GOP ads say Andy Beshear let criminals loose on Kentucky. What are the facts?

As COVID-19 swept through Kentucky in 2020, the highly infectious virus hit the state’s overcrowded prisons and jails particularly hard, killing dozens of inmates and staff and, in some facilities, sickening most of the prisoners.

Civil-rights lawsuits and court officials pressured the state of Kentucky to thin its incarcerated population before the body count became too terrible.

“Much like nursing homes, jails are susceptible to worse-case scenarios due to the close proximity of people and the number of pre-existing conditions,” Kentucky Chief Justice John Minton Jr. warned in a public message in the earliest days of the pandemic.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear responded by ordering the early release of more than 1,700 state inmates who were judged “medically vulnerable” or who had less than six months left to serve. In his executive orders, Beshear said the releases were limited to inmates convicted of non-violent and non-sexual crimes.

Kentucky wasn’t alone. Other states also released inmates early during the pandemic, as did the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, as did other countries, including France, Norway, Jordan, Canada, Iran, the Philippines and India. Globally, more than a million prisoners went home ahead of schedule to reduce the risks of deadly virus transmission.

Inmates in attack ads

However, Kentucky’s early releases are being used against Beshear in the gubernatorial campaign.

Two conservative groups backing Attorney General Daniel Cameron, his Republican challenger, are airing ads that attack Beshear for the releases. The groups say many of the freed prisoners committed new crimes, harming public safety.

In its ad, the Washington-based School Freedom Fund focuses on three men later charged with particularly ugly crimes: Nathan Donald Nickell, 33; Joseph Wayne Henderson, 41; and Sherman Lamont Sherley Jr., 28. (The men are not named in the ad, but their mugshots and prisoner identification numbers are shown.)

“These Kentucky convicts had means and motive — to sexually abuse a young child — brutally strangle a woman — allegedly murder an innocent man — means, motive and the opportunity,” the ad’s narrator says.

An on-screen graphic reads: “Beshear’s Prison Commutes Lead to Increase in Crime,” citing an Oct. 4, 2021, WAVE-TV report in Louisville.

Various news anchors take turns speaking: “Governor Beshear issues commutations for more than 1,700 inmates. ... The report found that half of the criminals he let out of jail went right out and committed more crimes ... One-third of them committed a new felony.”

Beshear appears on screen to defend himself: “We made what I believe are reasonable decisions.”

Finally, the narrator concludes: “Their victims know better.”

Accurate or not?

Is the ad an accurate description of what happened?

Let’s take this step by step.

Did the three men pictured do what the ad says they did?

Yes.

Among the inmates released by Beshear was Nickell, who was sentenced last year in Campbell County to 15 years in prison for sexual abuse of a minor and related crimes; Henderson, who was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for breaking into a woman’s Louisville home and strangling her into unconsciousness; and Sherley, who awaits trial for the June 17, 2021, fatal shooting of a man outside a Louisville nightclub.

All three men are back behind bars today.

Are Beshear’s commutations to blame for their new crimes?

That’s a little murkier.

Court records indicate that Nickell and Sherley didn’t have much time left to serve on 18-month sentences when they were freed in August 2020 and April 2020, respectively. By the time they got into trouble again in 2021, they probably were going to be out regardless of the COVID releases.

However, Henderson previously was sentenced on Sept. 4, 2018, to a longer stretch — five years — for fleeing police, tampering with evidence, DUI, first-degree wanton endangerment and carrying a concealed deadly weapon. He won early release in April 2020 as part of a special effort for the medically vulnerable. He broke into a woman’s home and brutally assaulted her just 13 months later, according to court records.

Committing new crimes

Did a report really say that half of Beshear’s early releases committed more crimes and one-third committed a felony?

Not exactly, but close.

An Aug. 10, 2021, report prepared for lawmakers by the state courts — the report cited by the ad — found that one year after Beshear finished ordering early releases, 47% of the former prisoners had received at least one new criminal charge against them. Thirty-two percent of the total faced at least one new felony charge.

Most of the felonies were crimes involving drugs or property, but at least 83 felony cases involved serious crimes against people, from assault to homicide, according to the report.

However, this data reflected charges, not convictions. Not everyone who is charged with a crime gets convicted.

And the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet said at the time that the majority of new charges came more than six months after the early releases, so in many instances, the inmates would have been back on the streets, regardless. The majority of new felony charges started to arrive in the spring of 2021, according to the report.

Sadly, a high recidivism rate is not unique to this one small pool of former inmates.

A massive 10-year study of nearly 74,000 prisoners who were released by 24 states in the year 2008 revealed that at least 82 percent were arrested and charged again. The study, for the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, showed that at least 43 percent of the former inmates were charged with a new crime in the first year after their release.

Cameron and Matt Bevin’s pardons

No discussion of Kentucky’s gubernatorial race and criminals can be complete without a reference to Beshear’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, who issued pardons and commutations to hundreds of people as he left office, including murderers, rapists and, in at least one case, the relative of some of his campaign fundraisers.

As with Beshear’s early releases, some of Bevin’s beneficiaries later were charged with new crimes.

This has created a vulnerability for the Republicans. Cameron, their nominee for governor, is the state’s chief law enforcement officer. But he tried to avoid saying anything publicly about Bevin’s pardons controversy even as local and federal prosecutors protested angrily and pursued some of those cut loose.

The Democratic Governors Association, backing Beshear, is running attack ads criticizing Cameron for not taking action, despite saying that “it’s obviously something we’ll look at” shortly after taking office in 2019.

“For three years, Cameron’s refused to appoint a special prosecutor, even as some of the criminals were arrested for new crimes,” the DGA said in one of several ads about Bevin’s pardons. “Cameron passed the buck and Kentucky got hurt.”

Responding to these attacks, Cameron’s campaign says the attorney general referred the matter of Bevin’s pardons to the FBI for further investigation.