CNN Asked Roy Cooper About Freed Prisoners and He Gave the Wrong Answer

A court order forced North Carolina to release thousands of convicted criminals.

CNN asked Roy Cooper if he had regrets about any of them.

Cooper's answer will make you wonder whose side he was really on.

The Court Order That Let Thousands of Convicts Walk

A 2021 settlement between North Carolina and civil rights groups forced the state to release somewhere between 3,500 and 4,200 convicted criminals.

State officials first claimed only inmates whose sentences were already ending in 2021 would go free.

That claim did not hold up.

Violent offenders went out the door too, and Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley says the real number topped 4,200.

North Carolina counted DeCarlos Brown Jr. among the roughly 3,500 names on its official settlement release list, and Brown is now facing federal charges for stabbing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska to death on a Charlotte light rail train.

That is not a rounding error.

Zarutska fled Ukraine to escape a war and survived it, only to be stabbed to death on a Charlotte train by a man the state itself listed among those it let go under the release program Cooper now defends.

She had a name and a family, and she should never have had to share a train car with him.

This Is Not the First Time Cooper Has Played Down the Indefensible

North Carolina Democrats had to publicly distance themselves this month from Shelly Headen, a state party figure who said she wanted Trump supporters sent to concentration camps.

Cooper and his party scrambled to walk that back only once it became a story they could not avoid.

That is the same instinct on display in his answer to Raju: minimize first, address it only when a reporter forces the issue.

When rhetoric inside his party turns radioactive, Cooper's first move is damage control, not accountability, and when his record on violent-offender releases turned radioactive, his first move looked exactly the same.

What Roy Cooper Actually Said When CNN Pressed Him

CNN's Manu Raju gave Cooper a direct opening to show remorse.

Cooper did not take it.

"This is something that the state had to do, because the court ordered it," Cooper said, treating the settlement like weather he had no control over.

Then he went further, claiming advocacy groups were "very frustrated that more weren't released."

Read that again.

The sitting governor's answer to a release program now tied to a murder case was to relay complaints that it was not big enough.

Cooper tried to soften the moment by invoking Trump's COVID-era prisoner releases, claiming roughly 13,000 federal inmates went free under similar reasoning.

That comparison collapses instantly.

Trump's releases targeted low-level, nonviolent offenders during an unprecedented public health emergency, not a blanket settlement that let violent criminals like Brown walk into a murder charge.

The Name Cooper Would Rather You Forget: DeCarlos Brown

Whatley has built his campaign around exactly this record, and Cooper handed him fresh ammunition on live television.

North Carolina voters do not need a lecture on legal procedure.

They need to know their governor's instinct, when asked point-blank about a policy tied to a murder, was to defend the release and pass along complaints that it should have gone further.

Cooper wants credit for prosecuting violent criminals earlier in his career.

Fine, take the credit.

But the man now running for Senate just told CNN, on camera, that the frustration he heard about most was that the state let too few criminals out the door, not too many.

Voters get to decide which answer that actually was.

Sources:

• "Democrat Roy Cooper Claims People Frustrated 'More' Prisoners Weren't Released," Breitbart, September 13, 2026.
• "DOJ Charges Man for Deadly Stabbing of Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina," CBS News, 2026.
• "Charlotte Rail Murder Suspect Linked to Inmate Release Approved Under Ex-Dem Governor, Republicans' Records Show," Fox News, 2026.
• "Roy Cooper, NC Democrats Backtrack From Shelly Headen Who Wants Trump Supporters in Concentration Camps," Breitbart, September 11, 2026.