NC Republican leaders order investigation of COVID-era prison releases
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- North Carolina General Assembly created a committee to review pandemic-era releases.
- Republicans accused Cooper of hiding details about inmates released under the settlement.
- The committee will review releases plus staffing, facility locations and reentry.
The North Carolina General Assembly announced this week a new committee tasked with investigating the release of thousands of inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For months, former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in November’s election, has faced attacks from Republicans that he is soft on crime because of a settlement that allowed for the prisoners’ releases. Republicans lead the state House and Senate.
At the center of the attacks is DeCarlos Brown Jr., a 35-year-old man from Charlotte, accused of killing 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska last August. Republicans discovered Brown’s inmate number on a list of people released from prison, though he served his full sentence and had already been released on Sept. 20, 2020, prior to the February 2021 settlement.
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from blaming Cooper for releasing prisoners.
“Roy Cooper opened the floodgates and then did the bare minimum to inform the public about the criminals being released into their communities,” Senate leader Phil Berger said in a news release. “He made every effort to hide what he did, and Republicans in the General Assembly are going to hold him and Gov. (Josh) Stein accountable for releasing violent, repeat offenders and endangering our citizens.”
Cooper’s team responded with a written statement saying, “These blatant lies from Republicans have been fact-checked for months and found to be false.”
Here’s what we know about the release of prisoners and the new investigation.
COVID impact on prisoners in NC
The first case of COVID-19 in North Carolina occurred on March 3, 2020. Within seven days, Cooper declared a state of emergency. And four days later, Cooper banned gatherings of more than 100 people.
By March 30, 2020, Cooper issued a “stay at home order.”
Less than a month later, North Carolina’s first prisoner would die from the virus.
On April 24, 465 of the 700 inmates at Neuse Correctional Institute tested positive.
By December, one in every six prisoners across the state had COVID.
The Department of Adult Correction told McClatchy on Tuesday that at the height of COVID, 14,000 inmates had tested positive and 4% of them had been hospitalized. Sixty-three inmates died between 2020 and 2023 from COVID-19, with another two deaths since then.
And then there were the prison staff — state employees: 10,000 positive cases and 23 deaths.
The lawsuit
Sheriffs in many of North Carolina’s larger counties agreed to release inmates early in the pandemic.
By March 20, Buncombe, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg and Wake counties cut down on their jail populations by releasing inmates with low-level charges, Carolina Public Press reported at the time.
Both county officials and Cooper, at the time, were hearing calls from advocacy groups to release inmates.
In late March, those groups asked Cooper to sign an executive order releasing prisoners.
When that didn’t happen by the next month, ACLU of NC, Disability Rights NC, Emancipate NC, Forward Justice and National Juvenile Justice Network filed a lawsuit accusing Cooper and Department of Public Safety Secretary Erik Hooks of failing to do enough to protect the state’s 30,000 prisoners from the virus, The News & Observer previously reported.
Two months later, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier Jr. warned that the plaintiffs would likely win the lawsuit because the virus had led to an environment in state prisons that may not be constitutional.
That kicked off months-long negotiations and mediation between the parties.
The Charlotte Post reported the plaintiffs wanted Cooper to release 18,000 inmates.
The legal settlement
The two groups finally settled on 3,500 inmates over a six-month period.
Keith Acree, communication director for the Department of Adult Correction, told McClatchy Tuesday, “The people managing the settlement process worked very hard to find candidates for release that presented the lowest risk to public safety, using risk assessment tools and knowledge of past behavior.”
It was standard at the time, Carolina Public Press reported, citing the prison system, to release 1,600 people per month after they had fulfilled their sentences.
“After Roy fought against these releases in court, North Carolina law enforcement officials and parole officers looked to similar criteria President Trump used a year prior when his administration released thousands of federal prisoners due to COVID-19, and North Carolina Republican leaders were regularly briefed on this process over five years ago, only now raising this issue in the middle of a political campaign,” a Cooper campaign spokesperson said.
Cooper’s administration appeared before the General Assembly’s Justice and Public Safety committees to explain the settlement.
Republicans expressed concerns in the hearing, but Prison Commissioner Todd Ishee told the committees that the prisoners who would be released were already set for release before the end of the year, Carolina Public Press reported.
The settlement included an agreement that the plaintiffs would receive a list of the people released using their prison system numbers, and that that list was under seal to be treated as “attorneys’ eyes only.”
That list was also allowed to be given to local reentry councils and reentry service providers for the sole purpose of providing services to those being released, and they were also required to comply with the terms and conditions of the protective order sealing the case.
DeCarlos Brown’s release
Fox News Digital reported that Republican officials provided the network with the list of inmates released under the settlement agreement, despite it being sealed.
The news outlet first reported that Brown was included on the list.
McClatchy independently obtained the list from the corrections department Tuesday. The list includes 4,455 entries, including 1,535 entries corresponding to people who had been released from prison prior to the settlement but committed a new violation, and were placed back into post-release supervision rather than prison.
These individuals appeared on the list because they were either restored or reinstated into post-release supervision following a violation, instead of being brought back into custody.
Brown was among those 1,535 entries.
Zarutska’s death became a national talking point for Republicans accusing Democrats of being soft on crime. Several of North Carolina’s lawmakers called on the National Guard to come to North Carolina as a result, though Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, did not.
The committee’s investigation
House Speaker Destin Hall said Monday afternoon that the newly created committee was formed to investigate how “early release decisions were made, who was responsible and whether proper safeguards were followed.”
The court-ordered settlement describes the criteria agreed upon to release the inmates.
The subcommittee will be led by two Republicans, Sen. Buck Newton of Wilson and Rep. Brenden Jones of Tabor City. Eight other Republicans and four Democrats will also serve on the committee.
On Monday afternoon, Rep. Lindsey Prather, a Buncombe County Democrat, wrote on social media that she wasn’t notified about what the committee was tasked to do.
“Me checking my email: Oh, I’ve been assigned to a subcommittee about prisons,” Prather wrote on social media. “Awesome! We must finally be addressing abysmal pay for correctional officers and staffing up more assistant district attorneys around the state! Me checking Twitter: oh. no.”
Berger and Hall said the committee will also review the state’s prison system and justice-related topics including staffing, health care, facility locations, consolidation, programming, reentry, recidivism, the Justice Reinvestment Act and community support.
The General Assembly began its short session on Tuesday.
