State admits error may have left killer largely unsupervised for months

ATLANTA — A couple was murdered and now the state is admitting to only Channel 2 Action News that an error may have left a convicted killer largely unsupervised for months.
 
Andre Gay was on parole when officers say he and another man kidnapped and killed Jeronta Brown and Briana Brooks in August.  Brooks was seven months pregnant.
 
Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh went to downtown Atlanta on Monday, where she spoke exclusively to the executive director of the state parole board about the internal investigation into what went wrong.
 
Kavanaugh started asking the parole board questions after the Fulton County district attorney criticized how they monitored parolees. Monday, the parole board official defended the system, saying it's very successful, when implemented.
 
But in the case of Brown and Brooks, they say a parole officer failed to do his job and now the agency is investigating why.
 
"The board expects the case to be supervised in the manner they prescribe.  And, in this case, that didn't happen," said Michael Nail, executive director of the state pardons and paroles board.
 
Andre Gay was serving a life sentence for killing a woman and a 17-month-old child. When the state paroled him January, the parole board mandated he receive the highest level of supervision.
 
"Unfortunately, it was a case where someone didn't do their job," said Nail.
 
Nail says they discovered the mistake only after Gay allegedly killed two more people. Nail spoke only with Kavanaugh about what went wrong.
 
"Mr. Gay was on voice recognition with a curfew," Nail said.
 
A parole officer was supposed to set Gay up on a system that would randomly call his home. The technology identifies the offender's voice, verifying he's where he's supposed to be.
 
Nail says an internal investigation revealed the officer never activated Gay's voice recognition system. The system never called him, not once.
 
A case summary says Gay was never fully placed on electronic monitoring and that the parole officer had deleted Gay's information from the system.
 
Yet, a DeKalb County parole officer and two of his supervisors allowed Gay to graduate to even less supervision.
 
"We have heard excuses. But we haven't in my opinion, received any valid explanation as to why it was not done," Nail said.
 
In September, Atlanta police arrested Gay and cohort Richard Wilson for the execution-style killings of Brown and Brooks.
 
"We can't say that us not doing our job directly contributed to it, what we can do is question whether or not it did, and that's the troubling part," Nail said.
 
Kavanaugh received the following statement from Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard's office.
 
"(Terry) Bernard chairman of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles) admitted errors were indeed made on behalf of the parole board in this matter. I was struck by the chairman's candor and eagerness to address the flaws in the system and work towards successful resolutions. What could happen to this officer -- investigation should be concluded this evening or tomorrow."

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