After the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced two cases of measles-related deaths in one county, the local coroner appeared to contradict the account. And in an ongoing spat with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that a Shapiro staffer may have even “fabricated” the deaths. We’ll lay out what we know.

The saga brings to mind a pandemic-era falsehood that the vast majority of people classified as dying from COVID-19 did not die of the disease, but died of other causes while they happened to be infected. And when two children died of measles complications in Texas last year, Kennedy, along with activists in his former nonprofit, baselessly alleged that the kids did not die of measles, despite evidence to the contrary.

The situation in Pennsylvania is less clear. One of the deaths appears to be of an infant that tested positive for measles and died of a ruptured spleen. It is possible that the rupture was due to infection with measles, but the coroner has said the pathologist determined measles was not involved. There is no information about the second death. Meanwhile, the state has acknowledged that the term it has used to describe the deaths – “measles-associated” – includes cases in which measles infection is detected but “may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death.” 

As we’ll explain, that statement may not mean as much as it appears to, since measles deaths would not be expected to have measles listed as an immediate cause anyway. But without more information about the cases, it is difficult to say what has happened, leading many – including Kennedy – to speculate that the deaths were not measles-related after all.

“Pennsylvania created its own information vacuum and then seemed surprised when someone else filled it,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and an infectious diseases attending physician in Pittsburgh, told us in an email. “The coroner’s account and the state’s account are not necessarily in conflict — they are two offices answering two different questions — but nobody in Harrisburg explained that, so the public was left to choose between fraud and incompetence.”

Timeline of Events

On Aug. 25, the Pennsylvania Department of Health announced that it had confirmed two cases of “measles-associated” deaths. Other than noting that the individuals were both unvaccinated and residents of Lancaster County, the department did not provide any further details, citing privacy concerns. The release strongly implied the deaths were at least partially due to measles, referring to them twice as “related” to measles.

“These mark the first deaths related to measles within the Commonwealth in 35 years,” the department’s press release noted.

Later in the day, Shapiro held a press conference with the health department in Lancaster County to share the announcement and to encourage vaccination.

“We hope and we pray that those deaths will be the last,” he said of the two deaths. “I want to be clear. This illness and death from measles is completely preventable.”

Local and national news outlets then picked the story up, with many stating that the two people died from measles. 

Initially, the main story from the press conference was a quarrel between Shapiro and Kennedy about whether the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine contains fetal tissue, and whether Kennedy has spread vaccine misinformation. Kennedy has – and the vaccine does not. (The rubella component of the vaccine is manufactured with and was initially developed with fetal cells derived from an elective abortion in the 1960s. While trace amounts of cell components from the cell strain can persist in the purified vaccine, whole cells do not. The Catholic Church has said the shot can be used “with a clear conscience.”)

But soon, questions swirled about how much the two announced deaths were related to measles.

Josh Parsons, a Lancaster County commissioner, posted on X the day of the press conference that the county coroner’s office was not aware of any measles deaths, although there was one baby that had tested positive for the disease but did not die of it. 

“They have one case where a person died WITH measles, but not FROM measles,” he wrote. “Measles was definitely NOT the cause of death in that case.”

The following evening, Aug. 26, Kennedy had picked up on the controversy, writing on X, “The announcement appears to have been premature, and the deaths may even have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers. The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths. State law requires that all measles deaths be reported to the coroner.”

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Debra Bogen responded to Kennedy on X, saying she had “thoroughly reviewed the case investigation information and sadly can confirm that there were two recent measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro during a press conference in Lancaster County on Aug. 25.

That same day in Florida, Kennedy had also said, citing the Lancaster County commissioner, that “they cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County.” He added: “The press is all covering this as if those measles deaths actually happened. But nobody’s doing … the little bit of critical inquiry to find out. We’re trying to figure out, you know, who those deaths were and whether they actually happened, and we can’t figure that out yet.”

Meanwhile, in the late afternoon of Aug. 26, DOH issued a statement that appeared to say that one of the two deaths was the baby the coroner’s office was aware of and gave more information on the definition of “measles-associated.”

“PA DOH uses the term ‘measles-associated’ when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death,” the statement read. “Not all deaths are referred to a coroner under Pennsylvania law. Accordingly, one of the two measles-associated deaths is under investigation by the county coroner — as confirmed by the Lancaster County Coroner, who stated publicly their office is reviewing an infant death with a positive measles test.”

(Online during this period, a fake screenshot of a news headline circulated a rumor that the two deaths were both men in their eighties. There is no evidence for this, and according to the state’s dashboard, no measles cases have occurred in anyone 65 years or older this year.)

Multiple news outlets have reported more details on the infant case over the last several days. On Aug. 26, the Philadelphia Inquirer said that Lancaster County Coroner Dr. Stephen Diamantoni told them that the child, a newborn who died shortly after birth, died of a spleen laceration, and that the pathologist who did the autopsy “did not feel it was related to measles.” He said the infant contracted measles before birth, tested positive for measles after death based on a test of lung tissue and that the case was still being investigated.

TribLive, a news outlet covering western Pennsylvania, reported on Aug. 27 that Diamantoni said the cause of death was a “traumatic laceration of the spleen” and that the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Wayne Ross, determined that measles was not a contributing factor to the death.

“Diamantoni later acknowledged, however, that measles was listed under Part II of the infant’s death certificate, which reports ‘other contributing conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause,’” the outlet reported. “Diamantoni said he still does not believe that measles contributed to the child’s death, but the disease was listed to offer ‘a broader view of the general health of the child.’”

Another local news source, citing the coroner, said the child that died was a male newborn who died at home and tested positive for measles via a PCR blood sample. An earlier version of the Inquirer story suggested there was a positive antibody test. Diamantoni, a family physician who was elected to his coroner post as a Republican, also told the TribLive that the baby was born with the assistance of a midwife at a birthing center in Lancaster County. He specified to LancasterOnline in an Aug. 27 story that the child died on Aug. 14 at a birthing center in Strasburg Township, and that the mother was alive, contrary to rumors that the second death was the baby’s mother.

As a newborn, the child would not have been eligible yet for routine measles vaccination, which begins at 12 months of age. However, if the baby contracted measles in utero from the mother, it is highly likely that the mother was unvaccinated.

An Information Gap

Much attention has focused on the newborn’s death from the lacerated spleen and whether it was ultimately due to measles infection. Measles is known to cause enlargement of the spleen, which during birth, could plausibly lead to a rupture. 

“Given that congenital measles infection can cause splenic enlargement and thinning of the splenic capsule, it is likely that the child ruptured the spleen during birth,” Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote in an Aug. 28 Substack post.

A 2024 study of children hospitalized for measles at a Polish hospital found that of the 26 infants under 13 months of age, four, or about 15%, had an enlarged spleen.

The coroner, however, said that the pathologist did not note an enlarged spleen during the autopsy, telling LancasterOnline that measles was not considered contributory because “there was no swelling or enlargement whatsoever” of the spleen and there was “massive blood loss.”

But Offit told the Philadelphia Inquirer that it is difficult to tell whether a spleen was enlarged after it ruptures, and that there should be an explanation for the rupture if it wasn’t caused by measles. The coroner has said the cause of the rupture is still under investigation, but no foul play is suspected.

Adalja said that measles “could be the reason an otherwise survivable delivery wasn’t survivable. It could also be incidental. I don’t think anyone outside that forensic center can say yet, and I’d be skeptical of confident assertions in either direction.”

The coroner’s office did not reply to our request for more information.

It’s worth noting that some of the confusion could come down to different definitions and processes that have not been adequately explained.

For example, Adalja said, the coroner or medical certifier produces the official death certificate, but state epidemiologists look at “deaths for outbreak surveillance under case definitions.” Those definitions are set by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The latter is “a faster, looser standard designed to flag that a death occurred during and plausibly in connection with an outbreak, so the state can act in real time rather than wait months for a final certificate,” he said. “The failure here is that Pennsylvania never told anyone two systems were running, so the coroner saying he had no measles deaths in his log and the state saying it had two looked like a lie rather than two people describing different databases.”

Similarly, DOH’s statement about “measles-associated” deaths not necessarily being assessed “to be the immediate cause of death” is almost meaningless, Adalja said, since almost no measles deaths would list measles as the immediate cause.

Death certificates show a causal chain, listing the immediate cause as well as the sequence of events that led to it, including the underlying cause that started the sequence. In measles deaths, measles is the underlying cause, but the immediate cause would be something such as pneumonia or encephalitis, which are complications of measles, he explained.

DOH’s statement, then, he said, “is technically accurate” but “functionally uninformative. Worse, to a lay reader it sounds like a concession — as though the state were conceding measles is being blamed for something it didn’t do.”

Another major question is the second measles-related death. The Lancaster County coroner has said he doesn’t know who this is, and told LancasterOnline that while there are several reasons why he might not know, by law, it should be reported to him. Kennedy and others have also said that it is state law for the measles deaths to be reported to a county coroner.

DOH, however, has said that not all deaths need to be referred to a coroner. Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at University of California Law San Francisco, told us that as far as she can tell, the health department is correct. 

State law specifies that one of the conditions requiring a coroner’s investigation is a “death known or suspected to be due to contagious disease and constituting a public hazard” – and both parts of the clause would need to be met.

“This would not be a death that is a public hazard,” she told us. “Measles is spreading unrelated to it, so I don’t see any way to see it as meeting this requirement.”

Offit told us that he had talked to people “high up in the Pennsylvania Department of Health who have said they are comfortable” saying that “because of measles, two people in Pennsylvania died.”

DOH, however, has not shown why it thinks that is the case. The department did not respond to our questions after it sent us its statement. Shapiro’s office also did not respond to an inquiry.

Both Offit and Adalja have said it would be helpful if the department had released more information. 

Offit’s concern is that regardless of what happened in these two cases, the measles outbreak in the state could very well be much larger than is currently known, and could be poised to grow as kids return to school and the seasons shift.

“This outbreak is much worse than they’re saying,” he said. “It’s probably closer to 2,000 cases. And it’s August” – not measles season, which is usually winter and spring. As of Aug. 28, Pennsylvania has recorded 460 measles cases, nearly half in Lancaster County.

Adalja told us he does not see a reason why the state couldn’t have provided more information that still kept private the identities of those who died.

“Secretary Kennedy suggesting the deaths may have been fabricated is inexcusable on its own terms. But he was handed the opening,” he said. “Even if measles is definitively established as the underlying cause in both deaths, this week already taught a slice of the public that when officials say ‘outbreak death,’ they might mean something else. That lesson outlasts the case. In an outbreak, institutional credibility is a consumable resource — and Pennsylvania spent a great deal of it protecting information that Texas released last year without incident.”

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A Republican ad attacking Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson in Maine says under his “failed leadership” the state’s high schools “dropped to dead last” in the country, according to annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report. But that’s not the whole story.  

A major reason Maine fell to last in those state rankings is because it stopped giving U.S. News access to Advanced Placement performance data for Maine high schools — a key part of the methodology the media organization uses to rate the schools. 

It’s unclear why the Maine Department of Education declined to grant access to the statistics, and a spokesperson has not responded to our request for comment. But, like Maine, other states that have not authorized U.S. News to use their high schools’ AP enrollment and exam data have fallen to the bottom of the rankings.

The ad blaming Maine’s descent on Jackson, a former state Senate president and majority leader, is from Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ campaign, and it has aired on broadcast and digital platforms since Aug. 17, according to AdImpact. Jackson is challenging Collins for her U.S. Senate seat in the toss-up race.

“Maine schools used to be among the best, but under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership in Augusta, our high schools dropped to dead last,” the ad’s narrator says, while a citation for U.S. News’ 2025-2026 state rankings appears on screen.

The Collins campaign confirmed to us that was the source for the claim.

Last year, Maine did place last out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on the review of its high schools. The state came in 51st again in the rankings for 2026-2027, which were published Aug. 17.

But the ad doesn’t mention a major reason for Maine’s consecutive last-place finishes. That is, the Maine Department of Education did not authorize U.S. News to have access to College Board data showing how Maine high school students performed on the AP exams for the college-level classes they completed. (The College Board is the nonprofit organization that runs the national AP program and administers the tests.)

In fact, Maine has now been last or next to last each year since the 2020-2021 rankings, when it first denied U.S. News access to its AP data. In 2019, the last time it permitted U.S. News to use its AP data, Maine placed 11th.

Maine was 1st in the U.S. News state rankings for high schools in 2014, and it was regularly in the Top 10 through 2018. But the methodology for rating states and high schools was different at the time.

Jackson was the state Senate majority leader from July 2013 to December 2014, and president of the state Senate from 2019 to 2024.

Since 2019, U.S. News has ranked all the states and D.C. based on the proportion of their schools that make it into the top 25% of high schools as determined by the media company. “That level of achievement is a valid indicator of the relative performance of a state’s high schools compared with other states,” U.S. News said in a post about this year’s rankings. 

The high schools, meanwhile, are ranked based on six criteria, including “college readiness,” which accounts for 30% of a school’s score, and “college curriculum breadth,” which makes up another 10%. Participation in, and performance on, AP exams, as well as International Baccalaureate, or IB, exams, is a key factor in both categories. 

Not having that exam information affects a school’s ranking.

“As with the 2026-2027 edition of Best High Schools, the Maine state education department declined to provide AP data for the 2025-2026 edition, which explains why Maine had the lowest proportion of schools placing in the top 25% last year,” a U.S. News spokesperson told us in an email.

The spokesperson said not allowing the use of the AP figures does not guarantee that a state will rank last, as the methodology “includes adjustments so that schools without AP or IB exam test-takers do not score significantly worse than those with very few test-takers.” But it does make it much more difficult for states to have high schools with higher rankings.

“While the adjustment prevents non-AP schools from automatically landing at the absolute bottom of national rankings, rising into the top 25% of high schools nationally without any AP/IB data is extremely challenging,” the spokesperson said.

And the reality is states that do not permit U.S. News to use the AP data often fall to the bottom of the standings.

For the 2025-2026 rankings, Maine was the only state not to allow the College Board to provide its AP data and it ended up last overall, with just four, or 3.6%, of its high schools ranking in the top 25%.

In the 2026-2027 rankings, Maine was joined at the low end of the rankings by Vermont (48th), Colorado (49th) and New York (50th). Those three states also declined to allow U.S. News to access their AP exam scores this time and their rankings suffered.

The previous year, when they allowed their AP data to be included in the calculations, New York placed 9th, Colorado was 10th and Vermont was 21st on the list.

The Jackson campaign pushed back on the ad’s claim.

“The ad blames Jackson for the U.S. News ranking of Maine’s public high schools. The truth is Maine ranked lowest in U.S. News’ 2025 report because the state did not give U.S. News permission to use its data,” a campaign spokesperson told us.

We asked U.S. News why Maine stopped granting access to the AP data, and the spokesperson directed us to the state Department of Education, which has not responded with an explanation.

The Collins campaign told us that lack of cooperation is telling.

“Maine’s lack of willingness to be transparent with its standardized testing demonstrates just how terrible the state of education has gotten under Troy Jackson’s leadership in Augusta — according to U.S. News, 51st place out of 51,” Blake Kernen, communications director for the Collins campaign, said in a statement. “The metrics that are available, including NAEP scores, depict a dire situation that has gotten drastically worse in recent years,” she said, referring to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. (NAEP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education.) 

In 2024, the most recent data available, Maine’s 4th and 8th grade students, although not last in the nation, had some of their worst NAEP scores in math and reading in about two decades. That year, Maine’s 4th grade average math score ranked below 39 other states and its 4th grade average reading score was below that of 40 other states. Maine’s 8th grade average math score was below 25 states and its 8th average grade reading score was below 30 states.

“Even the Biden Administration recognized how Augusta leaders were failing Maine’s students when it penalized the state in 2023 for violating the federal law that helps schools with high numbers of students from low income families — which is the vast majority of Maine schools,” Kernen said about a financial penalty the federal Department of Education gave Maine for not meeting required academic achievement standards. “As the second highest ranking official in the State of Maine, Troy had the power to do something about this alarming trend — but under his leadership, it’s only gotten worse.”

While the decline in the math and reading scores of Maine’s elementary and middle school students may be cause for concern, the Collins campaign ad specifically mentions the performance of the state’s high schools, and cites Maine’s ranking by U.S. News in particular.

That ranking is questionable since it is affected by the absent AP data.

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An ad from a super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley features a heart-wrenching testimonial from the father of a woman who was murdered in 2025. The ad falsely implies the accused murderer was one of the prisoners released during the COVID-19 pandemic when Whatley’s Democratic opponent, Roy Cooper, was governor of North Carolina.

The problem: Cooper had nothing to do with the accused murderer’s release. The suspect was released from a prison in South Carolina, not North Carolina.

Here’s how the ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, or SLF PAC, tiptoes the line, implying, but not directly stating, that Cooper was indirectly responsible for the woman’s death.

“Logan was the most caring, loving person,” Stephen Federico, the father of a 22-year-old murdered in 2025, says in the ad while choking back tears. “It was a home invasion. Went to the house where Logan was sleeping and he pulled her out of bed and forced her on her knees and stuck a shotgun in her, left side of her chest, and pulled the trigger for no reason. Logan was a casualty of an agenda. Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders. Forty years of Roy Cooper is enough.”

The claim about Cooper releasing “3,500 criminals out on the street” refers to a court settlement reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s some important context missing from that narrative. As governor, Cooper resisted calls to release prisoners to ease safety concerns. He was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists. After a judge issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the ACLU and called on the state to come up with a plan to reduce the prison population, Cooper reached a settlement to allow the release of 3,500 prisoners. But again, none of them was the man accused of killing Logan Federico.

South Carolina did not expedite the release of prisoners during the pandemic (though it, too, was sued by the ACLU and others). However, in addition to North Carolina, numerous other states did implement expedited release policies to reduce their prison populations in response to the pandemic, including states like Iowa and Arkansas with Republican governors.

We reached out to SLF PAC about its ad, but we did not get a response.

“These attacks are false – this heinous crime was committed in South Carolina by a South Carolina criminal, but a Republican super PAC is using this tragedy for political gain,” a spokesperson for Cooper’s Senate campaign told us.

Cooper and Whatley are vying for an open Senate seat being vacated by Republican Thom Tillis, who is retiring. The Cook Political Report says that this Republican seat is the one Democrats “are most likely to flip.”

Logan Federico’s Murder

Logan Federico was a resident of North Carolina, but she was visiting friends in Columbia, South Carolina, when she was shot and killed in a home invasion. The man charged with killing her, Alexander Dickey, had a lengthy criminal history in South Carolina.

A criminal history report obtained by WIS News 10 in Columbia shows that prior to Federico’s murder, Dickey had been arrested nearly a dozen times and charged with nearly 40 crimes, including burglary and robbery. A WIS 10 investigation in June 2025 revealed that flaws in the criminal reporting system potentially contributed to a shorter sentence in 2023, on a charge that could have kept Dickey behind bars for years.

As the WIS 10 investigation showed, Dickey was arrested in 2023 on a burglary charge and pleaded guilty to a first offense, third-degree burglary. But it wasn’t a first offense for third-degree burglary — Dickey had been sentenced for a first offense in 2014.

Rick Hubbard, the state’s 11th Circuit solicitor, told WIS 10 that his office did not know at the time about Dickey’s previous burglary arrests and convictions. So while Dickey could have faced up to 10 years in prison, he was offered a plea deal for time served (411 days awaiting trial), and was placed on probation.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, said it never received fingerprints from the 2014 burglary arrest, so Dickey’s earlier conviction was not apparent to prosecutors. According to WIS 10, “Had they known, Hubbard said his office would not have prosecuted Dickey’s case as a first offense and Dickey would have likely received a longer sentence.”

Since his daughter’s murder, Stephen Federico has been a prominent advocate pushing lawmakers to keep repeat offenders behind bars for longer.

In April, South Carolina Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has since passed away, and Rep. Russell Fry introduced what was called Logan’s Law. The legislation, which has not made it out of committee, would create a publicly accessible violent criminal offender database (which is meant to hold judges and prosecutors accountable for lenient sentences), and would direct the creation of a report to Congress “identifying deficiencies in the sharing of fingerprint, warrant, and criminal history data between states and the federal government.”

So, there appear to have been flaws in South Carolina’s criminal record-keeping on Dickey that may have kept him from being behind bars when he is alleged to have killed Federico. But none of that has anything to do with North Carolina, or Cooper.

Pandemic Prisoner Releases

In the ad, Stephen Federico says his daughter was “a casualty of an agenda.” He then immediately says, “Roy Cooper let 3,500 criminals out on the street; 18 of them were murders.”

Whatley, himself, has also made the prisoner release a key campaign issue.

There were thousands of prisoners released early during the pandemic, but there’s important context missing from that attack. Cooper resisted early calls in the pandemic to commute sentences to reduce the prison population.

On April 20, 2020, the ACLU, the NAACP and several inmates sued Cooper and other state prison officials saying they had “failed to meaningfully decrease the number of people in Department of Public Safety” facilities and that “[w]ithout timely relief from the courts, COVID-19 will continue to sweep through the state prisons, inflicting terrible suffering and death.”

On June 16 of that year, Wake County Superior Court Judge Vinston Rozier Jr. granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs, saying they were “likely” to “succeed on the merits of their claim that the conditions of confinement” violated the state constitution’s prohibitions against inflicting “cruel or unusual punishments.” The judge ordered the state to come up with a plan that would, in addition to other COVID-19 safety measures, reduce prison overcrowding.

Later, in December 2020, as COVID-19 cases in North Carolina prisons were rising, Rozier appointed a special master to review the state’s home confinement program and to provide recommendations for easing prison populations through eligible early release.

In February 2021, the two sides reached a settlement, with the state agreeing to the “early reentry” of 3,500 people in state custody within six months. (The plaintiffs had sought the release of as many as 18,000 prisoners.) According to The Assembly, a longform journalism news site, by the time the agreement was signed, more than 9,500 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19 and 47 had died.

“After [Cooper] fought against these releases in court, North Carolina law enforcement officials and parole officers looked to similar criteria President Trump used a year prior when his administration released thousands of federal prisoners due to COVID-19,” a spokesperson for the Cooper campaign told us.

As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act) signed by Trump in late March 2020, more than 13,000 federal prisoners were released from prison into home confinement. But the CARES Act excluded any prisoners convicted of violent crimes, sex offenses and terrorism-related crimes. That wasn’t entirely the case in North Carolina. While state officials initially indicated only nonviolent offenders would be among those released early, prison officials later clarified that some violent offenders due to be released in 2021, the year of the settlement, would also be included (provided they had served their minimum sentence).

The Charlotte Observer reported that the list also included 51 inmates serving life sentences. State officials say all were eligible for parole before the deal, and were not made eligible because of it. (In any case, the Cooper campaign says law enforcement officials and parole officers made the determinations about which prisoners were released, not Cooper.)

The agreement was criticized at the time by some Republicans, who argued Cooper should have continued to fight in court.

“A group I consider more liberal than me has sued an administration I consider more liberal than me, and a deal was reached,” Republican state Rep. Carson Smith said a week after the agreement was announced.

Representatives of the plaintiffs, however, described Cooper as consistently adversarial.

“The idea that, you know, Roy Cooper is somehow being attacked for doing too much here [to suport prisoner releases] is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” Daniel Bowes, director of policy and advocacy at the ACLU of North Carolina, told Carolina Public Press in March of 2021.

As the pandemic unfolded, “what we saw was a constant sort of reluctance to provide meaningful release,” Bowes said. “There was absolutely no sort of urgency that wasn’t pushed along by the litigation.” 

“It was an extremely adversarial litigation,” Emancipate NC attorney Elizabeth Simpson told The Assembly.

Orlando Rodriguez, special deputy attorney in the North Carolina Department of Justice, who represented the defendants, told Carolina Public Press the state feared more orders from the judge were coming. Indeed, the special master appointed to the case “said he was going to recommend that the state broaden the categories for who would be eligible for release,” Carolina Public Press reported.

The SLF ad also says that of the 3,500 prisoners released “18 of them were murders.”

That’s based on an analysis published in the New York Post on May 7 — and cited in the ad — that concluded nearly half of the 3,500 prisoners released went on to commit another criminal offense, many of them violent offenses.

While the ad leaves the impression that 18 of the people released were murderers, it’s actually that — as the New York Post put it — “A staggering 18 of the prisoners released have been charged with murder in the four years since.”

An analysis by The Assembly, however, concluded the New York Post story was misleading.

“Our analysis found that of the roughly 3,000 inmates who were released early because of the settlement, more than 90% would have been out by the end of 2021 anyway by virtue of completing their sentences,” The Assembly story stated. “The agreement allowed prison officials to let them out early through a variety of methods—awarding credits for things like good behavior to shave time off their sentences, releasing qualified nonviolent inmates to house arrest, and accelerating parole for eligible inmates serving life or long active sentences under a previous sentencing structure.”

Indeed, the Cooper campaign pointed out that more than half of the 18 individuals cited in the Post as murderers are alleged to have committed that crime after their scheduled pre-settlement release date for previous convictions. According to The Assembly, “at least seven of them were already out of prison before the settlement was even signed.” In other words, the Cooper campaign argues, the settlement had no part in most of the murders identified by the New York Post.  

Whatley campaign spokesman DJ Griffin said, “While Cooper had the opportunity to fight this settlement in court (like Democrat Governors in Colorado and Illinois), he chose to settle, releasing thousands of convicted criminals back onto our streets.” Griffin claimed a number of people have been murdered  by “criminals Roy Cooper released from prison early.” 

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