Former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s record on criminal justice is being scrutinized by Republicans seeking to derail his campaign to claim a Senate seat.
Cooper, a popular two-term governor, launched a bid in July to replace outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). Days later, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley announced a campaign challenging the former governor as the GOP fights to keep the Senate seat red.
In the wake of a violent crime against a Ukrainian refugee captured on video that has shaken the state, Whatley and other Republicans are seeking to use the gruesome incident to argue that the eight years his rival spent sitting in the state’s highest office were spent crafting policies that favored criminals instead of protecting residents.
“It’s pretty simple. A vote for Roy Cooper is a vote for more crime, more violence, more criminals. Cooper and his cohorts in the radical left simply value criminals more than victims, full stop,” Whatley said Monday in response to surveillance footage showing the young woman being stabbed to death on a light rail train car on her way home from work at a pizza shop.
Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless man, is accused of stabbing Iryna Zarutska, who fled Ukraine in 2022, with a pocket knife multiple times as fellow passengers looked on. The suspect has more than a dozen convictions dating back to 2014, including an armed robbery with a dangerous weapon, which earned him a five-year prison sentence before his release in 2020. Brown remained on parole until 2021, and subsequent charges against him included being arrested on charges of assaulting his sister at her home in Charlotte and later misusing the 911 system earlier this year, when he appeared to be mentally unstable during an encounter with the police, as described by the Charlotte Observer.
Whatley said Cooper bears “direct responsibility” for Zarutska’s death due to a number of criminal reform bills and executive orders he signed off on during his time as governor from 2017 to 2025. At the top of Whatley’s list is a 2020 executive order Cooper signed creating a task force examining criminal justice reforms that proposed multiple recommendations included in a crime bill the following year.
In a trio of bills in 2021, Cooper signed off on the most sweeping criminal justice reforms during his time in office in response to the death of George Floyd, which sparked accusations that racist police brutality is rampant. Many of the policies implemented in Senate Bill 300 included recommendations made by the task force on racial equity in criminal justice that Cooper created after riots broke out in Raleigh over Floyd’s death.
Provisions in the bill, now law, include expanded mandatory training to include community policing and “minority sensitivity” and allow for the immediate disclosure of body-worn camera recordings related to death or serious bodily injury. The legislation also says a person may not be found responsible or guilty of a local ordinance violation if there are no new alleged violations of the local ordinance within 30 days from the date of the initial alleged violation or the person provides proof of a good-faith effort to seek assistance to address any underlying factors related to the violation, such as homelessness or mental illness, according to the Carolina Journal.
“In 2020, my Democrat opponent, Roy Cooper, tasked a group of extreme leftists with advising him on implementing his executive order, which introduced weak-on-crime policies to North Carolina’s justice system regarding ‘pretrial release, fees, and fines,’” Whatley said, echoing criticism of the task force made by Republicans such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR). “He told the task force, ‘I look forward to implementing your strong recommendations.’ These policy changes empowered dangerous criminals, such as Decarlos Brown Jr., the murderer of Iryna Zarutska.”
In another post, Whatley said Brown “should have been behind bars years ago,” but alleged Cooper’s executive order “kept him on the streets,” saying Brown was released from prison months after the then-governor signed the executive order in June 2020.
“Since then, Brown has been arrested and released three additional times between 2021 and 2025, taking full advantage of Cooper’s weak policies,” Whatley said. “Cooper bears direct responsibility for this heinous act and must answer to the public about why he prioritizes criminals over public safety.”
Also in the criminal justice reform legislation Cooper signed into law in 2021 was House Bill 536, which created a new duty for law enforcement officers to intervene and report their colleagues if they see another officer using excessive force, and House Bill 436, which imposed psychological evaluation for applicants prior to being hired and expanded mental health training for officers.
“We have seen that the criminal justice system doesn’t always treat everyone the same, and too often the differences are disproportionately felt by people of color,” Cooper said when he gave the bill final approval. “This legislation will take us one step further toward a more equitable and just North Carolina for all.”
Whatley hasn’t been alone in attacking Cooper’s record. The Republican Party, dominated by Cotton’s comments, has jumped on board as it seeks to capitalize on a situation it believes puts the former governor in a politically vulnerable position.
Zarutska’s death “is a result of dangerous soft-on-crime policies pushed by radical Democrats,” the GOP’s X account wrote in a statement. “Roy Cooper needs to answer for this.”
Aside from his signature 2021 criminal justice bill, Cooper signed legislation into law in 2020, allowing judges to reduce mandatory minimum sentences mandated by law for drug offenders. State Republicans led passage of the First Step Act, billing the legislation that created shorter sentences for nonviolent offenders as an effort to end overincarceration.
The same year, Cooper signed the bipartisan Second Chance Act into law, which expanded the list of those who can have a criminal record cleared to include more offenders with nonviolent misdemeanors and nonviolent felony convictions after he similarly authorized relaxed provisions on the matter in 2017. In addition to ending policies that a prior felony conviction automatically disqualified a person from having certain charges expunged from their record, Senate Bill 562 made it possible for an offender with multiple nonviolent misdemeanor convictions to petition for an expunction.
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In July 2024, Cooper signed legislation into law to revive those provisions to allow for automatically expunged criminal charges resulting in acquittals or dismissals. Criminal records can be expunged as long as the charges were disposed of “on or later than December 1, 2021, and all charges in the case were dismissed without leave, dismissed by the court, or resulted in a finding of not guilty or not responsible.”
The Cooper campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
