Month: July 2017

An international company that manufactures electrical equipment is expanding to a new location in Memphis, investing upwards of $20 million and creating 90 new jobs here, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) announced Friday.

A member of the ABB Group, the company Thomas & Betts designs, manufactures, and markets products used for the connection, distribution, transmission, and reliability of electricity.

The company plans to expand its operations, as well as its research and development department to East Memphis.


Commissioner of TNECD Bob Rolfe says since 2011 the state’s manufacturing field has gained over 46,000 jobs.

“I appreciate Thomas & Betts for continuing the momentum of the manufacturing sector in our state,” Rolfe said. “I look forward to our continued partnership.”

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell believes that adding 90 jobs to the corporate landscape of the city is significant and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland agrees.

“By choosing the city of Memphis as the place it believes it can best grow, Thomas & Betts is adding the momentum we’re experiencing of late,” Strickland said.

The move, though, is contingent on PILOT approval.

Facebook

Braswell

A new state investigation of Shelby County District Attorney General (SCDAG) Amy Weirich has been opened related to her conduct in a 2005 murder trial, according to the defendant’s family, and they hope his race won’t hinder the investigation.

The family of Vern Braswell, who was convicted for the murder of his wife in 2005, filed a complaint with state officials last month against Weirich and her office on allegations of misconduct in his 2005 trial.

A Facebook page called Justice for Vern Braswell says an investigation into the matter was opened at the beginning of June. A family member confirmed Friday that the information on the page was correct.

But an official with the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility (TBPR), the arm of the Tennessee Supreme Court that oversees attorney conduct in the state, could not confirm whether an investigation had been initiated or give any other details.

The Facebook post points out that the TBPR got involved in the cases of Noura Jackson and Michael Rimmer. Weirich got a private reprimand from the TBPR in the Jackson case. ADA Thomas Henderson got a public censure for his conduct in Rimmer case. Jackson and Rimmer are both white.

“We hope and pray that Vern’s skin color doesn’t preclude us from being successful in our complaint against DAG Weirich,” reads the post. “But if history has taught us anything, we cannot be too hopeful.”

It goes further to point out that Jackson and Rimmer were granted new trials and that the prosecutors faced consequences for their conduct. But that for Braswell, who is African American, no new trial has been granted so far and that no prosecutor has yet faced any consequences.

When asked for a statement on the new complaint, a spokesman in Weirich’s office said her statement from Thursday, in which a new report ranked Weirich’s office first in the state for prosecutorial misconduct, still stands.

Weirich

“[The report] is a grossly inaccurate and incomplete account of these cases as seen through the eyes of a defense advocacy group,” Weirich said in a statement. “I became a prosecutor to hold the guilty accountable and to protect the innocent in every case, and that is what I have tried to do throughout my career. I will never apologize for trying to seek justice for victims of crime.”

Weirich prosecuted the case against Braswell, a former middle school principal, in 2005 and he was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He appealed the ruling in 2008 but was unsuccessful.

However, a defense attorney and a Shelby County prosecutor reviewing the case in 2011 found a sealed, manila envelope with a sticky note attached that read something close to “do not show to the defense” and Weirich’s initials, according to court testimony. Hiding evidence that could help a defendant’s case in court is illegal.

That envelope went missing. Asked in court about the mysterious envelope in 2014, Weirich said she couldn’t recall such an envelope and that it was not her practice to hide evidence.

That missing envelope is the centerpiece of the Braswell family’s new complaint against Weirich to TBPR. The complaint also claims other evidence helpful to Braswell’s case was withheld from his attorneys and that a key witness for the prosecution was “pressured to testify a certain way.”

The complaint says a TBPR investigation into the case and the SCDAG’s practices “would get to the bottom of this.”

“We believe the the integrity of the D.A.’s evidence files are of paramount importance to society as a whole and the entire criminal justice process as are the safeguards to ensure justice is being achieved in the proceedings that not only determine guilt, but that also clear the innocent,” reads the complaint.

Further, the complaint says case files should be shared before during, and after trials, that SCDAG attorneys should not be able to purge their files of evidence, and that prosecutors, too, should be held accountable “in the process of determining guilt and clearing the innocent.”

The very last sentence of the complaint underscores the hope against racial bias in the case.

“We hope and pray that Vern’s skin color does not stand as a bar to these matters being fully investigated from an unbiased perspective,” the complaint reads.

Sewer in Memphis

There will be an increase on customers’ Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) bills beginning January 1 to fund improvements to the city’s stormwater and sewer systems.

The Memphis City Council voted Tuesday to approve an increase of the stormwater and sewer fees that shows up on customers’ monthly MLGW bills.

In January, stormwater fees will initially increase from $4.02 to $4.64 per unit, while the sewer fees will go from $2.27 to $2.87 per unit each month.

The plan is to continue to raise the fees in phases over the next five years, totalling an overall increase of 50 percent from the current costs.

After January, stormwater fees will see its next increase in July 2019, as the fee will raise to $5.25, and then finally to $6.03 in July 2022.

The next increase phase for sewer fees will not be until January 2020 when the fee will raise to $3.32.

At the end of the five year period, the Council says on average a customer will spend about $9 more each month— $108 more per year— on stormwater and sewer fees.


City Council Chairman Berlin Boyd says although he and other Council members realize the increase in fees will not be a “cost easily absorbed by every citizen,” these increased rates are necessary to fund the more than $150 million in stormwater projects and finance over $872 million for the sewer system.

Weirich

Shelby County District Attorney General (SCDAG) Amy Weirich’s office ranks first in Tennessee for prosecutorial misconduct, according to a new report from a Harvard Law School group.

Weirich called the report “grossly inaccurate” and one that paints an “incomplete account of these cases.” But a local criminal justice advocate said the report was enough to call Weirich “one of the most problematic prosecutors in the entire country.”

From 2010 to 2015, the SCDAG office had the highest number of misconduct findings and the most overturned convictions in Tennessee, according to the report from the Fair Punishment Project.

The group “is helping to create a fair and accountable justice system through legal action, public discourse, and educational initiatives,” according to its website. The project is a joint initiative of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice and its Criminal Justice Institute.

Most of the misconduct findings in Shelby County, of which the report says there are more than a dozen, come as Weirch and the attorneys in her office have failed to hand over relevant information to defense attorneys and have made inappropriate statements during trials.

“Leaders set the tone for an organization, and a look into Amy Weirich’s own record of misconduct, illustrates why Memphis cannot shake its misconduct problem,” the report reads.

For this, the report’s authors point mainly to Weirich’s conduct during the murder trial of Noura Jackson, noting that Weirich allegedly hid a statement from a key witness and violated Jackson’s constitutional right to silence in her closing argument.

Weirich faced public discipline last year from the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility for her conduct in the case but the charges against her were dismissed and she was issued a private reprimand.

“[The report] is a grossly inaccurate and incomplete account of these cases as seen through the eyes of a defense advocacy group,” Weirich said in a statement. “I became a prosecutor to hold the guilty accountable and to protect the innocent in every case, and that is what I have tried to do throughout my career. I will never apologize for trying to seek justice for victims of crime.” 
[pullquote-3]
Josh Spickler, the executive director with the Memphis-based criminal justice reform group Just City, said the misconduct findings in Weirich’s office were not isolated events or occasional instances of human error but “a pattern of misconduct, ethical violations, and inappropriate behavior.”

“In the six years since DAG Weirich’s appointment to this position, this amounts to more than just an appalling miscarriage of justice,” Spickler said. “Our criminal justice system has experienced significant delays and has spent millions of dollars as a result of this conduct. Victims and their families have been denied justice and the accused have spent years awaiting a fair determination of their guilt.”

[pullquote-1]The report focused on allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in Tennessee, California, Louisiana, and Missouri. Those states were apparently chosen because of the media buzz surrounding high-profile cases and prosecutors in certain jurisdictions.

In New Orleans, DA Leon Cannizzaro repeatedly hid evidence, issued fake subpoenas and more, the report said. In Orange County, Calif. DA Tony Rackauckas’ office has faced scandals involving a secret jailhouse informant program, the suppression of evidence, and falsified testimony. In Missouri last year, Jennifer Joyce, the then-elected city of St. Louis prosecutor, defended a prosecutor in her office with 25 misconduct allegations, according to the report.

The report said that (adjusted for population) 89 percent of Tennessee counties had fewer findings of misconduct than Shelby County. Also, 94 percent of Tennessee had fewer misconduct-related conviction reversals than Shelby.

[pullquote-2]For Weirich, the report also pointed to a 2004 capital murder trial in which she called the co-defendants “greed and evil” 21 times in her opening and closing arguments. Weirich’s name calling earned her a rebuke from the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals that reminded her that it “is improper for the prosecutor to use epithets to characterize a defendant” and called her argument “unseemly.” One of the two defendants got a new trial thanks to Weirich’s arguments, the report said.

The report also pointed to another 2004 murder case in which a prosecutor and a defense attorney found a manila envelope with a sticky note attached that read “do not show defense” and carried Weirich’s initials. The envelope vanished and in 2014 Weirich claimed she couldn’t recall it.

The report also spotlights the murder case of Andrew Thomas in which Weirich failed to report that a witness had been paid for her testimony. Weirich claimed that the witness was paid in a trial previous to her prosecution of the case.The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the conviction in the case.