As reported by RedState, Cooper’s administration agreed to a settlement with civil rights groups who claimed that overcrowded state prisons placed inmates at heightened risk during the pandemic, obligating the state to release at least 3,500 inmates over six months. State records, however, show that the Department of Public Safety ultimately released 4,234 offenders—734 more than the minimum required—raising immediate questions about why the governor’s team went well beyond what the court-ordered agreement demanded.
Cooper has repeatedly maintained that his hand was forced by the settlement, portraying the mass releases as an unavoidable response to COVID-era litigation. Yet the decision by his subordinates to free hundreds of additional inmates beyond the mandated threshold undercuts that narrative and suggests a broader policy choice aligned with progressive criminal-justice activism rather than public safety.
May 08, 2026
At the time the settlement was signed, Cooper’s own Department of Public Safety went out of its way to present the move as routine rather than extraordinary. "The department will move forward with the actions outlined over the next 180 days, most of which it is already carrying out daily," said Timothy Moose, then the agency's chief deputy secretary for Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice, signaling that the administration viewed these releases as an extension of existing practices rather than an emergency exception.
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The consequences of that decision are now starkly visible in state recidivism data and in a new public database tracking post-release offenses. According to reviews of state records, more than 600 of the released inmates went on to commit serious felonies, including homicides, sex offenses, and other violent crimes, and at least 18 of those freed under Cooper’s watch were later charged with murder.
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One of those cases involves Tyrell Brace, who was released in 2021 under the settlement and later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 23-year-old Elante' Thompson. Thompson, who was gunned down while trying to break up a fight, left behind a young daughter who is now 6, a human cost that cannot be dismissed as an abstract statistic in a policy debate.
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Thompson’s mother, Debra Thompson, has been unsparing in her assessment of Cooper’s responsibility for her son’s death. "Why would you release somebody like that?" she told the Post. "They're already showing they're a gangster to society. You're going to release a menace on the street?"
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Her grief has driven her to pursue a path she never anticipated, as she now studies for law school, a decision she said was inspired by her son’s murder and her determination to seek justice and accountability. For families like hers, the governor’s pandemic-era choices are not theoretical—they are the difference between life and death.
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Another case that has drawn public outrage is that of Kyshaun Norrell, whose violent history was well known to the state before his early release. Norrell had previously been convicted of murder as a juvenile after shooting two people in a school parking lot at age 17, killing one, yet he was still released more than a year ahead of his scheduled October 2021 release date under Cooper’s settlement.
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In March 2023, Norrell again turned to violence, shooting two more people near Raleigh and killing 34-year-old David Chavis. Norrell is now serving life in prison for first-degree murder, but that sentence offers little comfort to a family that believes the state knowingly put a proven killer back on the streets.
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Chavis’s mother, Carrie, has refrained from naming Cooper personally, but her words leave little doubt about where she believes the system failed. "He already killed someone before. They shouldn't have even had the opportunity to let him out," she said. "I'm still grieving for my son. The pain's not ever going away."
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These and other cases are now documented in a searchable database, CooperReleasedHim.com, which allows users to look up released inmates by county, conviction history, and post-release offenses. The site has become a focal point for critics who argue that Cooper prioritized the demands of left-wing advocacy groups over the safety of law-abiding citizens.
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According to the database, 2,412 of the 4,234 inmates released under the settlement went on to commit additional crimes or post-release violations, a reoffense rate approaching 57 percent. Among those released were 70 convicted murderers, 99 rapists, and 203 offenders convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child, figures that underscore how far the administration was willing to go in emptying prison beds during the pandemic.
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The database has also reignited a dispute over the true scale of the releases, as some mainstream outlets continue to repeat the original 3,500-inmate figure from the settlement. Critics note that the list of 4,234 unique offender IDs has been publicly available for months, and they argue that the persistent use of the lower number serves to minimize the scope of Cooper’s actions and blunt public backlash.
One local outlet, WRAL, has been singled out for continuing to report that only 3,500 criminals were released under the settlement, despite the higher figure documented in state records. For conservatives who already distrust legacy media, this discrepancy is further evidence that sympathetic outlets are running interference for a Democratic governor now seeking federal office.
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The fact that Cooper’s subordinates released 734 more convicts than required by the settlement is central to the political and moral debate now unfolding in Raleigh and beyond. It directly challenges the governor’s claim that he was simply complying with a court agreement, instead suggesting that his administration embraced a broader decarceration agenda consistent with national progressive trends.
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North Carolina lawmakers, led by Republicans, are now preparing a deeper review of the settlement and its aftermath. Reports indicate that House Speaker Destin Hall said a legislative committee investigating the agreement is expected to meet soon and that what lawmakers have uncovered so far is "worse than we thought."
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Cooper’s campaign has responded not by contesting the numbers, but by attacking the messenger and attempting to shift blame to the Trump administration. A spokesperson told North State Journal that the founder of CooperReleasedHim.com was "a convicted January 6th rioter" and argued that the Trump administration used similar criteria when releasing federal prisoners during COVID.
Notably, the campaign did not directly dispute either the total number of inmates released or the recidivism figures compiled by the database project. Instead, the response leaned on character attacks and whataboutism, a familiar tactic when Democrats face scrutiny over soft-on-crime policies that have produced deadly results.
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Cooper’s Republican opponent, former RNC Chairman Michael Whatley, has seized on the issue as a defining contrast in the Senate race. "Roy Cooper was a complete failure at keeping our communities safe. 19 North Carolinians would be alive today if Roy Cooper had not released their killers from prison. Victims’ families deserve answers. Why did Roy Cooper allow these dangerous criminals back on our streets?" he said, framing the election as a referendum on basic law and order.
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As Cooper asks voters to promote him from the governor’s mansion to the U.S. Senate, the families shattered by crimes committed by his early-release beneficiaries are unlikely to fade quietly into the background. North Carolinians will have to decide whether a leader who presided over the release of violent offenders—despite clear warning signs and beyond what was legally required—should be entrusted with greater power in Washington, or whether this episode is a warning about what progressive criminal-justice experiments look like when real lives are on the line.
