Tony D. Hartsell strangled and beat the 84-year-old North Carolina woman who lived across the street from him before stabbing her 44 times, mutilating her body beyond recognition. A jury found Hartsell guilty of first-degree murder in 1995 and sentenced him to life in prison.
But in March 2021, Hartsell walked out of a North Carolina prison a free man, much to the dismay of his victim’s family. His release came a month after then-governor Roy Cooper (D.) and his administration agreed to fast-track the release of 3,500 inmates as part of a legal settlement with the NAACP—a deal that included Hartsell, according to a copy of the “early release” list obtained last week by WSOC-TV. Now, as Cooper’s campaign for North Carolina’s open Senate seat heats up, he insists he had nothing to do with Hartsell’s release. Cooper’s campaign told the Washington Free Beacon that the prisoner was eligible for parole before the governor signed the deal and that the state Department of Adult Correction, a cabinet-level agency that reports to the governor, had a say in granting Hartsell parole.
Being eligible for parole in itself is not a guaranteed ticket to freedom, however, and Hartsell’s inclusion on the “early release” list that stemmed from Cooper’s settlement raises questions about whether the deal played a factor in granting his liberation. In total, 51 North Carolina convicts serving life sentences for first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or first-degree rape are named in the Cooper “early-release” list, according to an analysis by North Carolina reporter Andrew Dunn.ᐧ
Their inclusion on the list flies in the face of a promise the Cooper administration gave to state lawmakers in February 2021 that nobody who had “committed a crime against a person” would be included as part of the deal.
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Cooper’s settlement with the NAACP, which was signed by his chief of staff, quashed a lawsuit that a coalition of activist groups filed against the Democratic governor and his administration over health concerns at state prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whitley Carpenter, an attorney for Forward Justice, a racial justice nonprofit that was involved in the litigation, hailed the deal at the time, saying the most effective way to protect prisoners from COVID-19 “is to reduce the number of people in prison.”
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