A man who raped and murdered a 19-year-old college student after racking up 18 prior arrests is being set free — while Americans who walked through the Capitol on January 6 continue to sit in federal custody.

The two-tier justice system isn't a glitch. It's the design. Violent predators get parole boards that eventually tire of saying no. Political dissidents get years in a cell.

Brian McCarthy was 23 when he attacked Katy Hawelka near Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, on Aug. 29, 1986. The 19-year-old sophomore was walking back to her dorm, limping from a recently removed cast on a broken foot. McCarthy smashed her head into a wall, kicked her repeatedly with work boots, and raped her. In his own taped confession: "I was picking her up and throwing her and I was using every bit of my strength in my body to move that girl, just, just to shake her insides out."

Before he murdered Katy Hawelka, McCarthy had already been arrested 18 times — forgery, burglary, car theft, grand larceny. The system had every warning. It failed anyway. He got 23 years to life in 1987.

Now, after denying him parole nine times, the New York State Board of Parole has approved his release. His release date is February 24, 2027, or earlier, according to Department of Corrections spokesperson Thomas Mailey. As recently as April 2025, a parole board found McCarthy's account of the killing not credible and determined he wasn't ready for release. Then, suddenly, he was.

The family is shattered. "For 40 years and 10 parole hearings, we have shown up to fight for Katy and trusted that justice would prevail," the Hawelka family wrote on Facebook. "We never imagined that this release could become a reality."

Campus security guards saw the attack in progress and walked away, believing it was consensual sex. They came back later and found Katy unconscious. She was brain-dead. Her parents disconnected life support three days later.

Meanwhile, in Kitsap County, Washington, a father had to do law enforcement's job himself. An active-duty Marine, Timothy Caldwell, allegedly grabbed a 12-year-old girl walking home from school and told her she was coming with him. She punched him and ran, snapping a photo as she fled. Her father, Dustin Praxedes, posted that photo on Facebook, tracked down the address, and called deputies to make the arrest. Caldwell had a loaded shotgun at his door when police arrived. "It's your obligation as a father to track someone down that tries to harm your children," Praxedes told reporters.

The system couldn't keep a confessed murderer behind bars after nine parole denials. The system couldn't catch an attempted child kidnapper without a dad doing the detective work. But that same system has had no trouble warehousing January 6 defendants — some held pretrial for years, some sentenced to decades — for the crime of walking through a public building.

Katy Hawelka's family trusted the system for 40 years. Now they know what that trust bought them. The question isn't why the system fails. The question is who it chooses to fail — and who it chooses to punish instead.