A Minnesota state legislator turned congressional candidate is facing sharp criticism over an early release law she championed that freed inmates later charged in separate killings, Fox News reported.
Rep. Kelly Morrison, a Democrat who won a U.S. House seat representing Minnesota's Third Congressional District in 2024, authored the Minnesota Earned Incentive Release Act while serving in the state Senate. The law, signed in 2023, allowed certain inmates to shorten their sentences through credits for good behavior and program participation. Critics now say it put dangerous offenders back on the streets with fatal consequences.
Brandon Wilmore was released from state prison early under the law's provisions. He had been serving time for a prior violent offense. After his release, Wilmore was charged with second-degree murder in connection with a fatal shooting in Minneapolis in 2024. He has pleaded not guilty.
In a separate case, Tyler Janssen gained early release under the same statute. Janssen had been imprisoned on assault and domestic violence convictions. Following his release, he was charged with murder in the stabbing death of a woman identified as his former girlfriend in southern Minnesota. Janssen has also pleaded not guilty.
Both men remain in custody awaiting trial. Neither has been convicted in the murder cases.
Before the Earned Incentive Release Act took effect, Minnesota inmates could earn limited sentence reductions. Morrison's legislation expanded the credit system, allowing inmates to accumulate additional time off their sentences by completing rehabilitative programming, maintaining clean disciplinary records, and meeting other benchmarks set by the Department of Corrections.
Supporters of the law, including Morrison, argued it would reduce prison overcrowding, save taxpayer money, and incentivize rehabilitation. Morrison framed the bill as a public safety measure, contending that inmates who participate in programming are less likely to reoffend.
Opponents warned at the time that expanding early release to inmates convicted of violent crimes created unacceptable risks. The two murder cases have given those critics a grim set of talking points.
The National Republican Congressional Committee seized on the cases during the 2024 campaign cycle and has continued pressing the issue since Morrison took her House seat. NRCC spokeswoman Savannah Viar tied the deaths directly to Morrison's legislative record.
"Kelly Morrison's early release law put violent criminals back on the streets, and now people are dead because of it."
Minnesota Republican state legislators echoed that line, calling the law a reckless experiment that prioritized offenders over victims. State Sen. Warren Limmer, a Republican who opposed the bill during floor debate, said the cases confirmed what opponents had predicted.
Morrison's office pushed back on the criticism. A spokesperson said the law included safeguards and that the Department of Corrections, not legislators, made individual release decisions. The spokesperson also noted that no system can eliminate all risk of recidivism and that the vast majority of inmates released under the law have not been charged with new violent offenses.
Minnesota's Third Congressional District, which covers the western suburbs of Minneapolis, has been a competitive swing seat. Morrison flipped it in 2024 after a hard-fought race. Republicans view the early release issue as a potent weapon heading into the 2026 cycle, particularly as crime and public safety remain top concerns for suburban voters.
The attacks follow a well-worn playbook. Republicans have successfully used criminal justice reform measures against Democratic candidates in recent cycles, tying individual violent incidents to broader policy choices. The strategy proved effective in several 2022 races nationwide and appears set to resurface in Minnesota.
Morrison, for her part, has not called for repealing or amending the law. Her office has emphasized the broader data on recidivism reduction rather than engaging with individual cases.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections has not publicly disclosed the specific credit calculations that led to Wilmore's or Janssen's early releases. Investigators have not said whether either man's release triggered any risk assessment flags or whether supervision conditions were imposed and followed after release.
Authorities have also not confirmed whether either man was subject to post-release monitoring at the time of the alleged killings. Those details could prove central to determining whether the law itself failed or whether its implementation broke down at the administrative level.
The distinction matters. A law that functions as designed but produces bad outcomes raises different questions than a law that was poorly executed by the agency responsible for applying it. Neither answer is likely to satisfy the families of those killed.
The debate over earned-time credits is not unique to Minnesota. More than 30 states operate some form of incentivized early release, and similar controversies have erupted in Colorado, Illinois, and New York when freed inmates committed violent crimes. The policy tension between reducing incarceration costs and managing public safety risk has no clean resolution, and individual tragedies tend to dominate the argument regardless of aggregate data.
For Morrison, the political calculus is straightforward. She authored a law. Two men released under that law now face murder charges. The connection is direct enough for a campaign ad, even if the legal and policy picture is more complicated.
When voters see a lawmaker's name on a statute and a murder defendant's name on a release order, they tend to draw a straight line. Whether that line holds up under scrutiny is a question Morrison will have to answer long before 2026.
