As midterm campaigns heat up, Republicans are again saying former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper released an inmate early, even though the man, DeCarlos Brown, served his full term. Brown has been charged with fatally stabbing Iryna Zarutska in August on a light-rail train in Charlotte.
Cooper is running for the U.S. Senate. What’s fueling the attacks now is a recent Fox News report showing Brown on an early-release list linked to a 2021 settlement of a lawsuit. Brown’s name isn’t on the list, but his inmate identification number is.
The ACLU and other advocacy groups filed the lawsuit in April 2020 to protect state prisoners from contracting the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus. As part of the settlement, state officials agreed in February 2021 to the early release of approximately 3,500 nonviolent inmates over six months.
Republicans, including Cooper’s likely opponent, Michael Whatley, insist the list proves Brown was released early, thus paving the way for him to ultimately kill Zarutska.
But as The Assembly previously reported, Brown wasn’t released early. He got out of prison on September 20, 2020, after serving his 73-month mandatory minimum sentence for armed robbery. That was five months before the state settled with the ACLU and other groups.
Keith Acree, a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, said Brown then had to serve 12 months of post-release supervision. That supervision ended September 20, 2021.
Cooper has denied the allegations. On X, Cooper’s campaign was blunt: “This is bullshit. DeCarlos Brown served his full sentence and was not released from prison as a result of a court ordered settlement.”
Prison officials hadn’t released the list until now. That has allowed Republicans to criticize Cooper, claiming that his “soft-on-crime policies” led to Zarutska’s death. State Republicans used that argument last year to help push a slew of changes that culminated in Iryna’s Law, which, among other things, restricts pre-trial release and seeks to revive the state’s death penalty.
“When he was North Carolina Governor, Roy Cooper released repeat offender DeCarlos Brown Jr., who went on to brutally murder Iryna Zarutska aboard the Charlotte light rail this past summer,” Whatley said in a statement. “Cooper said the inmates he released weren’t violent. That was a lie. Then he tried to cover it up. An innocent woman is dead, and her blood is on his hands. Instead of taking responsibility, Cooper is still lying and scrambling to hide the truth.”
Senate Leader Phil Berger Jr. said in a statement that Cooper and Gov. Josh Stein are trying to cover up that they let violent criminals out of prison early.
“This isn’t only about DeCarlos Brown, this is about soft-on-crime Roy Cooper endangering our communities and hiding the names of those he released,” Berger said. “There are 3,499 other names on the secret list of criminals let out, including violent habitual felons, individuals with life sentences convicted of heinous crimes, and drug dealers and traffickers. Cooper and Stein are only now willing to come clean about their secret list after I found it and told the public about it.”
Berger further claims that a court-appointed liaison was evaluating prisoners to be released as “part of a collusive settlement among the Cooper administration, Stein’s Justice Department, and far-left activists.” He said Brown’s inclusion on the list is proof that he was released early.
The state, the NAACP, and other parties reached a settlement on February 25, 2021, in which the state agreed to the “early re-entry” of 3,500 inmates, including 1,500 within 90 days of the settlement. The rest would be released over six months.
Here’s where things get complicated. While Brown was out of prison, he was arrested in February 2021 after his sister said he assaulted her. But she declined to press charges, as The Assembly previously reported. Still, the arrest exposed Brown to the possibility that his post-release supervision might be revoked, meaning he could go back to prison.
Prison officials held a hearing on February 15, 2021. At that hearing, officials decided to keep Brown in post-release supervision, which expired on September 20, 2021. (If prison officials had sent him back to prison, under the maximum sentence, he likely would have been released in November 2021.)
Acree, with the state adult corrections department, said Brown’s “re-entry” to post-release supervision put him on the list. He said the settlement’s start date was the same day as Brown’s hearing, and state prison officials could count inmates who got post-release supervision earlier than they would have or those, like Brown, whose post-release supervision was not revoked when it could have been.
Regardless, state corrections officials and Cooper maintain that Brown was not released early because of the settlement.