In the photo, Jennifer Hall sits beside her boyfriend, Joe Hoffman. Her hair cascaded down both sides of her face and her lips were parted in a half-smile. It was Aug. 25, 2008, her 36th birthday.

“My hair was down to my waist for 20 years,” she said. “I woke up bald — no teeth, 85 staples in my head — out of a drug-induced coma.”

Two hours after the photo was taken, Hall and Hoffman were attacked by a homeless man, Derrick King, near Wabash Avenue and Roosevelt Road, after telling him they didn’t have any cigarettes. King and a second person then beat, stomped and kicked Hall unconscious, she said.

[…]

Meanwhile, the last year has been difficult for Hall.

She moved from the South Loop because she was afraid to walk the streets. She separated for a time from her boyfriend. She can walk and talk, she said Wednesday, but her jaw still falls out of joint, she still has seizures, and nerve damage prevents full use and feeling in her left foot.

While this story is ultimately about the problem with the early release of violent offenders, if you’ve read my blog long enough, Jennifer Hall’s story should ring a bell. I wrote about it back when it happened, focusing on the disparity between the reporting from the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times versions, where one painted this as an unprovoked attack for refusing to give a man a cigarette, and the other reporting that one of the victims — which they said was likely Hall herself — allegedly told the offenders to “go get a job.”

Derrick King certainly did not deserve to be released early from prison so he could offend again, but I stand firmly by my original statements that Hall likely wouldn’t be suffering from any of these horrible problems if her or her boyfriend had simply said “sorry, no” instead of insulting and provoking a man who was already reduced to begging on the streets and had nothing to lose.