AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.<\/p>\n
Read our AI Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Did U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley want North Carolina prisoners released during the COVID-19 pandemic?<\/p>\n Read more ‘Business is business.\u2019 QB Darian Mensah describes his move from Duke to Miami<\/a><\/p>\n Did his opponent, former Gov. Roy Cooper, want the prisoners to remain behind bars despite the risk the virus posed for them?<\/p>\n And why is a video of Whatley<\/a>, uncovered by WSOC-TV in Charlotte, leaving both men explaining where they stood on the issue in the early 2020s, when the virus tore through North Carolina\u2019s prisons infecting one in every six prisoners?<\/p>\n In July 2020, Whatley sat for a roundtable in Catawba County surrounded by Republican leaders including then-state Rep. Jason Saine. And he told his audience Cooper \u201cdid not act to protect folks in prisons, so we have had a significant spike among the prison population as well as prison guards …\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier Jr. had recently ruled that the conditions of the jail were unconstitutional due to COVID-19, in a lawsuit by civil rights groups against the state calling for the release of 18,000 prisoners.<\/p>\n A month earlier, Rozier had ordered<\/a> the state to offer applications for facilities and homes willing to serve as a potential early-release partner for inmates; develop extended criteria of who could safely be released earlier, including those who had served their mandatory minimum sentences; and consider using, more broadly, legal maneuvers already in place that would allow the prisons to release early inmates to reduce the prison population.<\/p>\n In July, Rozier said state officials failed to meaningfully follow his order.<\/p>\n The state Republican Party, led at the time by Whatley, put out a news release<\/a> that same week saying that Cooper only took COVID in prison seriously when a judge ordered him to.<\/p>\n He told McClatchy during a news conference in Raleigh last week that when he spoke in July 2020, he was not calling on prisoners to be released.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I was saying was that conditions in prisons needed to be addressed,\u201d Whatley said. \u201cWhat we saw in many other states was they took steps to address it that involved COVID shots, they involved masks, they involved separation. Certainly, we did not call in any way for there to be a release of prisoners, let alone 4,200 of them, including the worst of the worst, with pedophiles and predators and rapists and murderers.\u201d<\/p>\n Department of Adult Correction Communications Director Keith Acree told McClatchy in April<\/a> in a written statement: \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The United States\u2019 first batch of COVID vaccines became available in December 2020, five months after Whatley\u2019s criticism of Cooper that he now ties to using vaccines in the prisons. The state staggered distribution by need and didn\u2019t make vaccines available to everyone over 16 until April 7, 2021.<\/p>\n As for masks, Republican officials in North Carolina largely opposed mask mandates.<\/a><\/p>\n In July 2020, Whatley wrote an op-ed in North State Journal<\/a>, a conservative news outlet, calling masks \u201ctools\u201d and \u201cimportant\u201d but not \u201ca plan.\u201d He criticized an ad by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services calling on state residents to mask and stand 6 feet apart. He called on North Carolinians to demand a plan from Cooper.<\/p>\n During Thursday\u2019s news conference where Whatley announced the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association endorsed his campaign, he gave an eight-minute speech holding up photos of North Carolina prisoners released under the settlement who he said went on to commit violent crimes.<\/p>\n He then held up a photograph of DeCarlos Brown,<\/a> a 34-year-old man charged in the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska<\/a>, on the Charlotte light rail in August 2025.<\/p>\n Zarutska\u2019s death became a political flashpoint<\/a> in the Senate race. At first Republicans accused Cooper of being soft on crime for the state\u2019s bail policies, because Brown was out of jail on bail awaiting trial for misuse of the 911 system.<\/p>\n Then Republicans leaked to Fox News<\/a> a list, sealed under court order<\/a>, of the list of people released early from prison \u2014 and Brown\u2019s name was included.<\/p>\n Brown wasn\u2019t actually released early<\/a>. He had served his full sentence and was out of prison before the court-ordered settlement, but state officials included his name anyway. That hasn\u2019t stopped Republicans and Whatley from accusing Cooper of being responsible for her death.<\/p>\n The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in North Carolina on March 22, 2020, and the virus quickly ran rampant in North Carolina\u2019s jails and prisons. Acree, the correction spokesperson, told McClatchy<\/a> in April that at the height of COVID, 14,000 inmates tested positive for the virus, 4% were hospitalized and 63 died between 2020 and 2023, with two additional deaths since then.<\/p>\n Read more England’s Jude Bellingham and Girlfriend Ashlyn Castro’s Relationship Timeline<\/a><\/p>\n Civil rights groups called on Cooper to release 18,000 prisoners, but he refused to sign an executive order to implement their request, leading to a lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court in April 2020.<\/p>\n By June, Rozier ordered the prison system to expand early release criteria, but it wouldn\u2019t be until February 2021 that the settlement was in place.<\/a><\/p>\n On Monday, Cooper held a campaign rally in Graham where he spoke about how he plans to \u201cmake stuff cost less\u201d if he is elected senator.<\/p>\n After addressing supporters, he took questions from reporters, where he answered McClatchy\u2019s question about the 2020 video and Whatley\u2019s explanation of it.<\/p>\n Cooper said that at the time of the video Whatley knew the court ordered the state to release the prisoners and complained the state hadn\u2019t done something before the court ordered it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear that he has made this COVID prisoner release the center of his political attack, but he\u2019s been caught lying about it time and again,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI was the one who fought these releases.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we know that when he says that he meant that we should have used more vaccines, vaccines didn\u2019t even exist at the time. What this court was talking about was releasing prisoners. And the bottom line is here: I\u2018m the only one in this race who\u2019s actually prosecuted violent criminals \u2014 worked to keep them behind bars …\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to serving two terms as governor, Cooper served<\/a> 16 years as the state\u2019s attorney general. Whatley worked<\/a> as an energy lobbyist and for lawmakers including former President George W. Bush and Sen. Elizabeth Dole, before becoming chairman of the state party and then the Republican National Committee.<\/p>\n Cooper went on to criticize Whatley for allowing a convicted sex offender to rise in the ranks within the North Carolina Republican Party, as first reported by Asheville Watchdog.<\/a><\/p>\n Harvey West served as North Carolina\u2019s 1st District Republican Party chairman under Whatley, though he told WRAL that Whatley<\/a> didn\u2019t want him in the position. He wouldn\u2019t offer an explanation to the television station on why.<\/p>\n However, by 2011, West was appointed to the party\u2019s powerful Plan of Organization committee and would be appointed another nine times. In 2021 and 2024, it was Whatley who made West\u2019s appointment, West said.<\/p>\n West said he never hid his convictions from the state party, and some party members, including Michele Woodhouse, fought for years trying to have him removed.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until the story broke during Whatley\u2019s campaign that the state\u2019s Republican Party voted to ban sex offenders from holding party office.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201c… He has appointed a convicted sex offender who served time in jail to a prominent position in the North Carolina Republican Party to the point where the Republican Party has had to come in to prevent that in the future, and that\u2019s just wrong,\u201d Cooper added.\u201d And I think that shows where I stand on crime, and where he stands on crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by The Assembly if he pushed back against the prisoner release or regrets it happening, Cooper noted that it was a court order, and argued the court could have ordered a lot more prisoners released.<\/p>\n