictions. In the latter offenses, Winslow pushed his sister in the face and broke another woman’s cell phone, grabbing and pushing her by the neck and hair, starting to drag her upstairs, and biting her, the criminal complaints show. He was on probation when he attacked the UW-Madison student.
It’s a pattern. We’ve reviewed all of Crawford’s felony cases as a judge, obtained through open records laws, and she gives almost no offenders lengthy prison terms, no matter how violent or heinous their offenses. For example, we previously reported that she gave the rapist of a 6-year-old girl only four years behind bars; he’s already out. In case after case, it’s the same story.
Crawford even admitted that the Langdon Street Attack case was violent and horrific. But then she gave Winslow well under the max.
“There’s no question this case involves a horribly violent crime that led to the victim in this case being severely injured, numerous broken bones in her face, she was left exposed, having been dragged down the lake bank by the defendant, after he attacked her viciously on the street. She was a stranger to him,” Crawford said during the sentencing.
“This was a young woman who was walking alone…(Winslow) beat her in the face, leaving her unconscious, and then dragged her, not a short distance. Down the street, into the snow, down the lake bank,” Crawford said. If it weren’t for “the interventions” because of a couple of concerned citizens, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that young woman would not have lived through the night,” Crawford said.
“This was a random attack of a young woman who was helpless, alone, in the middle of the night.”
However, Crawford showed concern for Winslow during the sentence.
During the sentencing, Crawford admitted that she gave weight to Winslow’s impoverished and traumatic childhood, however.
Her sentence included five years of extended supervision in the community. The prosecutor asked for an additional nine years of extended supervision. She ordered that sentences for two of the three counts run concurrently (at the same time) as the first charge, when the prosecutor asked for them all to run consecutively. She did order that the Langdon Street sentence run consecutively to the Jefferson County armed robbery sentence.
Susan Crawford Said She Wished She Could ‘Fix’ the Langdon Street Attacker
“It is also true he comes from a life filled with hardship, deprivation, and poverty,” Crawford said of the Langdon Street attacker, after citing a need to protect the public from him.
“Had an absent father. Lived in a very rough area of Chicago as a child. Experienced both poverty and homelessness after moving to Madison. I do take into account that he came from a place of deprivation and trauma. I wish I could do something to fix Mr. Winslow’s trauma that he’s experienced,” Crawford said.
That’s even though Winslow was “looking for a victim that night,” Crawford acknowledged, noting he had followed another young woman that night and tried to enter a fraternity. He was “on probation for a number of prior offenses,” Crawford admitted.
Crawford again cited Winslow’s “history of trauma” and “mental illness” when she handed down the sentence, as well as his substance abuse. She said the aim was to “impose a just sentence.”
The defense attorney, Guy Cardamone, told Crawford that Winslow was “extremely depressed” when he attacked the student. He also brought up Winslow’s race and poverty and said he picked up trash on Earth Day. Winslow claimed the victim made a derogatory comment toward him, but there is no evidence that is true. Rather, prosecutors say he grabbed her from behind and randomly started beating her. He didn’t even know her.
“You are and will continue to be dangerous,” Crawford told him.
Court records confirmed that Winslow was convicted of three violent felonies: two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety and one count of substantial battery. Crawford dismissed sexual assault and false imprisonment charges as part of a plea deal, allowing them to be read-in, records show. An April 2024 notation in the court records says Crawford “ordered zero restitution.”
Far from taking responsibility, Winslow stood “mute” in court hearings and, at one point, wouldn’t cooperate with a presentence writer, records show.
Residents didn’t believe the sentence met the mark.
At the time of the sentencing, angry readers filled WKOW-TV’s comment thread on Facebook, slamming Crawford’s sentence as too light.
According to the criminal complaint:
At 3:22 a.m. on Feb. 3, 2019, the student was discovered “beat up” with “facial injuries,” completely soaked clothing, and “covered in blood.”
There were drag marks on the ground. Two passersby had called the police because they saw the girl being dragged toward the lake. Video footage showed Winslow taking “wide strides” behind the victim as she walked down the street before grabbing and dragging her by her ankles and legs down the street.
He left her at the bottom of a hill, amidst branches, sharp edges, snow, and ice.
Her face “was extremely swollen, and her eyes were practically swollen shut.” She could barely talk because her face was so swollen, and she was bleeding from her mouth when an officer tried to talk to her at the hospital. She had fractures to her eyes and jaw that required surgery and other abrasions.
“The victim said she remembered hearing footsteps running up behind her before the attack, and she remembered kicking. She also said she remembered she saw that her belt buckle was undone after the attack,” the complaint said.
When found, her underwear “were hanging out of the back of her pants and were bunched up.” She wasn’t physically able to get off the ground. Her zipper was down, the complaint says.
Jerome Winslow later admitted he punched the student “at least three times.” He said he was drunk. The victim had a broken jaw and needed titanium plates to reconstruct it.
Read the full criminal complaint here:
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