Former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, now running for U.S. Senate, signed a binding legal settlement that freed roughly 3,500 convicted criminals from state prison during the COVID pandemic, and nearly half went on to commit new crimes, including at least 18 charged with murder.
Cooper agreed to the deal in February 2021, settling a lawsuit brought by the NC NAACP, the ACLU of North Carolina, and Disability Rights NC. The settlement required the state to release 3,500 inmates over six months, framed as a public health response to COVID-19 in the prison system. But what Cooper's administration told state lawmakers at the time, that only non-violent offenders nearing the end of their sentences would walk free, turned out to be false. Violent offenders, including convicted murderers and rapists, made the list. And the consequences have been measured in body counts.
A 2024 state report found that 48 percent of the released inmates reoffended. More than 600 committed serious felonies. Among the released: DeCarlos Brown Jr., who is now accused of killing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant, on Charlotte's light rail system. Brown had been on Cooper's early release list. The state initially shielded that list from public view until Brown's connection to it surfaced.
When Cooper's team briefed North Carolina's General Assembly on the settlement, prison officials assured legislators that only convicts with sentences ending in 2021 would be released, nobody who had "committed a crime against a person." That assurance later collapsed. Officials corrected themselves, acknowledging that violent offenders were included in the releases. Cooper's team admitted to misleading legislative oversight.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that 51 North Carolina convicts serving life sentences for first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or first-degree rape appeared on the early release list. Over 90 percent of those lifers secured release after Cooper signed the settlement. These were not low-level drug offenders or people weeks from finishing their terms. They were among the most dangerous people in the state prison system.
The families of victims have not been quiet. Debra Thompson, whose son Elante' was murdered by a released inmate, put the question plainly to the New York Post:
"Why would you release somebody like that? They're already showing they're a gangster to society. You're going to release a menace on the street?"
Carrie Chavis, mother of murder victim David Chavis, echoed her:
"They shouldn't let him out. They need to pay for what they did. He already killed someone before."
These are not abstract policy debates. These are mothers burying their children because a governor signed a settlement and then misrepresented its scope to the people's elected representatives.
Since the political fallout began, accelerated by the Zarutska killing and the release of reoffending data, Cooper has offered multiple explanations. First, he tried to attribute the releases to federal prison releases under the Trump administration. That framing did not hold together: the state settlement was a separate, state-level agreement that Cooper voluntarily signed. No federal action compelled it.
When that explanation failed, Cooper shifted to blaming prison officials for deciding who ended up on the release list. But the settlement itself was the mechanism that required the state to reduce its prison population by 3,500 inmates. Cooper signed it. He was not a bystander. He was the governor.
His campaign has pushed back, calling the characterization of his record a "lie" and pointing to Cooper's "career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter pretrial release bail policy as governor." The campaign has also cited his 40-year tenure in public office. But a four-decade résumé does not change the contents of a legally binding document he put his name on, or the 18 murder charges that followed.
The pattern of Democratic officials shielding violent criminals from consequences extends well beyond North Carolina. But Cooper's case stands out because of the paper trail: a signed agreement, broken promises to legislators, and a body of reoffending data that arrived on schedule.
Cooper was not the only governor facing lawsuits from civil rights organizations demanding prisoner releases during COVID. But he was, by the available record, the only one who signed a binding settlement agreement requiring his state to release inmates on a fixed schedule.
In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, resisted similar demands. The ACLU ultimately prevailed with a consent decree with the state Department of Corrections, but Polis's continued litigation avoided a court-mandated quota system. He fought. Cooper settled.
In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker never signed a contract guaranteeing or commanding a large-scale mass release. He kept control over population figures within executive discretion. In New Jersey, the state legislature passed measures allowing mass releases, a legislative action, not an executive capitulation. In some states, judges ordered inmate releases, but many of those rulings were later blocked or overturned on appeal by the very governors who had been sued.
Cooper chose the path of least resistance. He agreed to the terms his opponents wanted, and the people of North Carolina paid the price. That distinction matters, and no amount of blame-shifting can erase it. Even some Democrats have begun acknowledging that shielding criminals from accountability carries real costs.
The murder of Iryna Zarutska brought the issue from policy abstraction into daily headlines. The 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee was killed on Charlotte's light rail. DeCarlos Brown Jr., the man accused of her murder, had been on Cooper's early release list. The Washington Examiner reported that Brown was released shortly before the lawsuit was formally settled, with releases already underway before the public announcement.
Cooper has rejected responsibility, saying his Republican Senate opponent, Michael Whatley, is trying to score political points by citing Zarutska's death. But Whatley's criticism has been specific and grounded in the state's own data. As AP News reported, releases were already counting toward the 3,500 total before the settlement was even publicly announced, meaning the process was moving before North Carolinians had any chance to object.
Whatley has framed the issue in blunt terms:
"Nineteen innocent North Carolinians are dead because Roy Cooper chose to let violent criminals walk free. This was a deliberate, reckless choice that prioritized violent criminals ahead of innocent North Carolinians. Roy Cooper failed at his most basic duty as governor, protecting the people of North Carolina."
The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican PAC, has been running a campaign called "Roy Cooper's Felon Friday," highlighting individual cases of convicted felons released early under Cooper's administration. Cooper responded with a campaign ad promoting his crime record. The ad touts his years as attorney general and his support for tougher bail policies as governor.
But ads do not undo settlements. And résumés do not bring back the dead. The question North Carolina voters face is straightforward: Cooper signed a deal that released violent criminals, his administration lied to lawmakers about who was on the list, and people died as a result. His response has been to blame everyone but himself, Trump, prison officials, political opponents, while the families of victims ask why convicted murderers walked free in the first place.
The broader trend of leniency toward violent offenders costing innocent lives is not unique to Cooper. But few cases come with a paper trail this clean: a signed agreement, a broken promise, a corrected record, and a rising body count.
Voters can read a settlement agreement. They can count to 18. And they can decide whether a man who signed away public safety for political convenience deserves a promotion to the United States Senate.
