Milwaukee man gets 22 years for killing his brother in family dispute

A Milwaukee family fight that turned lethal ended with Brandon Smith ordered to serve 22 years in prison, followed by 20 years of extended supervision, for killing his brother, Justin Smith. Milwaukee County Judge Laura Crivello imposed the sentence on June 5, giving Smith credit for more than a year already served and closing a case that began with a shooting at the brothers’ North 47th Street home.

The killing unfolded in the early morning hours of February 26, 2025, in the 4900 block of North 47th Street near 47th and Stark. Milwaukee police responded to what records described as a domestic-dispute shooting and found Justin Smith dead inside the home with a gunshot wound. Investigators also found a bloody hammer near his body, a detail that underscored how violent and chaotic the confrontation had become inside the family residence.

Brandon Smith was first charged with first-degree intentional homicide. A cash bond was set at $150,000, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for March 12. The case later went to trial, and on April 1, 2026, a jury convicted him of the lesser charge of first-degree reckless homicide instead.

Court filings laid out the family tension that prosecutors said led to the shooting. A woman who lived with the brothers told police that Brandon Smith believed Justin Smith had been involved with his ex-wife, but investigators said that claim was not true. That same woman led police to the place where Brandon Smith’s gun was hidden, and officers recovered it.

Smith also told investigators that he thought Justin Smith was monitoring him through his cellphone and believed he was going to be ambushed. Those statements, paired with the ex-wife accusation and the weapon recovery, gave the case a disturbing mix of domestic conflict and paranoia that pushed it beyond a simple neighborhood shooting.

The case landed in a city that saw 142 homicides in 2025, up from 132 in 2024, according to Milwaukee police data. But this one was especially personal: a brother killed a brother inside a shared home, after a dispute that had been building in plain sight. With the sentence now set, the case ends where it started, inside the family itself.