More than 560 inmates released from North Carolina prisons under former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration went on to face arrest for new offenses within two years, and at least four of those released inmates have since been convicted of murder, according to a Fox News Digital review of state sentencing commission data. The findings have landed Cooper, now a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, squarely in the crosshairs of his Republican opponent and national GOP operatives who say the former governor failed to protect North Carolina families.
Cooper’s administration settled a 2020 civil rights lawsuit in early 2021, agreeing to reduce the state prison population through expanded early releases, parole reviews, and other measures. The lawsuit, filed by the North Carolina NAACP, the ACLU, and other groups, argued that crowded prison conditions during the pandemic put inmates at unconstitutional risk under the state constitution.
The result: roughly 3,500 inmates walked out of North Carolina prisons over a 180-day window from February to August 2021. Cooper’s team said at the time that releases would focus on nonviolent offenders. Officials later acknowledged that individuals convicted of violent crimes were also included.
Fox News Digital reviewed data from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission and found that from a sample group of 1,180 released prisoners, 566, 48 percent, were later arrested on charges tied to new offenses. Twenty percent of that sample group had been convicted.
The cases go well beyond property crime and probation violations. Tyrell Brace, who had prior convictions for assault by strangulation, assault inflicting serious injury, felony larceny, and breaking and entering, was released months ahead of his originally scheduled January 15 release date. On January 29, 2022, just days after he would have otherwise walked free, Brace was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Elante Thompson, described as a young father, in Charlotte.
Daron Owens was released a month early. Months later, he was involved in a drive-by shooting that left a victim with gunshot wounds. Owens was sentenced in federal court to 10 years for possession of a firearm by a felon.
Jimmie Speight, previously convicted of indecent liberty with a child and failure to register as a sex offender, was released just under nine months ahead of schedule. In 2023, Speight was sentenced to more than 32 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Kyshuan Norrell, convicted of manslaughter, was released and has since been sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder.
Michael Whatley, the Republican running against Cooper for the North Carolina Senate seat, posted on X that Cooper “was a complete failure at keeping our communities safe.” In the same post, Whatley asked directly: “Why did Roy Cooper allow these dangerous criminals back on our streets?”
DJ Griffin, a spokesperson for the Whatley campaign, went further in a statement to Fox News Digital.
“Roy Cooper has blood on his hands. His dangerous decision to release thousands of convicted felons during COVID has resulted in the deaths of 19 North Carolinians. Now, victims’ families say he is solely to blame for these deaths. All while Cooper refuses to take any responsibility for his actions.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee piled on. Bernadette Breslin, the NRSC’s national press secretary, told Fox News Digital that Cooper “aided and abetted the release of thousands of violent criminals onto North Carolina’s streets.” She added: “Cooper’s soft-on-crime policies are too dangerous for North Carolina families.”
The NRSC also posted on X, calling the early releases “INSANE” and declaring: “Roy Cooper must answer for this.” The scrutiny comes as Democrats at the federal level face their own legal and investigative questions, though the North Carolina case stands on its own as a matter of public safety and executive accountability.
Cooper’s campaign pushed back hard. A spokesperson told Fox News Digital that “these blatant lies from Republicans have been fact-checked for months and found to be false.” The spokesperson also argued that Cooper “fought against these releases in court” and that North Carolina law enforcement and parole officers used “similar criteria President Trump used a year prior when his administration released thousands of federal prisoners due to COVID-19.”
The campaign added that keeping the public safe was Cooper’s “top priority,” which was why he “refused to commute sentences when outside groups asked him to during the pandemic.”
One specific case has become a flashpoint. Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr. was charged with the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, in Charlotte. Republicans alleged Brown may have been among the inmates released under the COVID agreement. Cooper called that claim a “lie.” A North Carolina Department of Adult Correction spokesperson told the Charlotte Observer that Brown was not released early.
But the Charlotte Observer also reported that state officials said Brown’s release was included in the settlement releases “because the settlement allowed the state to count certain cases retroactively to meet its terms.” Brown had been arrested at least 14 times before the killing and had served prison time after a 2015 armed robbery conviction. He was released from custody in September 2020.
The gap between Cooper’s flat denial and the state’s own explanation of retroactive counting raises questions that the former governor has not publicly resolved. It is the kind of contradiction that voters, particularly families of victims, deserve to see addressed directly, not dismissed with talking points. Across the political landscape, Democrats have shown a pattern of deflecting accountability onto their opponents rather than confronting the consequences of their own decisions.
AP News reported at the time that North Carolina civil rights groups struck a deal with Cooper’s administration allowing the early release of 3,500 inmates over six months. Under the terms, the Department of Public Safety had 90 days to release at least 1,500 offenders and another 90 days to release the remaining 2,000. Timothy Moose, the department’s chief deputy secretary for the Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice, said the department would “move forward with the actions outlined over the next 180 days, most of which it is already carrying out daily.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had initially pushed for the release of thousands more. The settlement was framed as a compromise. But the compromise still put 3,500 inmates back on the streets, and the data now show that nearly half of a large sample group ended up rearrested.
Earlier in the pandemic, before the settlement, the Washington Examiner reported that North Carolina officials had already begun expediting the discharge of 300 inmates scheduled for release in spring or early summer 2020, with 500 additional vulnerable inmates, including pregnant women and older adults, under consideration. Public Safety Secretary Erik Hooks said at the time that “the department has been reviewing all options to protect public safety as well as our employees and those in the state’s custody.”
The early releases, in other words, did not begin with the settlement. They accelerated under it.
Cooper’s campaign also tried to redirect attention to Whatley. The campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital: “While Roy spent his career putting rapists and violent criminals behind bars, Michael Whatley spent his appointing a convicted child sex predator who served time in prison for multiple counts of felony child sex crimes to a powerful position within the North Carolina Republican Party.”
That reference is to Harvey West Jr., a registered sex offender who served prison time for child sex crimes and who, according to WRAL News as cited by Fox News Digital, said Whatley appointed him to the Plan of Organization Committee in 2021 and 2024. Whatley told the Washington Examiner that West “was elected on his own.” The Cooper campaign clearly views this as a potent counterweight. Whether voters see it that way, or whether they see it as a deflection from the core issue of public safety, remains to be tested.
Cooper’s willingness to settle the lawsuit and release thousands of inmates was a policy choice with real consequences. The state promised the releases would target nonviolent offenders. The state later admitted violent offenders were included. Four released inmates have since been convicted of murder. Nineteen North Carolinians are dead, according to the Whatley campaign’s count. And the former governor’s primary response has been to call the criticism “blatant lies”, even as state records and the Charlotte Observer’s own reporting complicate that defense.
The questions that remain unanswered are significant. Which officials authorized the inclusion of violent offenders? How were the 19 deaths the Whatley campaign cites connected to specific released inmates? What criteria governed the retroactive counting that apparently swept Brown’s case into the settlement totals? These are not partisan gotchas. They are basic accountability questions that any candidate for the U.S. Senate should be prepared to answer. The broader pattern of Democrats resisting accountability while pressing aggressive political offensives makes the silence all the more conspicuous.
Cooper built a career in law enforcement before entering politics. His campaign leans on that record. But a record is only as strong as the decisions that follow it, and the decision to settle a lawsuit that put 3,500 inmates back on North Carolina streets, including violent felons, now defines a chapter of his governorship that no résumé line can erase.
Voters in North Carolina will have to decide whether a governor who presided over the kind of policy failure that Democratic leaders increasingly refuse to own deserves a promotion to the United States Senate.
When nearly half the inmates you release end up rearrested and four of them go on to commit murder, “I fought it in court” is not an answer. It is an excuse.
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