Group backing Budd targets Beasley with TV ad about 2019 sex offender case
The conservative group Club For Growth will spend $400,000 to distribute a television ad targeting North Carolina’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Cheri Beasley.
Club for Growth, which backs Republican nominee Rep. Ted Budd, highlights in the ad an August 2019 decision from the state Supreme Court when Beasley was the chief justice. The court ruled it was unconstitutional to subject people to lifetime location monitoring for recidivism, or committing a second offense after their initial release from prison.
The case was brought by a North Carolina man named Torrey Grady, who was convicted as a teenager of a sexual offense and spent more than five years in prison after his conviction. He was released in 2002, according to the state Bureau of Investigation’s sex offender registry.
In 2006, Grady was convicted of another sex crime and spent more than two years in prison for that. He was convicted again in 2018 for failing to register as a sex offender and was released last week, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety’s public offender database.
The Supreme Court decision did not make a judgment on Grady’s guilt. It was focused on the constitutionality of lifetime monitoring imposed on people solely on the basis of recidivism.
What the ad says and shows
The ad begins with an image of a manila folder that opens to a criminal file, opening to Grady’s mugshot.
“Torrey Grady sodomized a 7-year-old boy. Out on probation, he impregnated a 15-year-old girl, qualifying him for lifetime GPS tracking under a bipartisan state law — until Justice Cheri Beasley struck it down.”
The ad shows Grady’s mugshot as it tracks a vehicle across an aerial photo. It shows an image of Beasley and a quote attributed to the Washington Free Beacon: “Soft on sex crimes.” A portrait of Beasley appears between piles of paper. A gavel slams down beside Beasley’s photo.
It continues with images of a criminal file with Grady’s mugshot and fingerprints. The tracker imagine blinks: “Error. Error.”
“Beasley ruled that it violated the child predator’s privacy. Last week, Grady was released from prison. Where’s he going? Ask Cheri Beasley. She’s the reason we won’t know.”
The ad ends with an image of Beasley next to a manila folder that says in all caps: “RELEASED.” Text on the screen reads “Cheri Beasley Dangerously Liberal.”
Fact-checking the ad
The ad accurately describes Grady’s criminal record, as recorded in the public offender database and described in the Supreme Court’s dissenting opinion. The ad’s description of Grady’s whereabouts being completely unknown is more hazy.
Here are fact-checks from the ad:
▪ In the dissenting opinion, Paul Newby, who is now the court’s chief justice, wrote that Grady’s 1997 conviction stemmed from “a sexual assault involving anal sex on a seven-year-old boy while the victim’s younger brother watched” — making the description of Grady’s first sex offense true.
▪ Newby also wrote Grady impregnated a 15-year-old, which led to his 2006 conviction.
▪ The ad says Grady qualified for lifetime monitoring, which is true. The Supreme Court agreed with an appellate court that Grady’s treatment was unconstitutional. Unlike the appeals court, which focused just on Grady’s case, the Supreme Court’s opinion applied to all individuals who are subject to lifetime monitoring solely because of their recidivism.
▪ Although Grady will not be subject to location monitoring based solely on his recidivism, Grady is a registered sex offender and his address is public, according to the state’s sex offender database. He is also on probation, according to the Department of Public Safety’s public offender database.
Beasley campaign responds
Dory MacMillan, spokeswoman for Cheri Beasley for North Carolina, said in a statement the ad misrepresents Beasley’s record, and said law enforcement officials have refuted the claim that Beasley is soft on crime.
In this case, she said Beasley agreed with a majority opinion that concurred with a lower court opinion issued by multiple conservative, Republican judges.
“Throughout her service as a public defender, judge and Chief Justice, Cheri Beasley has always done the job she pledged to do: protect our Constitutional rights and keep our communities safe, including partnering with law enforcement to create the state’s first human trafficking court to hold traffickers accountable and support victims,” MacMillan wrote.
Multiple law enforcement officials, including Cumberland County Sheriff Ennis Wright, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry L. McFadden, and Greater Cumberland Area Lodge No. 59 Fraternal Order of Police State Trustee and retired Fayetteville Police officer Reginald Harvey, also issued a statement in response to the ad.
“These attacks are outrageous and disgraceful,” they wrote. “The truth is that Cheri partnered with us for over two decades to keep communities safe and always upheld the Constitution and followed the rule of law, and that’s why we are supporting her in this election.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
.jpg)