The Office of the Attorney General released a dataset on Monday which refuted claims made for months by Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares about the danger of inmates released early because of the enhanced earned sentence credit program.
The data was revised after Cardinal News shared the results of its analysis of an earlier dataset provided by the Office of the Attorney General in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Miyares has repeatedly claimed that the enhanced earned sentence credit law has led to the early release of people who have gone on to commit crimes that resulted in dozens of deaths.
In July, Miyares asserted that “53 Virginians were murdered” because of the state’s early release program. He doubled down on that claim in October, and increased the number of Virginians who were murdered to 70.
“Seventy Virginians are dead today, dead today, because a felon that was supposed to be behind prison [sic] got out early,” he said during the first and only debate in the 2025 attorney general’s election.
But data provided by Miyares’ own office did not corroborate the attorney general’s claims.
On Friday, after a phone call with Cardinal News, Shaun Kenney, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, and Tama Celi, director of research for the Department of Corrections, agreed to review the dataset and provide additional information.
The attorney general’s office, in partnership with the Department of Corrections, provided corrected data and analysis to Cardinal News on Monday evening.
New analysis painted a different picture than what Miyares claimed
After further analysis of data originally provided to Cardinal News, the attorney general’s office and the Department of Corrections determined that only 72 of the 78 people listed on the initial dataset benefited from enhanced earned sentence credits, Kenney said in an email on Monday.
Of those 72 people, only 13 had been convicted of a homicide-related offense.
The OAG’s new analysis showed this about the remaining released inmates:
- 18 were rearrested and ultimately convicted of a non-homicide-related offense;
- 10 had charges that ended in a dismissal or nolle prosequi — meaning the case was dismissed but able to be revisited should new evidence be found;
- 15 were rearrested but do not have a final disposition; and
- 16 were rearrested and have a case that is pending.
“The data provided by VADOC does not allow us any deeper insight as to whether these crimes were committed within the period of time where the offender would have taken advantage of early release,” Kenney said.
He added that there was one offender in the dataset whose expected release date, actual release date, and arrest date all line up to indicate that they would fall under that category — that their crime may have been committed within the period of time that they were released early through enhanced earned sentence credits. He noted that there is the possibility of more offenders existing outside of the dataset due to gaps in information.
“Absent a JLARC or Crime Commission study, VADOC remains partially equipped with the tools or resources to accurately measure the full impact of EESC and is only able to offer a fractional view by which the public can ascertain its impact,” Kenney said.
Miyares declined to directly redefine his claim that 53 or 70 Virginians have died because of enhanced earned sentence credits, given the new analysis.
“What remains indisputable is that innocent Virginians will continue to be murdered, raped, or assaulted until this early felon release program is repealed. Any number of victims other than zero is unacceptable,” Miyares said.
How we reported this story
A spreadsheet of 78 people was provided by the Office of Attorney General in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Cardinal News. That FOIA request sought data on people who were released from prison early under the state’s Enhanced Earned Sentence Credits law, who had been charged or convicted of a crime that had resulted in the death of a Virginia resident.
The data received by Cardinal News was a list of people who the Department of Corrections identified as eligible for EESC who had been rearrested in connection to what the Virginia State Police had said were “homicide-related” offenses.
Miyares, a Republican, is seeking reelection. He has made his opposition to the enhanced earned sentence credit program a cornerstone of his campaign and has criticized his opponent, Democrat Jay Jones, for voting in support of the law during Jones’ term as a delegate in the 2020 General Assembly session. Miyares, who was also a delegate in 2020, voted against the bill.
That bill increased the cap on the number of days off of a prison sentence that a person in Department of Corrections custody could receive based on good behavior and other criteria. The legislation was passed in 2020, but its partial enactment was halted until July 2022. It was not fully enforced until July 2024. More than 16,000 people have been released early under the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, according to Miyares’ office.
A campaign claim and incomplete data
Miyares wrote, in an op-ed on Virginia Scope in July, that “because of Virginia’s early release program, 53 Virginians were murdered.”
During the October debate in the attorney general’s race, he said that his opponent “voted for the disastrous Northam felon early release program. …Seventy Virginians are dead today, dead today because a felon that was supposed to be behind prison [sic] got out early because of Jay Jones’ vote and law that he championed.”
Analyzing the initial dataset of 78 people to verify Miyares’ claim proved difficult. In some cases a charge in the court system of “attempted aggravated murder” showed up in the dataset with an arresting offense of “aggravated murder.” In other cases, expected release dates were missing. In the dataset, the “expected release date” refers to the date a person would have been released from prison, absent enhanced earned sentence credits.
Many of the victim names, which are public information in a murder case, were missing. The subsequent charge disposition and date of the accused, and the jurisdictions where many of the alleged crimes that resulted in a death took place, were also missing.
Cardinal News spent weeks tracking down every name on the list in statewide and local court information systems. After that, we shared the dataset with multiple prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys and checked our analysis of certain cases with several commonwealth’s attorneys.
Here’s what we found.
Nearly three dozen cases did not receive a murder or manslaughter charge. Another two dozen cases did not or have not yet resulted in a conviction.
Cardinal News’ analysis of that list shows that 34 of the 78 names on the list did not have a murder or manslaughter charge connected to them in online court information systems.
“If they’re saying that 78 deaths are attributable to [enhanced early sentence credits], then that’s clearly wrong and they’re either misinterpreting the data or they can’t understand it,” said Doug Ramseur, a criminal defense attorney based in Richmond, after reviewing the list provided by Miyares’ office.
Of the remaining names that did have a murder charge connected to them, 26 cases were either ongoing, nolle prosequi, acquitted or declared a mistrial.
“If we believe — I hope they do — in the presumption of innocence, people are innocent until proven guilty in trial, then I don’t see why we can say those people are responsible for deaths,” Ramseur said.
Cardinal News asked Miyares twice during campaign stops over the summer for data to back up his claim that 53 deaths are attributable to the enhanced earned sentence credit program. He responded by saying his office or his campaign would provide the information. It wasn’t until Cardinal News submitted a FOIA request to the attorney general’s office more than a month after the initial in-person request that the information was made available.
But crucial information was missing from that data set.
The information requested vs. the information received
This is what was requested of the Office of Attorney General: data on people who have been released from prison early under the state’s Enhanced Earned Sentence Credits law, who have then been charged and/or convicted of a crime or crimes that have resulted in the death of a Virginia resident, after their early release under the EESC law, including:
- The name of the perpetrator;
- The conviction and date of the conviction that sent them to prison initially;
- The date of their initial expected release;
- The date of their actual release under EESC;
- The date of the crime or crimes allegedly committed following their release that resulted in the death of a Virginian;
- The name of the victim; and
- The new charge and/or conviction faced by the alleged perpetrator following the death of the victim.
The data set received in response to the request was a list of 78 people who had been in the Department of Corrections’ custody, who the attorney general’s office said had been rearrested in “homicide-related” offenses after their early release under the enhanced earned sentence credit program.
Information to support Miyares’ claim was missing, however, including:
- the “expected release date” for 43 of those individuals;
- 48 victim names, which is public information in a murder investigation;
- 15 subsequent charge dispositions;
- 38 subsequent charge disposition dates;
- and the jurisdiction where 32 of the accused murderers were tried.
“It’s almost impossible to tell how accurate [the attorney general’s claim] is unless you have access to the Department of Corrections records and go through a very painstaking examination of each case to find out whether it had anything to do with early release or not,” said Don Caldwell, the commonwealth’s attorney in the city of Roanoke, in early October.
Concerns regarding the missing data were brought up repeatedly to the attorney general’s office and the Department of Corrections between September, when the FOIA request was fulfilled, and October. No additional information was provided by either agency until late October.
Absent access to the Department of Corrections’ records, Cardinal News searched each of the 78 names in the online statewide court information system, local online court information system, and the Fairfax online court information system. There was no murder charge for 34 of the 78 people on the list.
Of those who did receive murder charges, at least 18 cases showed the murder was committed after the accused or convicted person’s “expected release date” — the date they would have been released absent enhanced earned sentence credits.
In at least 11 cases out of the 78, the inmate’s “actual release date” — the date they were released with potential enhanced earned sentence credits included — was listed as later than the “expected release date” in the data provided by the attorney general’s office.
In at least two cases, the alleged murder or manslaughter offense occurred before the accused’s “actual release date.”
‘No murder charge’; ‘we can’t find a record of a manslaughter charge’; ‘he did not kill anyone’; ‘nobody died in this incident’ — Commonwealth’s attorneys and their take on cases, data
In early to mid October, Cardinal News reached out to the commonwealth’s attorney’s office in each jurisdiction listed on the dataset provided by the attorney general’s office, in an effort to get details on the cases specific to their districts. A number of them replied, to talk through cases.
The Roanoke city commonwealth attorney’s office was able to confirm that one person on the list had a pending murder charge in its jurisdiction, after examining data from the attorney general’s office. That murder took place after the accused was released from prison, Caldwell said.
“Whether he was released from supervision, that’s a whole different story too,” he added. “I don’t know if he was under supervision at the time or not.”
Another person, who was listed with a manslaughter arresting offense on the attorney general’s data sheet, was found guilty of eluding police along with hit and run charges. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
“We can’t find a record of a manslaughter charge,” Caldwell said. “We did not prosecute him for manslaughter.”
Ramin Fatehi, the commonwealth’s attorney in Norfolk, confirmed that three out of four people who were listed on the data sheet from the attorney general’s office with homicide arresting offenses were convicted of a murder charge in his jurisdiction. The fourth received a disposition of “nolle prosequi” on a murder charge, meaning there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the case at that time, Fatehi said. That action left the case open to try again should more evidence be found.
Two of the three people who were convicted of a murder charge in Norfolk were co-defendants in the same murder case. Fatehi said he was unable to determine if any of the four defendants were recipients of enhanced earned sentence credits. Three of the Norfolk offenses occurred months after the offender’s expected release date, according to the attorney general’s data.
One person in Smyth County, who was included in the attorney general’s data sheet with a second-degree murder arresting offense, was ultimately convicted of unlawful wounding.
The original indictment was for malicious wounding and the commonwealth attorney’s office ended up indicting him for attempted murder in the second degree with a weapon. He was ultimately convicted of the lesser charge, Smyth County Commonwealth’s Attorney Phillip Blevins said.
“No murder charge in there, not even a murder charge in the outset, it was always ‘attempt,’” Blevins said. “In this particular case there was never a dead body, so there was never murder.”
“He did not kill anyone, he was charged with attempted aggravated murder,” said Lynchburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Bethany Harrison about another individual listed on the attorney general’s data set with “aggravated murder” as his most serious arresting offense. He was tried in Lynchburg Circuit Court and later died in jail.
Another person on the attorney general’s data sheet from Henry County was wanted, stole a tractor and rammed into a police cruiser during a pursuit and pushed the cruiser about 100 yards, nearly toppling it over an embankment, said Henry County Commonwealth’s Attorney Andrew Nester.
“[He] did not kill anybody, but he clearly engaged in beyond violent behavior,” Nester said.
In Virginia Beach, a person was listed on the attorney general’s dataset with an arresting offense of aggravated murder, a class 1 felony, after he allegedly shot at a police officer.
“Nobody died in this incident,” a staff member in the Virginia Beach Commonwealth Attorney’s office said.
Another person stole a number of vehicles in a short period of time until he was spotted by police while driving a stolen vehicle. Police pursued him through Colonial Heights and into Petersburg where he ran a red light, hit another vehicle and killed an occupant of that vehicle. That death occurred on March 15, 2023. The accused was convicted, said Chesterfield County Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Kenneth Chitty.
The convicted person had been released on December 27, 2022, though his expected release date was listed as December 5, 2022, according to data. Regardless, the Department of Corrections asserts that he benefited from enhanced earned sentence credits.
EESC law passed in 2020, blocked for years, still debated in 2025
Virginia’s enhanced earned sentence credit law was passed in 2020 by a Democratic-controlled General Assembly and signed by Democratic then-Gov. Ralph Northam. It built on an existing earned sentence program and increased the cap on the number of days off of a prison sentence that a person in DOC custody could receive from 4.5 days to 15 days for every 30 days served.
“The General Assembly, in their infinite wisdom, made it retroactive,” Nester said, of the enhanced earned sentence credit law. “It made prosecutors furious, because, think about this, up until that point, we told victims, we told victims’ families, we made plea agreements, we argued for sentences based on the amount of time that they would serve. Judges set sentences based on the amount of time that they knew they would serve.”
Republicans pushed back against the legislation, and the bill’s effective date was halted until July 1, 2022. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had been in office for less than a year, included a clause in the 2022 budget that blocked access to enhanced earned sentence credits for many prisoners, including those who were serving time for robbery, kidnapping, abduction, rape and manslaughter, according to reporting by Courthouse News. Miyares’ office also issued an advisory opinion that interpreted the law to exclude people convicted of conspiracy and solicitation charges.
The enhanced earned sentence credit law was fully implemented, despite Republican opposition, in July 2024.
Before enhanced earned sentence credits, people who were convicted and sentenced to jail were required to serve at least 85% of their sentences. After enhanced earned sentence credits were enacted, people who were convicted and sentenced to jail were required to serve at least 65% of their sentences, if they qualified, Nester said.
More than 16,000 people have been released early from Department of Corrections custody under the enhanced earned credits program between fiscal year 2023 and 2024, according to the attorney general’s office.
And it may be too early for Miyares to make claims about the rate of murder and manslaughter connected to a program that is still in its infancy.
“They’re jumping too early to make conclusions on things that they can’t and intentionally coming to the wrong conclusion,” Ramseur said. “If they gave this more time, then maybe they could get better data but what they’re using now doesn’t support what they’re saying.”