Brittany Brown, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

Shelby County’s first Democratic district attorney in decades, Steve Mulroy, recently crossed the 100-day mark of being in office, following a campaign that promised to bring progress and change to the criminal justice system.

On the campaign trail, Mulroy prioritized tackling violent crime and reforming the cash bail system, among other efforts to restore public trust in the criminal justice system.

In the days after the campaign, MLK50 talked to people who supported Mulroy and asked them what they wanted to see the new DA accomplish while in office. So far, Mulroy has delivered on many of their priorities, including increased hiring and expanded diversity in the DA’s office, while launching the Justice Review Unit and revamping the Economic Crimes Unit.

The path to plant seeds for reform hasn’t been a smooth one. Just as Mulroy took office on Aug. 31, two high-profile incidents shook Memphis: the kidnapping, assault and death of Eliza Fletcher and the livestreamed fatal shooting spree that left several people injured and dead. The city and the new progressive DA were catapulted into the spotlight, along with questions around how to continue to support and push for criminal justice reform in face of violent crime.

Still, Mulroy seemed to remain firm in his commitment to reform the criminal justice system while keeping violent crime as his top priority. One case highlighting a stark difference between Mulroy and his predecessor is the recent release of Courtney Anderson, who’d been sentenced to 162 years in prison for multiple counts of theft and forgery, an excessive sentence. After serving 25 years, he was recently released after a Shelby County criminal court judge brought the case to Mulroy’s office. “We never could have set the sentences straight if Amy Weirich was still in office. She was the original prosecutor on the case,” said Judge Paula Skahan.

The People’s Checklist: Shelby County resident’s top priorities for DA Mulroy

Create more transparency and accountability
Establish a Conviction Review Unit
Implement community-centered restorative justice practices
Decrease transfer of youth to adult courts
More community involvement and a diverse staff reflective of Shelby County demographics, in the DA’s office

One hundred days isn’t long in an eight-year term – the nation’s longest elected prosecutor term. But Mulroy is taking stock of what he’s done in that time.

So, we’re taking a quick look back at what he’s accomplished so far and revisiting some of the people we talked to see what they think of Mulroy’s promises and actions.

Create more transparency and accountability

In August, Earle Fisher was among those calling for increased transparency from Mulroy. Now, Fisher says, the marked difference between Mulroy and former DA Amy Weirich is his commitment to open and honest public engagement: “[Mulroy is] not running from accountability, and I think this is one of the more fundamental things that you can ask for and demand of people in elected office,” said Fisher, founder of Up the Vote 901 and senior pastor of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Whitehaven.

While remaining cautiously pragmatic and optimistic, Fisher believes Shelby County residents are still growing accustomed to Mulroy as the new DA and learning about his values and priorities in office.

A group of nine men and one woman stand outside the Lorraine Motel in Memphis having a discussion. In the center of the group is Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy. — Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy speaks with workers ahead of a press conference speaking out against this year’s campaign against Amendment 1, a right-to-work bill that passed despite efforts to stop it by workers and labor organizations. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

Tikelia Rucker, political organizer with Memphis for All and a member of the Justice and Safety Alliance, is excited to see Mulroy taking steps to restore trust in the community. Like Fisher, Rucker believes Mulroy’s openness with the Shelby County community is the first step to reform. More representation and transparency are what the community wants to see happen sooner rather than later, she said.

Establish a Conviction Review Unit

The new Justice Review Unit, launched Dec. 1, is one of the newest offices in Tennessee to take a look back at wrongful convictions and sentences, and officer-involved shootings. The Davidson County District Attorney’s Office in Nashville established a Conviction Review Unit in 2017, making it the first and only unit of its kind in Tennessee at the time.

Now, five years later, Memphis follows, but with one major difference — an additional review of wrongful sentences (Nashville’s office only reviews convictions), which will be a high-focus area for the JRU, Mulroy said. Also, the Economic Crimes Unit, revamped and launched Nov. 4, will focus on worker exploitation, an issue Mulroy says is rampant in Shelby County.

Rucker considers the new Justice Review Unit a major accomplishment so soon in the DA’s term. Still, she’s also critical of how information about the unit and its application process will be regularly shared inside prisons. The JRU application is available online and by mail only to incarcerated people and their attorneys.Some prisons don’t have internet access or may encounter issues receiving mail.

William Arnold served on Mulroy’s transition team and was a member of the Justice Review Unit working group. Mulroy’s commitment to establishing the JRU shows it wasn’t “just a campaign promise, but a piece of hope,” said Arnold, a formerly incarcerated person who was exonerated in 2021 after a wrongful conviction in Nashville.

Arnold wants to see Mulroy continue to enlist the voices, opinions and actions of regular people in the community while taking an objective, humane and case-by-case approach to prosecution.

“In Tennessee and in a lot of Southern states, we have politicians who say they’re tough on crime, but they’re really tough on people,” Arnold said. “Take into consideration that a person’s sentence may not match the crime and that locking them up and throwing away the key is not always the answer.”

Implement community-centered restorative justice practices

Fundamentally, Fisher wants to see fewer people being prosecuted and incarcerated for petty crimes that reflect a need for mental health services, educational engagement and other social safety net services. Fisher said that he hopes to see Mulroy take his public service role as DA and prioritize public safety, not increase the heavy hand of law enforcement and incarceration.

Based on Mulroy’s campaign promises and professional background, Fisher believes in Mulroy’s ability to address violent crime comprehensively but knows the change he wants to see will take much longer than 100 days to accomplish.

“Structural change is very rarely implemented immediately,” Fisher said. “They are still adjusting and adapting to what it means to try to be a progressive prosecutor, if there is such a thing.”

The top priorities Rucker wants to see Mulroy approach are decreasing crime, continuing to restore trust and creating different avenues for the community to work with the DA’s office. She hopes to see more partnerships between the DA’s office, law enforcement agencies and city and county leaders that center restorative justice and holistic solutions to violent crime.

“It has to be a collaborative effort in order for us to really, really move the needle,” Rucker said. “It does give a sense of hope like Memphis is moving in the right direction, and that’s what this year has been about: progress. Just baby steps to build and move forward in a progressive manner.”

Decrease transfer of youth to adult courts

While wrongfully incarcerated for seven years, Arnold said he encountered other men who had been inside for years, serving decades-long life sentences for crimes they committed years ago in their youth. In Shelby County, there’s a regular pattern of transferring youth to adult court, a practice so common that data show Shelby County transfers more children – primarily Black children – than any other county in Tennessee.

Arnold hopes Mulroy changes this and, instead, approaches each juvenile crime on a case-by-case basis, looking at the root causes of crime and offering diversion programs in the form of job training and educational opportunities.

“What else can we do versus locking them away and allowing them to develop in that horrible place,” Arnold said, “because you’re not going to get anything good from it.”

Mulroy says he remains committed to decreasing the number of youth transferred to adult court and plans to partner with the newly elected Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon to implement more restorative justice and early intervention practices among juvenile defendants.

More community involvement and a diverse staff reflective of Shelby County demographics in the DA’s office

A view of the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center. Sunlight is reflected in the windows. — The district attorney’s office is on the eighth floor of the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center. Photo by Brad Vest for MLK50

Mulroy’s focus during the first few months in office has been on hiring for the understaffed team he inherited. Of all new staff hires, 50% are people of color, compared to 30% people of color in the previous administration’s staff makeup, and 40% of newly hired attorneys are people of color, compared to the previous 15%, Mulroy told MLK50.

“You want [staff] to have cultural competence and a real understanding, both of the defendants and the victims, in order to make good decisions,” Mulroy said. “But it’s also just as important as a matter of public trust.”

At just a few months into his eight-year tenure, Mulroy said he’s pleasantly surprised at how open and welcoming the DA’s office staff is to change under his leadership.

In addition to hiring more staff and increasing staff diversity, one of Mulroy’s first action items as DA was to issue instructions to his staff to deprioritize prosecuting marijuana possession — which disproportionately affects Black men — and reprioritize prosecuting non-fatal shootings in efforts to address violent crime. Mulroy said he took these steps in an effort to restore public trust in the fairness of the criminal justice system.

“We need to restore public confidence so we can get the community cooperating with law enforcement — providing tips, reporting crimes, serving as witnesses,” Mulroy said. “That really is the only way we’re going to bend the curve on violent crime.”

The coming years of Mulroy’s tenure as DA will be marked by reform through continuously hiring diverse staff that can make new decisions and lock in change for years to come, which will, in turn, slowly reshape the criminal justice system.

“A lot of the change that’s occurring right now is happening in a hundred or a thousand different little decisions that are being made by assistant district attorneys. That’s happening gradually, little by little, without much fanfare,” Mulroy said. “I want to hardwire reforms and bake in change that will last beyond my tenure.”

Hardwiring change

Mulroy walks the fine line of being a progressive DA while addressing crime in a city that’s experienced an increase in property crime and an increase in major violent crime. At this start of his term, the Eliza Fletcher and Ezekiel Kelly cases — both major violent crimes allegedly committed by formerly incarcerated people released early from prison — struck a dissonant chord between Memphians who believe in reform and those who believe in a “tough on crime” approach.

As DA, Mulroy is committed to being “smart on crime,” as he described it, instituting swift and certain punishment: “For decades, our approach to violent crime [has been] to lock more people up and to lock them up for longer. It’s demonstrably not working.” The metrics for progress, Mulroy said, will reflect not in the conviction rate or the years of sentences, but in the rate of recidivism, or “criminal acts that result in rearrest, reconviction or a return to prison,” according to the National Institute of Justice.

Now, the DA is focused on answering the question, how do you hardwire change? Aside from focusing on reforms that can be implemented quickly, Mulroy’s long-term focus is structural change, like expanding restorative justice opportunities. Deep change like this takes time, funding and resources, Mulroy said.

Mulroy plans to hire staff who will be devoted to animal abuse and neglect cases. He also plans to hire a staff member who can coordinate the different treatment programs and rehabilitative services, like drug and mental health court, so they can be incorporated into plea offers.

“This [public office] is the one that has the greatest potential for making a difference. Because the DA has such broad discretion, one person can just really completely change the direction of the criminal justice system — not overnight, but certainly within eight years,” Mulroy said.

As the November general election nears, Shelby County residents will soon vote for several key leaders in local, state, and federal positions, along with four proposed amendments to the Tennessee Constitution.

Tennessee Constitutional Amendment 1, or the so-called “right-to-work” amendment, is the central focus of labor organizers this election season. On the November 8th ballot, voters will be instructed to select “yes” or “no” as to whether they want to enshrine “right-to-work” in the state constitution, although the law has been on the books in Tennessee for 75 years, since 1947.

Supporters of the amendment say it will protect workers’ freedom of choice to join unions and strengthen the state economy. Former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and current Gov. Bill Lee both support the “right-to-work” amendment, urging residents to vote ‘yes’ in a video statement.

“Right-to-work is common sense, and with federal efforts to repeal it nationwide, it’s time for Tennesseeans to speak up,” Lee said in the video statement. “This amendment will protect the rights of Tennessee workers and help keep our economy growing.”

But those who oppose the amendment, like Memphis labor organizer Jeffrey Lichtenstein, say that “it undermines the financial and political strength of unions,” ultimately limiting protections and collective bargaining efforts for people in the workplace.

Among the sponsors of the “right-to-work” amendment is Brian Kelsey, a Republican state senator; co-sponsors include Republican state Rep. Kevin Vaughan. Of state legislators who represent Shelby County voters in the Tennessee General Assembly, those in support and those against amending “right-to-work” in the state constitution are split at party lines, with Republicans for and Democrats against.

Under the “right-to-work” law, unions are required to represent all employees in a workplace, but unions are not allowed to require that workers pay membership dues in return. On paper, the law reads as if it prevents workers from being forced to join a union, but federal law already guarantees this protection. Essentially, it forces unions to provide workers with the benefits of union membership without paying any of the cost.

(Left) A Black tobacco worker on strike holds a sign reading, “Our Boss Owns 77 Houses. We Can’t Pay Rent” in this photograph from the 1930s.
(Right) A 1937 packing plant strike in Maryland had both Black and white workers on the line together. (Photos: via Library of Congress)

THE ROOTS OF RIGHT-TO-WORK

The “right-to-work” movement began in the 1930s and took off in the 1940s, led by Southern segregationists and white supremacist businessmen who feared unions promoted worker unity and solidarity across racial lines. In fact, the phrase was popularized by Vance Muse, a Texas oil industry lobbyist and known associate of the racial terror group the Ku Klux Klan.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. actively campaigned against “right-to-work” legislation during his lifetime, drawing the connection between racial and economic equity. In 1961, he told the AFL-CIO that “the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.”

Twelve states, including Tennessee, enacted the law in the 1940s. Over the next several decades, other states adopted “right-to-work” laws, but Tennessee is the first state in the 2020s to attempt to change its constitution with a “right-to-work” amendment. Alabama was the last state to successfully do so in 2016, and Oklahoma did the same in 2001.

Today, 27 states are “right-to-work” states, including Tennessee and the rest of the South. Just nine of those states currently have “right-to-work” enshrined in state constitutions, while 18 have laws on the books. If Tennessee becomes the 10th state to amend its constitution with “right-to-work,” it could “open the floodgate to it happening in other Republican-controlled states around the country,” Lichtenstein said.

Opponents of Tennessee Constitutional Amendment 1 said embedding “right-to-work” in the state’s constitution aims to limit the bargaining power of unions since it requires them to represent all employees in a workplace, whether or not they are dues-paying union members.

“If there are a bunch of people in unions who are benefiting from them and are not paying any dues to cover the cost of those services, the unions in the state are sort of being sucked dry,” said Lichtenstein. “[Unions are] unable to fight for better working conditions, to expand union membership, to fight for better workplace protections across the state.”

If “right-to-work” is amended in the state’s constitution, it will become markedly more difficult for future voters and state leaders to pass legislation in favor of organized labor, workers, and unions, “right-to-work” opponents say.

Under current federal law, employers are prohibited from discriminating against workers who refuse to join a union as a condition of employment. So the long-term goal of “right-to-work” is to steadily and slowly erode the collective bargaining power of labor unions — effectively erasing the collective power and voice of workers, according to Lichtenstein.

“[A union] is funded by its membership, and it has, more than anything else in this country’s history, the strongest record of anti-poverty and fighting for economic equity,” Lichtenstein said.

WORKING IN A “RIGHT-TO-WORK” STATE

Sweetrica Baker, operations and digital organizing coordinator with the Memphis and West Tennessee AFL-CIO Labor Council, said “right-to-work” states tend to have lower wages, and the data backs up her claim.

A 2015 study by the Economic Policy Institute shows people in “right-to-work” states, like Tennessee, earn an average of 3 percent less in wages than those in non-“right-to-work” states.

In “right-to-work” states, union density — the percentage of workers who are union members — is low, at 6.5 percent, while membership in states that do not have the law on the books is more than double, at almost 14 percent, according to a 2019 analysis by Bloomberg Law. Union organizing activity and work stoppages are also lower in “right-to-work” states, the analysis shows, with non-union workers earning less than union workers, and workers overall earning less in “right-to-work” states.

Altogether, people in “right-to-work” states earn $11,058 less per year, the poverty rate is higher at 11 percent, workers are 12 percent more likely to be uninsured, and workers have a 57 percent higher risk of dying on the job than people in non-“right-to-work” states, according to AFL-CIO’s Common Sense Economics training program.

“Right-to-work” supporters, like former Gov. Bill Haslam, say the law supports economic growth, citing “a lot of success recruiting jobs to Tennessee.” Haslam said “right-to-work” is a fundamental reason the state is a good place to live and work.

Opponents of “right-to-work” say the law is why employers are attracted to states like Tennessee: “Businesses come here for that specific reason. They’re concerned about growing their money,” Baker said.

Today, Memphis is one of the poorest large metro areas in the nation. Of the 25 largest employers in the area — including FedEx, which employs 30,000 workers alone — only two employers, Shelby County Schools and University of Tennessee Health Science Center, supported increasing hourly wages during the 2018 “Fight for $15” campaign.

Baker said the effects of what she sees as anti-union and anti-worker “right-to-work” legislation trickles down into communities. People who earn low wages have difficulty accessing affordable food and affordable housing, ultimately leading to less money circulating in the local economy. She said the law negatively impacts funding for public schools, infrastructure, and other public goods and services supported by taxpayers, who tend to spend less when wages are lower.

In Memphis, the economy is based heavily on low-wage jobs. Lichtenstein said those who support amending “right-to-work” in the Tennessee Constitution envision a state that’s built on low wages and economic inequality.

“Most people that I talk to think that labor has an inherent dignity, and folks should be able to live a good life working a regular job,” Lichtenstein said. “That’s also good economics. When you raise wages, you actually help the economy.”

Brittany Brown is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her at brittany.brown@mlk50.com.

This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power, and policy in Memphis.