A North Chicago woman was sentenced to 45 years in prison Thursday for the murder of her 6-year-old son, a crime the judge said “shocks the conscience.”
Jannie Perry, 42, pleaded guilty last year to the first-degree murder of Damari Perry. The child was made to stand in a cold shower on Dec. 30, 2021 – his sixth birthday – until he convulsed and died, authorities said.
The defendant, aided by some of her other children, later took the boy’s body to an abandoned section of Gary, Indiana, where they attempted to burn the child’s corpse with charcoal briquets, according to reports.
“That little boy probably never had a moment of joy in your care,” Lake County Judge Christopher Lombardo told Perry. “I have no words to describe what kind of person would do that. I can’t imagine what he felt every day of his life.”
Prosecutors said that some of Perry’s other six children abused Damari and participated in the attempt to cover up his death. A cell phone video taken by one of the boy’s siblings was shown in court. In it, a naked, thin Damari, his hands bound, is shown being slapped by a sibling, with the boy’s head bouncing off a kitchen counter.
Assistant State’s Attorney Stephen Scheller said the sibling shared the video with his mother by text. Jannie Perry, prosecutors said, texted back, “I’m so tired of his skeleton-looking ass.”
That comment elicited an involuntary groan from the boy’s father, Dalvin Driver, who was in court. Driver, who didn’t live with Perry and her children, said his son was “everything to me.”
“I’ll still pray for you,” he told Perry during his victim statement, “but God’s got the last call.”
Perry made a brief statement to the court.
“I made a huge mistake,” she said. “My kids are my world. Damari was my world, too.”
But the prosecutor said the boy was killed intentionally on his birthday.
“This was the day he should have been showered with gifts and love by his family,” Scheller told the judge. “Instead, he was showered with cruelty, hatred and inhumane treatment.”
Jeremiah Perry, Damari’s older brother, is awaiting trial on murder charges, and another sibling was charged as a juvenile.
Jannie Perry pleaded guilty in a partial deal in which prosecutors agreed to cap the sentence recommendation at 45 years. The judge said that Perry should consider the 45-year limit as “a blessing” because the case could have resulted in a longer sentence. She is required to serve the entire term, minus the four years she has spent in jail since her arrest.
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“We must honor Damari by making sure this never happens again,” State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart said. “One way we can do this is by being loud and clear: If you choose to harm a child, and that child dies as a result of your abuse, you will be charged with murder, we will seek to detain you while the case is pending, and then you will face imprisonment.”