“Iryna’s Law” took effect in North Carolina on Monday after lawmakers passed the tough-on-crime legislation in response to a Ukrainian refugee’s highly publicized murder on a Charlotte train.
The wide-ranging law broadly discourages pretrial release for defendants with prior criminal histories, requires mental health examinations in some serious cases and increases punishment for crimes committed on public transportation systems — provisions that relate to the August murder of Iryna Zarutska, the law’s namesake. It also adds ten assistant prosecutors to Mecklenburg County, gives the state’s chief justice authority to suspend magistrate judges, expands methods for executions and allows courts to extend probation sentences for juveniles they deem to be dangerous.
Zarutska was fatally stabbed on a light rail train by a man whom authorities identified as Decarlos Brown Jr., a mentally ill homeless resident with more than a dozen prior arrests.
US Attorney of the Western District of North Carolina said that Iryna Zarutska’s family told the Ukrainian Embassy they would bury her here because “she loved America.” @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/lNoboqSLhT
— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) September 9, 2025
The law requires jail or house arrest for anyone convicted of three Class 1 misdemeanors or higher offenses in the past 10 years. It also directs judges to order mental health evaluations for defendants who were involuntarily committed in the past three years or are a danger to the community in order to determine whether to institutionalize them again. Additionally, it bans judges from releasing defendants on a “written promise to appear” — the same declaration Brown made in January before police say he murdered Zarutska in Charlotte.
The law mandates that police inform judges about any arrestee behavior that shows they are dangerous to the community before detainment decisions are made. Judges must also order officials to provide a “criminal history report” on all defendants before deciding conditions of pretrial release, the text says.
Judges who grant pretrial release to criminals convicted of Class 1 misdemeanor or higher offenses three times, or those facing violent charges, must provide “written findings of fact” explaining the decision, the law says.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein signed Iryna’s Law in October. Stein praised the requirements for judges to weigh defendants’ criminal records in pretrial release rulings. He went on to call the death penalty provisions “barbaric” and complained about the bill’s emphasis on cash bail, NC Newsroom reported. The legislation states that lethal injection is North Carolina’s preferred execution method, but that if it is unavailable, others may be used.
The Trump administration criticized liberal cities’ criminal justice policies after Zarutka’s murder and charged Brown in September with committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing the death penalty for Brown, and he also faces state-level murder charges over Zarutska’s death.
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