Dateline’s “Unchecked Evil”: Trial, Lawsuit, and the Tokes Act

The NBC Dateline episode “Unchecked Evil,” reported by Andrea Canning and first aired on June 24, 2019, told the story of Reagan Tokes, a 21-year-old Ohio State University senior who was abducted, raped, and murdered in February 2017 by Brian Golsby, a convicted sex offender who had been released from prison just months earlier and was supposed to be under GPS monitoring.¹ The title captured what the reporting exposed: the monitoring that was supposed to keep Golsby in check was not functioning in any meaningful way. The case led to a life sentence for the killer, a wrongful death suit that the Ohio Supreme Court refused to hear, and a state law that reshaped how Ohio sentences violent felons.

What Happened to Reagan Tokes

On the night of February 8, 2017, Golsby spotted Reagan Tokes leaving the Bodega Café in Columbus’s Short North neighborhood after a work shift. He forced her into her own car at gunpoint, made her withdraw money from an ATM, raped her, and shot her.² Her body was found in a snowy field at Scioto Grove Metro Park in Grove City, outside Columbus.³

Investigators linked Golsby to the killing through DNA on cigarette butts recovered inside Tokes’s car and through data pulled from his GPS ankle monitor, which placed him at the scene. The same investigation tied him to a string of aggravated robberies involving six other victims in the weeks before the murder.⁴

Why the Monitoring Failed

Golsby had pleaded guilty in 2011 to attempted rape and robbery, both second-degree felonies, and served concurrent six-year sentences. He was released on November 13, 2016, only four months before he killed Reagan Tokes, and was classified as a Tier III sex offender required to register for life.⁵

He was placed in the EXIT program, a halfway house run by a private contractor called NISRE under contract with the Ohio Division of Parole and Community Service, and fitted with a GPS ankle monitor. State Representative Kristin Boggs, who later co-sponsored reform legislation, called the monitoring “practically meaningless.” Inclusion and exclusion zones were never programmed into the device, his curfew was not tracked, and local law enforcement could not pull his GPS data without a subpoena.⁶ The family’s later lawsuit alleged the EXIT program operated as “strictly a ‘housing program'” and that Golsby was “free to come and go as he pleased.”⁷

A GPS expert at trial explained that the ankle devices record near-real-time location data but that “human oversight is needed for its success.” No one was watching. Golsby committed at least seven felonies during January and February 2017 while on supervised release, and none were connected to him until after Reagan Tokes was dead.⁷ Boggs noted that the Cleveland Adult Parole Authority, which oversaw Golsby, carried caseloads nearly double the recommended standard, and that Golsby had been released with no housing after private reentry contractors rejected him because of his violent history.⁶

The Trial and Sentence

A Franklin County grand jury indicted Golsby on March 31, 2017, on charges including four counts of aggravated murder, three counts of kidnapping, seven counts of aggravated robbery, one count of rape, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of having weapons while under disability, along with firearm, repeat violent offender, and sexually violent predator specifications.⁴

The capital trial ran two weeks before Judge Mark Serrott. On March 13, 2018, after about five hours of deliberation, the jury found Golsby guilty on every count. The verdict landed on what would have been Reagan Tokes’s 23rd birthday.² In the penalty phase, the jury deadlocked on death and unanimously recommended life without parole. Judge Serrott imposed three consecutive life terms without parole for the murder, kidnapping, and rape, plus additional time on the remaining counts, for an aggregate sentence of life without parole plus 105 years.⁸ Golsby later pleaded guilty to six additional counts of aggravated robbery tied to the earlier crime spree.⁴

The Family’s Lawsuit Against the State

In May 2018, Reagan Tokes’s family filed a wrongful death and survivorship action against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the Adult Parole Authority, and NISRE Inc. They alleged that authorities failed to configure Golsby’s monitoring, never accessed his GPS data, set no exclusion zones, and ignored at least three post-release control violations between December 2016 and January 2017.⁷

The state moved to dismiss under the public duty doctrine, which holds that government supervision of a parolee is a duty owed to the general public rather than to any specific person. The Ohio Court of Claims agreed in September 2018, the Tenth District Court of Appeals affirmed in May 2019, and in August 2019 the Ohio Supreme Court declined the family’s appeal by a 6-1 vote, effectively ending the suit against the state.⁹ A separate action against NISRE Inc. remained pending in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.¹⁰

The Reagan Tokes Act

Blocked in the courts, Reagan’s parents, Lisa McCrary-Tokes and Toby Tokes, turned to the legislature. Working with State Representatives Jim Hughes and Kristin Boggs, they pushed for a bill addressing the failures they believed had cost their daughter her life. Senate Bill 201, the Reagan Tokes Act, was signed on December 21, 2018, and took effect on March 22, 2019.¹¹

The law made two central changes to Ohio sentencing. For first- and second-degree felonies that do not carry a life sentence, judges now impose both a minimum and a maximum prison term, with the maximum set at the minimum plus 50 percent. An incarcerated person is presumed to be released at the end of the minimum term, but the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction can rebut that presumption and hold the person up to the maximum based on prison rule violations or other specified findings.¹² The law also allows prison officials to recommend release before the minimum expires for exceptional conduct, with the sentencing court’s approval, cutting up to 15 percent off the minimum.¹³ A separate provision directed the Adult Parole Authority to study improved GPS monitoring.¹¹

The law survived a constitutional challenge in July 2023, when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that letting prison administrators extend sentences within the range set by the judge does not violate separation of powers or the right to a jury trial. Justices Jennifer Brunner and Michael Donnelly dissented, writing that the procedures used to add time were “insufficient in light of the gravity of the decision being made.”¹⁴

How the Law Has Worked in Practice

A 2025 investigation by The Marshall Project and WOSU found that in the six years since the law took effect, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction had denied every one of the more than 120 petitions filed by incarcerated people seeking early release. Meanwhile, roughly 700 people had been denied release and held past their minimums under the law’s disciplinary extension provision, adding a combined 830 years of incarceration at an estimated $32 million in state costs.¹⁵ More than 14,500 people have been sentenced under the law, close to one-third of Ohio’s prison population.¹³

The reporting also documented racial disparities. Black men make up roughly 45 percent of Ohio’s prison population but nearly 60 percent of those held beyond their minimum terms. Cuyahoga County, home to about 10 percent of Ohio’s population, accounts for nearly 23 percent of those kept past their minimums. Critics at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center describe the law as “all stick, no carrot,” and Matthew Ahn, director of the Beyond Guilt project, called it “just another accelerator toward runaway incarceration.” DRC spokesperson JoEllen Smith said Director Annette Chambers-Smith “carefully reviewed and considered” each early release petition before denying it, and prison officials have said the criteria for early release are held to high standards.¹⁵

Reagan’s parents also founded the Reagan Delaney Tokes Memorial Foundation under the motto “Actions Conquer Tragedy,” funding scholarships at Ohio State with a preference for undergraduate psychology majors, Reagan’s field of study, and running safety and self-defense programs.¹⁶

1
Orlando Sentinel. Murder of Reagan Tokes, an Ohio State Student, to Be Featured on Dateline
2
WOSU. Brian Golsby Convicted of Killing Reagan Tokes, Now Faces Death Penalty
3
The Marshall Project. Ohio Reagan Tokes Senate Bill 201
4
Supreme Court of Ohio. State v. Golsby, Tenth Appellate District Opinion
5
The Lantern. Records: Reagan Tokes Suspect Previously Convicted of Robbery, Attempted Rape
6
NBC4i. Legislator Wants Changes to Sentencing and Parole Laws After Murder of OSU Student
7
Columbus Dispatch. Family of Reagan Tokes Sues State
8
Columbus Dispatch. Sentenced to Life
9
WOSU. Ohio Supreme Court Denies Appeal in Reagan Tokes Lawsuit
10
Columbus Dispatch. Supreme Court: State Had No Duty to Protect Tokes
11
Ohio Legislature. Senate Bill 201
12
Supreme Court of Ohio Sentencing Commission. SB 201 Quick Reference Guide
13
WOSU. All Stick, No Carrot: Ohio’s Reagan Tokes Law Acts as a One-Way Ratchet for Prison Time
14
Ohio Capital Journal. Reagan Tokes Law Extending Prison Sentences Constitutional, Ohio Supreme Court Rules
15
The Marshall Project. Ohio Reagan Tokes Law Sentencing Reform Prison
16
The Lantern. Reagan Delaney Tokes Foundation Establishes Scholarship at Ohio State