Tag: Amy Weirich

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Deforming Tennessee Justice

A Tennessee “country lawyer” named Andrew Jackson founded the Democratic Party. An Illinois “prairie lawyer” named Abraham Lincoln founded the Republican Party. Both represented people charged with violent crimes. Jackson allegedly committed a few of his own in his early years, and Lincoln was defending people charged with murder, right up to the time of his run for the presidency.  

Lincoln’s memorial now stands on our national mall in Washington, D.C., as both a tribute to justice and the most visible platform for those seeking fairness to peaceably assemble. Many of our founding fathers were defense attorneys. John Adams even defended the British soldiers at the Boston massacre. But today, the voices of private criminal defense lawyers are not wanted nor welcomed by the state government in Nashville. Somehow, American heroes like Thurgood Marshall and the fictional Atticus Finch are no longer valued as part of American culture.

Last week, Governor Bill Haslam formed a 27-member task force to reform sentencing laws in Tennessee. The goal is a noble one, as nearly every study of prisons reveals that the United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but more than 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, demonstrate the anger that many citizens have at a government that is over militarized and increasingly appears to be waging war on its own people. 

Citizens of Tennessee can likely expect more of the same from the sentencing task force. The commission counts numerous prosecutors, judges, and police chiefs among its membership, and gives the appearance of being well rounded. However, the task force lacks even one private criminal defense lawyer among its members. In fact, the governor appointed only one recently reelected public defender to the task force. In other words, almost no one charged with “reforming” sentencing in a draconian justice system has ever defended a citizen at a sentencing hearing.  

The act of standing alone with a single citizen as the overwhelming weight of our government crushes his liberty is an experience that almost no one on the task force understands. The government will reform itself largely on the advice of its own employees, and without the advice of those independent thinkers who exist outside of government — like the lawyers who founded our country.

Six Shelby County residents were appointed to the task force. All are white Republicans, now tasked with reforming a system that overwhelmingly affects people of color. But, more importantly, none have defended a sentencing hearing since these laws were created in 1994.  

Senator Brian Kelsey is a lawyer who has never argued a case in criminal court. Sheriff Bill Oldham is not a lawyer, but his son serves as a prosecutor in the criminal courts. His predecessor in the Sheriff’s Office is Mark Luttrell, our current county mayor, who never argued a criminal case. Bill Gibbons is the current director of Tennessee’s Department of Homeland Security, a law enforcement position. As a lawyer, he served as our district attorney in an administrative capacity and never argued a criminal case.  

Amy Weirich is one of the most accomplished trial attorneys in the history of Shelby County, but has served only in the role of prosecutor. The Honorable John Campbell is equally accomplished as a trial lawyer, having served as a prosecutor from 1986 until he took the bench in 2012. A notable local lawyer who differs from all others on the committee in both appearance and work history but was not selected is Memphis Mayor A C Wharton.

I know several of these citizens, but my affection for them does not change the fact that each of them presents only one side of the debate about sentencing in Shelby County. For example, our laws send people to prison for six years for possessing $40 worth of marijuana, an act that is no longer a crime in several states. Possessing just $10 of cocaine can lead to a 30-year sentence.  

The elected officials of the task force all promise to be “tough” on crime. None ran advertisements promising to be “fair” or “smart” on crime. But the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that families in Shelby County are destroyed by many of our sentencing laws. How can a commission this one-sided and completely lacking in practical perspective make any meaningful reform? 

The task force should remember the words of Lincoln: “A law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.” It would be even better for Tennessee if the task force had members who actually live and work as Lincoln did — to remind the group in person.

Mike Working is the owner of The Working Law Firm, and serves as a member of the board of directors for the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Categories
Opinion The BruceV Blog

Election Results Give Reason for Optimism

It’s been a long time since I woke on the day after an election in Shelby County feeling as optimistic and grateful as I do today. Let me count the ways:

First, my state senator, the mentally and physically impaired embarrassment, Ophelia Ford, was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary by Lee Harris, a smart, young law school professor with, I suspect, a bright political future hereabouts. This was the result I wanted most from this election cycle. Win.

Across the state in Knoxville, GOP primary voters turned out in droves to demolish the re-election bid of lunatic state senator Stacey Campfield, aka “Mr. Don’t Say Gay.” Thanks, Knoxville. Love ya. For grins, check out Campfield’s reaction to his defeat on his blog.

Perhaps the result that surprised me most was the defeat, statewide, of Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey’s attempted purge of three Tennessee Supreme Court justices. The upshot: Ron spent a few hundred thousand dollars to let Tennesseans know the names of three Supreme Court justices. Epic fail. Couldn’t happen to a sleazier jackass. This vote, and Lamar Alexander’s victory over anti-immigration nut Joe Carr, gave me some real hope that the Tea Party tide may have finally turned in Tennessee. I hope so, anyway.

Joe Brown and Henri Brooks were resoundingly trounced in their races for attorney general and Juvenile Court clerk, respectively. I’ve had my issues with Brown’s opponent, Amy Weirich, but Brown, like Brooks, simply self-destructed, making Weirich the winner by default, and by a landslide.

To recount, Memphis purged itself of Ophelia Ford, and along with other Shelby County voters, soundly rejected two potential lightning rods/potential embarrassments for public office.

On the other hand, Germantown and Collierville re-elected self-promoting loon Brian Kelsay and public drunk Curry Todd to the state legislature — without opposition. Shades of Ophelia Ford. The next time you hear some suburbanite snarking on Memphis politicians, remind them to check their own backyard.

And I was glad to see Steve Cohen retain his 9th District Congressional seat. Some advice: If local Democrats want to win county-wide races, they would do well to figure out how to organize behind Cohen and his presidential support and national clout, instead of lobbing a futile and divisive primary challenge at him every two years. The muddle-headedness of the SCDP is self-defeating.

There also needs to be serious state legislation passed to crack down on the illicit fake “official ballot” business hereabouts. It’s scandalous. But, all in all, not bad results to wake up to, IMO.

Categories
Fly On The Wall Blog Opinion

Six Completely Screwed Up Things Judge Joe Brown Has Said About Women. And Men Who Act Like Women.

Joe & friends

  • Joe & friends

Politics is the ultimate reality show. That’s especially true in Memphis this election year thanks to the mud-slinging antics of former Judge turned TV arbitrator Joe Brown, who recently accused his political opponent, District Attorney Amy Weirich of being gay and in the closet. Brown’s subsequent apology for the attempted public shaming generously allows that gays have nothing to be ashamed of, blaming the victim of the intended gay smear because she doesn’t do more to support LGBT rights.

The only surprising thing about this dustup is that people were surprised. It’s not like Weirich is the first person Judge Joe has accused of being gay on the “down low.” Judge Joe’s long history as an arbiter of proper gender conduct suggests he has a serious problem with women, especially if they don’t have a man. Why you may ask? Because women without men raise boys who act like women, which more or less implies that there must be something wrong with the way women act in the first place. For fifteen seasons the celebrity judge presided over a make believe courtroom, slut-shaming and ball-busting his way to becoming America’s second favorite TV judge, just ahead of The People’s Court‘s Marilyn Milian, but well behind Judge Judy. But there’s a dirty little not-so-secret secret about popular courtroom programming. It’s nothing like an actual courtroom, and critics have long worried that it warps viewers’ sense of how our legal system actually works. The combative and openly biased behavior TV judges regularly engage in to score big on a daytime/late night reality shows would merit disciplinary action in the real world.

This is a gavel, which is sometimes called a skank hammer.

  • This is a gavel, which is sometimes called a “skank hammer.”

Court shows are typically confrontational reality TV, and that kind of programming has always trucked in manufactured drama, aggression, poorsploitation and heterosexist culture-bating. And like I said, when it came to bringing in the ratings, Judge Joe was always a big #2, swirling around the commode of trash television.

Here are just a few of the wacky things the tough-loving judge has said about women. And Men who act like women.

Poor Snidely Whiplash. He was probably raised in a single parent home without a man to teach him man things.

  • Poor Snidely Whiplash. He was probably raised in a single parent home without a man to teach him man things.

1. Men are Weak, Women are Weaker: Judge Joe Brown describes himself as a “Defender of Womanhood,” and a “Promoter of Manhood.” It’s practically the guy’s motto. And what’s wrong with defending womanhood and promoting manhood, anyway? Isn’t that chivalry, or something? It’s certainly Medieval, right?


The cast of the musical Camelot explains the true meaning of chivalry.

I’m not going to spend too much time with this because it’s pretty self-explanatory and the other entries are solid examples of just how screwed up an idea it is. By making this his mission Judge Joe is basically saying that women require a strong man to protect them from weaker men and also from intrinsic weaknesses of the feminine kind. When Joe talks about promoting manhood what he’s actually promoting is anti-girlishness in men.

2. Thugs are bad because they act like women and homosexuals aren’t strong role models: Judge Joe thinks men have “too many puny ‘role models.’” In April, 2012, at a “Men’s Day program” held in in the Hathaway-Howard Fine Arts Center on the Pine Bluff Campus of the University of Arkansas, he supported his unified puny dude theory by listing numerous examples of unmanly male role models: “prima donna” athletes, “uninformed” journalists, “self-serving” politicians, homosexuals in the entertainment industry,” and… wait, what? Why are homosexuals puny role models? And more importantly, what would “prima donna” athlete and openly gay defensive end Michael Sams have to say about that?

Clearly a gangbanger. Probably a woman.

  • Clearly a ‘gangbanger.” Probably a woman.

But wait, there’s more.

“Gangbangers and would-be thugs are really nothing but girls, not men,” he continued. “Boys with bling don’t have jobs because they think some woman somewhere will be silly enough to support them. It requires moral and physical courage to be a real man, and that’s why you need an education. People need your leadership.”

The shorter Joe: It takes moral and physical courage to not be a girl. Ladies, take note.

3. Pretty women are insecure and easier to deal with than ugly women: “I don’t deal with ugly women,” Judge Joe told some adoring fans one night after he had been drinking.


Beauty is only skin deep but life’s too short for ugly chicks.

A widely-shared video clip shows Brown seating young ladies on his knee and pontificating on the differences between pretty and ugly women. So why does Judge Joe prefer pretty girls? Because,““Pretty women are insecure,” and therefore easier to deal with.

Well duh! Anybody who’s ever tried to exploit somebody’s weakness for personal satisfaction knows that.

4. If you act gay, you’re gay. And it might be contagious: Once upon a time Cracked, the humor magazine turned online list-factory decided to infiltrate the weird world of cheaply-manufactured court TV. The storyline Cracked developed was irresistible: A man asked his friend to hire strippers for his bachelor party. Only the man hired male strippers and now the groom to be isn’t just single, he’s gay. Ridiculous, right? So ridiculous, in fact, that every major Hollywood courtroom wanted them.

Its possible that this list is a Cracked ripoff. Okay, this list is a Cracked ripoff

  • It’s possible that this list is a “Cracked” ripoff. Okay, this list is a “Cracked” ripoff

Cracked took its case to Judge Joe who, before ruling in favor of the plaintiff, attempted an outing of the defendant: “If you hired these people, obviously you might like what they have to offer…If there was a time for you to come out of the closet, this is the time for you to do it.” It’s unclear what bearing the defendant’s sexual orientation had on the case or the plaintiff’s amazing transformation.

1977244_10202541362398685_1893129136513610568_n.jpg

5. Single mothers are to blame for pretty much everything: A 15-year old male student accused of pushing a female classmate told Judge Joe he’d been called a “bitch.” Judge Joe’s response: “Maybe you were acting like one. Sounds like it to me. You’ve got earrings in your ears.”

Then Brown dressed down the boy’s mother: “You know what your problem is lady? Let’s get to you first so I’ll get it out of the way. There is no man in this boy’s life to give him man training. You’re the mother and you condone him going off and doing such physical injury to this young woman woman [cross talk]. Be quiet! [Crosstalk]. Now mam. He does not have a man in his life to give him man training. You take the position in writing that you condone what he did to this young lady… When there is no man in a boy’s life and his mother says his transgressions violently on other females is okay, where do I go from there but to say maybe, maybe what’s going on is because these single mothers with a lot of babies at home don’t want the man around, and then teach their sons to do the same bloody thing. And I’m looking at him with two earrings in his ears, and I’m listening to what she has said he was called, reading what the school report says and I’m thinking to myself that was a pretty apt description of this aggressive young girl over here. Not that one [the actual girl], the young girl standing to your left [the boy.]

Judge Joe, in the spirit of every schoolyard bully ever, called the teen boy a “sissy.” That was just the warm up for an epic rant about manliness and the failings of women. “You punk,” he continued. “You spineless, girl-acting, unmanly little cretin, what’s wrong with you? Then you’re gonna try to demonstrate some kind of attitude toward me? Roll your eyes? C’mon. Play girl. I’m getting a good demonstration. And you give me this nasty unmanly attitude about some young lady provoked you, using some language against you… Man’s got an obligation to protect womanhood. That has been my lifetime avocation. Protecting womanhood and promoting manhood.”

Hitting and pushing is troubling behavior. Seeding gender insecurity is clearly the solution!

6. If you don’t stand up straight you might be on the down low: After accusing a male defendant, whose activities had nothing to do with sex or sexuality of being potentially gay on the down low Judge Joe decided to stir the pot until it boiled. “What I used to see was, when there was a man standing at the podium, what he was doing was behaving in a certain way,” he said. “And I saw the young ladies and they would act in a certain way. And what’s interesting is over the last twelve years I’ve been doing this particular arbitration thing I’m doing right now, and considering [crosstalk]… Be quiet! The 20 years I have done this before I have noticed an interesting transition. The boys are beginning to act like the girls used to in terms of their body language, rolling eyes, head up, hand on hip, moving around. Women, since time immemorial have talked over someone who’s tried to address them and you are talking over me just like you are a woman. So when you start acting like one, sounding like one, moving like one, then I’m going to put it out there.”

Happens all the time.

  • Happens all the time.

After provoking the defendant in ways unbecoming in an actual courtroom and making presumptive comments about the defendant’s mother, Judge Joe called the LAPD to arrest the defendant for mirroring his own bad, womanly behavior.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

With Election Less Than a Month Away, Patterns Are Taking Shape

CREDIT: Jackson baker

We are now less than a month away from August 7th, when the final votes in the Shelby County general election and state and federal primaries will be counted, and distinct patterns are taking shape.

Those races that were expected to be the most closely watched ones at the beginning of the election season — for the 9th District congressional seat, for Shelby County Mayor, for District Attorney General, for the District 29 state Senate seat, and for Juvenile Court Judge and Juvenile Court Clerk, among others — continue to command attention.

Although several circumstances — including charges and counter-charges, endorsements, demographics, and the like — are potentially influencing voter reactions, one factor that cannot be overlooked is the perennial one of money. Some candidates have it in spades, while others are struggling.

A word of caution: Lest it be forgotten, two candidates in the May 6th primaries for county offices — Kenneth Whalum, running for the Democratic nomination for County Mayor, and Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the District 10 County Commission seat — nearly won races against highly favored opponents with more visible campaigns and vastly more funding.

Credit those outcomes to the power of name recognition, which remains a major factor in the current scene.

For what it’s worth, however, here are three examples:

• City Councilman Lee Harris, who is campaigning aggressively in his Democratic primary effort to unseat District 29 state Senator Ophelia Ford, garnering endorsements by the bushel and across the political board, is also raising disproportionate amounts of money — he boasts a 10-to-1 ratio over Ford’s in the reporting quarter ending June 30th. (His edge in money on hand is somewhat lesser — $28,646.29 to $11,549.66, a shade less than 3-to-1).

• Incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose ads have been omnipresent on TV of late, has a marked financial advantage over Democratic nominee Deidre Malone, with a reported $132,417 on hand as of the June 30th report, against $38,915.

• Rather famously, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General, Joe Brown, whose colleagues on the party ticket were counting on him for help, both from the luster of his “Judge Joe Brown” TV fame and from his bankroll, has hit snags in both respects and reports only $745 on hand as of June 30th, compared to $269,227 for his opponent, Republican incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich.

In all three of these cases, the financial underdog is seeking a tactical edge elsewhere.

Ford had her first public event last week, a fund raiser/meet-and-greet at the funeral home of brother Edmond Ford on Elvis Presley Boulevard, gathering around her not only numerous members of the still powerful Ford extended family but supporters from elsewhere on the political spectrum, notably GOP County Commissioner Terry Roland, her former opponent in a 2005 special election.

Malone continued with a series of events targeting various components of the Shelby County body politic — meeting, for example, with a group of women’s rights advocates on Saturday at Pyro’s Pizza on Union, and contrasting her strong pro-choice stance with what she described as positions on Luttrell’s part that were ambivalent at best, particularly in his having chosen to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood in 2011 as the county’s partner in employed Title X federal funding for women’s health.

Brown, meanwhile, was working the grass roots, especially in the inner city, with his “Law and Order Tour” with sidekick Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee for Sheriff. He presided over an event last week at the Central Train Station downtown and made appearances at forums, like one held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Sunday, where he continued to levy attacks on Weirich, blaming her for negligence in the matter of the much-discussed rape-kit backlog and questioning her use of federal and state funding.

• Early voting for the August 7th elections begins this Friday, July 18th, at the Shelby County Election Commission’s downtown location, and will continue there and, from Monday, July 21st, at 21 satellite voting sites until Saturday, August 2nd. (The locations of the satellite sites will be posted at memphisflyer.com.)

• In the wake of several meetings of the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee hashing out disputes over the party’s endorsement of judicial candidates but leaving them intact, a group of Democratic lawyers, including former party chairmen David Cocke and Van Turner, is issuing its own ballot — including judges left off the party endorsement list whom they deem deserving.

These include Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward, and General Sessions Judges Bill Anderson, Phyllis Gardner, and John Donald, among others.

• The first fully separate cattle call for Board candidates took place Monday night at the First Baptist Church on Broad under the joint sponsorship of several ad hoc education organizations.

Present and accounted for were Chris Caldwell and Freda Garner-Williams in District 1; Stephanie Love in District 3; David Winston in District 5; Shante K. Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

Absent from the event, which took place during an off-and-on thunderstorm, were Teddy King and Anthony D. Lockhart in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and William E. Orgel in District 8.

The format called for each candidate to make an introductory statement and field one question from the moderator, Daarel Burnette II of the education periodical Chalkbeat Tennessee subbing for Keith Norman, the church pastor, who was absent. Though Burnette’s question was the same for each candidate, having to do with the candidate’s foremost objective as a prospective board member, there was a fair amount of variety in the answers elicited, most of them sensible and well informed, concerning issues ranging from curriculum to parent-teacher relations.

A final round of questions was solicited from the audience. Fielding a question about the desirability of separating “politics” from education, Kernell, a longtime state representative from southeast Memphis, was unique in embracing that inevitable pairing, saying that his experience and entrée with the state legislature could have positive results for his district and Shelby County Schools (SCS).

The nine-member SCS board being elected in this year’s school board elections from the city of Memphis and unincorporated areas of Shelby County replaces the provisional seven-member board, which was elected from the whole of Shelby County.

One of the members of the outgoing seven-member board, David Reaves of Bartlett, was an interested spectator Monday night, chatting amiably before the event with several of his current Board colleagues who were taking part in the forum. Reaves is now a County Commissioner-elect and will be swapping chairs in September.

Monday night’s event took place under the auspices of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Ad hoc co-sponsors included representatives of Students First, Stand for Children, and the aforesaid Chalkbeat Tennessee.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Tennesseans Must Have Prescription for Large Amounts of Pseudoephedrine.

CREDIT: Ingvar Bjork | Dreamstime.com

The chances of a person emulating a scene from Breaking Bad have lessened, at least in Tennessee, thanks to an anti-meth law that went into effect last week.

The new law limits the sale of pseudoephedrine, a cold and allergy nasal decongestant used in the production of methamphetamine, to only 28.8 grams per year without a prescription. That’s equivalent to 240 12-hour Sudafed tablets.

Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich said illegal production and distribution of meth is a huge problem statewide. Weirich said every day there’s a new meth case on the docket in local courtrooms, and she thinks the new anti-meth law is a step in the right direction.

“I hope it cuts down on the number of people who are addicted and using methamphetamine [as well as] the number of children who are exposed on a daily basis to this poison,” Weirich said. “The children who live in those homes and are exposed to that substance being made by one or both parents, the physical side effects of that, not to mention the long-term emotional and psychological impact is huge.”

According to Governor Bill Haslam, Tennessee authorities seized around 1,700 meth labs and removed nearly 270 children from meth-related situations in 2013. The number of lab seizures last year was down from 1,811 in 2012.

Meth is a white, odorless stimulant that can be snorted, smoked, taken orally, or injected with a needle. Extremely addictive, the drug provides a sense of euphoria, energy, and normally decreases a person’s appetite. It can potentially cause heart and brain damage, insomnia, nausea, and increased aggressiveness.

The key ingredient in meth production, pseudoephedrine, isn’t purchased by the majority of Tennesseans. According to the National Precursor Log Exchange, more than 730,000 driver licenses were used to purchase 3.4 million grams of pseudoephedrine in Tennessee in 2013.

In Shelby County, meth production appears to be on the decline. From January to May 2013, authorities seized 19 meth labs in Shelby County, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). Through the same time period in 2014, the number was nine. Ten percent of the Shelby County Drug Court’s 278 clients attend the court program for meth.

Major pharmacies in the state likely won’t be burdened by the anti-meth law, but smaller establishments could be negatively impacted. Weirich said changing a law that targets a fragment of the population, but “forces everyone to follow a certain behavior” is “a complex issue.”

“There are many more people not addicted to meth in the state of Tennessee than there are addicted to it,” Weirich said. “It’s sometimes a shame when you have to change the laws for everybody just to get the attention of a small segment. We’re hopeful that maybe these limitations will help with the long-term effects.”

TBI Director Mark Gwyn said that although the law will help combat the state’s meth issue, more needs to be done: “It’s tough to estimate to what degree, but we firmly believe the new law will have a positive impact on Tennessee’s meth epidemic. Though the purchase limits for pseudoephedrine will be among the lowest in the nation, we certainly realize there remains a lot of work to do on this important issue.”

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Judge Joe Brown” Uncorks a Shocker, Taunting Weirich About Her Sexuality

Brown in the website clip

  • Brown in the website clip

From May 6, when several of his endorsees in Democratic primary elections for countywide office went down to defeat until Tuesday, July 1, when, according to his pre-announced plan, Joe Brown emerged again as a putative party figurehead at a newly opened downtown campaign headquarters, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General had been more or less dormant.

Brown had abandoned what, during the earlier phase of the political year, had been an active role of his as a major player on behalf of the Democratic ticket. But now, under pressure from other party members and under scrutiny by a curious media, the former “Judge Joe Brown” of a once well-watched TV arbitration program re-emerged, in full damn-the-torpedoes style.

Under the head “My Divorce Ain’t Your Business,” Brown’s campaign website published a video of the candidate, who has been rumored to be readying his private resources for the Democratic ticket’s use, addressing the matter of his finances while talking to a small group. Speaking apparently in response to a direct query from Fox 13 News regarding the current state of his affairs after going through a presumably expensive divorce, Brown tries to blow off the inquiry in the clip, changing the subject.

What he says next is jolting, indeed — especially given the widespread assumption that he is just now hoping to resume his role as a tutorial voice for his party prior to the August 7 general election and primaries for state and federal office.

Smiling wide, Brown strolls about holding a hand mike and says, obviously referencing his August 7 opponent, incumbent Republican D.A. Amy Weirich, “But they could ask her why her husband moved out and took the kids. Why a certain somebody moved in next door to her…I won’t hold it against anybody that’s their right but some in her community are on her about she needs to come out of the closet and instead of being so low down, she needs to stop being down low.”

The implication of that is as obvious as it is shocking, and the truth content of it is irrelevant. For the record, though, Fox 13 reports getting this response from Weirich spokesperson Kim Perry: “Amy and her husband are at home right now. I hope for Judge Brown’s sake and the community, that those around him will intervene to get him the help he needs.”

To be sure, Shelby County Democrats had been looking Brown’s way for a sign that he intended to resume his leadership role in a coordinated party campaign. It is doubtful that this is precisely what they expected or can welcome.

Note: The video mentioned below has been purged from YouTube, but here are links, courtesy of Fox 13, to videos documenting Brown’s remarks:

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/clip/10326066/judge-joe-brown-questions-amy-weirichs-sexuality

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/clip/10326035/judge-brown-questions-weirichs-sexuality-clip-1

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/clip/10326043/judge-brown-questions-weirichs-sexuality-clip-2

http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/clip/10326053/judge-brown-questions-weirichs-sexuality-clip-3

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Holding on Tight

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

What is interesting at this stage of Election 2014 in Shelby County is the degree to which what used to be called “coattails” loom larger than usual.

The endorsement game gets played in every election, of course, but there is usually a good deal less correlation between one politician’s favorable say-so about another and good results for the latter on Election Day than there is between, say, a famous athlete’s mug on a Wheaties box and the degree to which that cereal gets itself munched.

Endorsement campaigns in politics don’t do nearly as well. One reason is that people tend to make up their minds about candidates on other levels. For political regulars, most often it’s on a pure party-line basis. Or specific issues may predominate in voters’ minds — on the basis of candidates’ zeal or lack of it on hot-button issues like abortion or gun carry or school-district independence.

Or, as Michael Reagan, the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan, a talk show host, and a fixture on the Republican  lecture circuit, told it to a crowd of the GOP faithful at Collierville’s Town Square on Monday, “people vote for the people they like.” That was how his father was able to create a class of voters known as “Reagan Democrats,” and that was something that Republicans running in politically divided Shelby County had best keep in mind in 2014, he said.

Talk to people about “shared values,” he urged. Yet Reagan’s very presence, along with that of 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher, whose reelection contest won’t occur until November, was designed to confer something else upon the Republican ticket that will present itself to the electorate in August, and whose current office-holders were scattered generously in the crowd at Collierville — a bit of borrowed luster.

That was especially so in the case of Michael Reagan — likable but not notably charismatic in his own right but someone whose family name is the ultimate brand in Republican politics and whose late father remains, for the GOP rank and file and crossover voters alike, the emblematic Wheaties-box avatar.

Another circumstance at the Collierville event underscored the endorsement principle even more directly. Mark Luttrell, the Republican Shelby County mayor who will have his own reelection battle this August but who has always done well with middle-of-the-road groups and Democratic crossovers, had already had his turn on the dais and now became de facto master of ceremonies for a late arrival, District Attorney General Amy Weirich.

Almost compulsively, as Weirich stepped forward to take her place at the mic, Luttrell grabbed her in a vise-like one-armed hug and said, “Folks, we can’t afford to lose this girl. We cannot afford to lose this — I said ‘girl.’ This lady, this general, this District Attorney General, this paragon of virtue and a student of the law!”

The crowd exuded a surprised chuckle at the county mayor’s sudden show of zeal. “Don’t laugh, I’m telling the damn truth,” Luttrell said, still holding Weirich close. “Folks, let’s get out there and give our all for all of our candidates, but let’s remember: This lady here needs to be our attorney general. Amy Weirich!”

And then, and only then, Luttrell released her, and the endorsee could begin her speech — a measured, cheerful paean to public safety and good weather and high hopes and pride in her record.

There had been meta-messages a-plenty in that hug of Luttrell’s, that fervent introduction, that almost desperate-sounding endorsement. Weirich strikes a lot of people as an able professional, but this year she is up against not a checklist but an opponent of unpredictable intensity, of enormous panache and demonstrated show-business skill — Judge Joe Brown, the de facto Democratic nominee already, as Weirich, also uncontested in her primary, is a de facto nominee.

Famous for his 15-odd years in Los Angeles as a reality-show judge on daytime TV, the former Shelby County Criminal Court judge, a returned prodigal if there ever was one, had already shown what he could do in the previous week. Dropping into Juvenile Court and latching on to an unrepresented client the way somebody else might pick up a discarded newspaper, Brown stormed into a courtroom and a) made a shambles of judicial order, or b) struck a blow for justice. Pick one, depending on your politics.

He challenged the credentials of the presiding magistrate, decried the court itself as a “circus” and a “sorry operation,” got himself cited for contempt and (briefly) jailed. A disgraceful spectacle. Or a gallant deed. Again, take your pick, according to your politics. A domination of the news week, in either case. And a demonstration of political potency.

It was already axiomatic that Brown’s star power, if harnessed properly and, like nitroglycerin, kept within safe limits, could drive a lot of votes for the Democratic ticket. Contrariwise, he might implode unpredictably and scarify middle-of-the-road voters into going the other way.

In any case, Brown’s own version of the hug — both literal and figurative — is at this point a blessing devoutly to be wished by his fellow Democrats. On Saturday, he turned up in Whitehaven for the headquarters opening of Patrice Robinson, running for the District 9 County Commission seat in the Democratic primary against two tough opponents, Memphis Education Association President Keith Williams and incumbent Justin Ford.

Brown endorsed Robinson and sealed his endorsement with a bone-crushing hug — in every way a precursor and ironic counterpart to Luttrell’s hug of Weirich, two days later.

Nor is Brown’s embrace necessarily reserved for representatives of the inner city. In what is arguably an odd-couple arrangement, he has decided to make common cause with Steve Mulroy, the focused, Jesuitical, limerick-loving professor of law at the University of Memphis who has made a role for himself as the County Commission’s liberal light.

Mulroy is in a three-way battle for the Democratic nomination for county mayor with well-liked veteran Deidre Malone and with the Rev. Kenneth Whalum, an outspoken former school board member who sees himself as the people’s voice.

Both party regular Malone or Whalum, a maverick’s maverick, might regard themselves as deserving of the nod from Brown, but it is Mulroy who has it, perhaps because of their joint connection with the legal profession. He and Brown have recently been in conversations about doing joint campaign endeavors.

For her part, Malone announced an endorsement last week from James Harvey, the current county Commission chairman who dropped out of the county mayor’s race himself at the withdrawal deadline and is now looking down the road at a city mayor’s race in 2015.

                      

Jackson Baker

Taylor Berger, who’s no longer running, with his son

• Meanwhile, one of the touted races — between Republican incumbent County Commissioner Heidi Shafer and Democratic challenger Taylor Berger, has ceased to be — at roughly the point that it seemed to be heating up.

It was only last Thursday night, at a packed fund-raising affair that the Berger campaign seemed to be acquiring enough real energy to be competitive. But Berger announced on Monday that he was out of the race. Citing personal concerns on his Facebook page, Berger said, “To run this race right, I’d jeopardize my family and business.” After what had been a significant advance build-up, and especially after last week’s event, the timing left some of Berger’s supporters, who included some well-heeled donors, puzzled.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Public Rebuke

Shelby County district attorney Amy Weirich won’t discipline a high-ranking prosecutor in her office who was publicly reprimanded by the Tennessee Supreme Court over the holidays, and she won’t say why.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Henderson was censured by the state’s highest court in December after he pleaded guilty in November to charges of misconduct and violating state rules governing prosecutors.

He received the “public rebuke and warning” from the court’s Board of Professional Responsibility. He was also ordered to pay back to the board $1,745.07 in expenses associated with the matter.

When asked for a comment on the censure, Weirich issued a statement in an email defending Henderson’s record in the Shelby County District Attorney’s office. But Weirich refused to respond to a request for an interview to answer one question: Why would Henderson not receive any reprimand from her office for his actions?

“[The statement is] all she’s going to say about it, but no punishment,” said Larry Buser, a spokesman for Weirich’s office.

At the center of the censure are two first-degree murder trials of Michael Rimmer. He was convicted both times — in 1998 and 2004 — for the murder of Ricci Ellsworth, a hotel clerk. Rimmer went to prison for raping her in 1989, which put him in the sights of law enforcement and prosecutors when Ricci went missing after an apparent attack in the hotel where she worked in 1997. Her body was never found.

Attorneys who have worked for Rimmer say Henderson purposefully hid exculpatory evidence that could have helped their client during the trials. An eyewitness identified two men with blood on their hands at the time and place of Ellsworth’s disappearance. But the “identification and any documents referencing the identification were not turned over to defense counsel,” according to a letter to the Board of Professional Responsibility from Kelly Gleason, who had worked as a post-conviction attorney for Rimmer.

Henderson was not available for comment, but in a reply to Gleason’s original complaint in the case, he said he did give Rimmer’s original defense attorneys the names and addresses of the witnesses he questioned but claimed they never looked at the information. Also, the suspect the eyewitness pointed to had a “good alibi,” was among “hundreds” of “false leads” in the case, and was excluded from his case against Rimmer. Finally, Henderson said he did not suppress any information and would have turned over the evidence to attorneys if “I had recalled and or could have found it.”

“I am guilty of faulty memory or recall, but this complaint claims that I am an evil, criminal lying miscreant,” Henderson said in the November 2012 letter. “I submit my career, and the evidence in this case shows the complaint to be ill-founded and I urge you to dismiss it.”  

But a 2012 court review of the case by Shelby County Criminal Court judge James C. Beasley Jr. was enough to remove Henderson from the Rimmer case. The order from the court said, “Henderson purposefully misled counsel with regard to the evidence in this case” and that the state “failed to meet their responsibilities” under the law that requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence.

Both convictions of Rimmer have been vacated, and in 2012, he was granted a new trial. His attorneys want the Shelby County District Attorney’s office disqualified from the case and have requested a special prosecutor to present the government’s case.

District Attorney General Weirich said in her statement last week that the new trial was awarded because Rimmer’s attorneys were “ineffective, not because of actions or inactions by the District Attorney General’s office.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Getting Started

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“Dear Friends,” began the open-letter email from District Attorney General Amy Weirich, “As one year ends and another begins, we naturally reflect and look forward. As your D.A. (and a wife and mother) I have been doing my fair share of that in the last few days.”

The “reflection” that followed amounted to a quick recitation of figures (“217 jury trials and 777 days in trial”) designed to show that the D.A. had succeeded in her “mission to pursue the guilty and protect the innocent.”

After closing out the communication a couple of paragraphs later, Weirich thought to add a postscript: “P.S. This new year is also a big election year, which means that I have to run for the full eight-year term as our D.A. Don’t forget to tell your friends and neighbors about the great work we are doing in the office!”

And, just in case that message somehow missed its mark, Weirich had scheduled an attention-getting extravaganza for this week. She enlisted some unusual helpers. As the headline of her second major email of the week put it, “HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS PARTNER WITH DISTRICT ATTORNEY GENERAL TO BRING THE SLAM DUNK AGAINST BULLIES IN MEMPHIS.”

The Harlem Globetrotters?

As the email explained, the reigning clown princes of basketball — renowned for decades for their rare mixture of athletic ability and comedic talent — would be appearing with the D.A. at the Ed Rice Community Center in Frayser to help her dissertate on the “ABCs of Bullying Prevention.”

Alas, the lesson was not to take place, at least not on the appointed evening, Monday night of this week. The gods of weather had a perverse prank of their own — in the form of two days’ worth of bone-chilling near-zero temperatures, coupled with the possibility of precipitation, which forced Weirich’s office to issue yet another email, this one bearing a sad but candid message in the subject line: “Photo Op with Globetrotters and Attorney General cancelled.”

Even so, General Weirich surely deserved some points for the uniqueness of her aborted op. The Globetrotters!

Like any number of other incumbents, Shelby County’s Republican D.A. — anticipating a challenge from a Democratic opponent yet to be named, in a primary on May 6th — will be doing her best, all the way up to the countywide general election on August 7th, to find every means to maximize her visibility and to advertise her accomplishments.

Once again, it’s an election year, a big-ballot election year at that, with local, state, and federal offices up for grabs, including the full panoply of state judgeships, which — like the D.A.’s office — are only at risk every eight years.

Not coincidentally, other incumbents were also doing their best to be front and center as the New Year began.

Shelby County mayor Mark Luttrell, another GOP office-holder sure to face a Democratic opponent this year, also had an occasion scheduled, but, luckily for him, his was scheduled for next week, beyond the reach, it would seem, of bad weather.

The Luttrell event is to be a continuation, as an email from the county mayor’s office put it, of “his one-on-one meetings with citizens … to listen to their comments and suggestions,” a little less dramatic than Weirich’s evening of roundball but designed for similar effect. As Luttrell, all duty, wrote, “These visits give me the opportunity to speak personally with people about what’s important to them and how their ideas might improve our community.”

For the record, the next such opportunity is on Tuesday, from 1 to 4 p.m. in the mayor’s office in the Vasco A. Smith Jr. Administration Building downtown.

And there was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat, who had an event scheduled — a “district issues meeting” — on Monday morning of the current week and went ahead with it, cold weather or no.

Afterward, he would say, in language similar to that of Weirich and Luttrell, and, like them, via an all-points email, “Hearing what my constituents have to say about the issues is very important to me.”  

Luttrell and Cohen, along with two more incumbents, Memphis mayor A C Wharton and city councilman Myron Lowery, had gotten a head start of sorts in communicating with their constituencies, starting last Wednesday at Lowery’s annual prayer breakfast at the Memphis Airport Hotel and Conference Center.

All four, addressing an audience rife with office-holders, candidates, and activists, reached beyond their specific bases with appeals for wider unity. (Unlike Cohen and Luttrell, Wharton and Lowery won’t face the voters until 2015.) Luttrell made a pitch for “civility,” Lowery cited a need for “trust,” and Wharton tried to bridge the current divide between himself and the council with the declaration, “I’m through with whose fault it is.” Cohen, with calls for increasing the minimum wage and extolling the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), and conscious that his audience included declared likely primary opponent Ricky Wilkins, seemed a mite more agenda-minded, but he, too, cited a need to look beyond narrow partisanship.

Even the congressman’s endorsement of host Lowery’s resolution of “No Confidence” for current GOP election administrator Rich Holden, the counterpart of a resolution passed last month by the Shelby County Commission, was couched in relatively bipartisan terms.

In any case, the New Year, with its full raft of election contests, is upon us, and there will soon be enough conflict and crossfire — locally, at least — to satisfy the most rabid partisans and pol-watchers.

• Statewide, an element of drama will be lacking. The declaration by Memphis Democrat Sara Kyle, hard upon the New Year, that she won’t take on Republican governor Bill Haslam virtually ended Democrats’ hopes for something more than a pro forma challenge — if even that — to the GOP’s political hegemony in Tennessee.

Kyle, a former member of the Tennessee Regulatory Authority and the wife of state Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle (D-Memphis), had been regarded as her party’s last chance. Nor, apparently, is there a serious Democrat to take on the other ranking Republican on the state ballot this year, U.S. senator Lamar Alexander, whose concerns, such as they are, are with state representative Joe Carr (R-Lascassas), his Tea Party opponent in the GOP primary.

The chief contests statewide this year will be regarding three Constitutional amendments on the November ballot — one that would abrogate any abortion rights in Tennessee that go beyond federal law; another that would make a state income tax unconstitutional; and a third that would make explicit the governor’s right (which has been contested) to make appointments to state appellate courts.

All three amendments are favored to pass.

• A corollary to the continuing decline of Democrats’ clout in Tennessee is the fact of hotly contested Republican primaries, where more and more the real decisions are being made. In Middle Tennessee, U.S. representative Scott DesJarlais (R-4th) has his hands full with a challenge from state senator Jim Tracy (R-Shelbyville), who is supported by the GOP establishment.

And there is the case of state senator Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville), whose views are widely regarded as madcap and extremist (or at least inconvenient) within his own party ranks and is expected to be opposed in the GOP primary by Richard Briggs, a Knox County commissioner, and perhaps by other Republicans.

Campfield, who won national notoriety for numerous bills, including one to forbid the mention of homosexuality in elementary classrooms and another that would withdraw state financial aid from the households of failing students, received a dubious honor as the year got underway.

The website Wonkette bestowed its inaugural “S***muffin of the Year Award” to Campfield “for outstanding achievement in the field of trying to make life miserable for the people of State Tennessee.”

Categories
Calling the Bluff Music

The Harlem Globetrotters Promote Anti-Bullying Campaign (Updated)

harlem-globetrotters-98.jpeg

The world renown Harlem Globetrotters are stopping through Memphis to promote their anti-bullying campaign Wednesday, January 8th.

The event was originally scheduled to take place Tuesday, January 7th at the Ed Rice Community Center in Frayser. However, due to severe weather conditions and airline flight cancellations the event was postponed. The new location will be at Hickory Ridge Elementary (3980 Hickory Hill Road).

In collaboration with Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich, Globetrotter player Buckets Blakes is scheduled to present the “ABCs of Bullying Prevention: Action, Bravery and Compassion” to youth at the school. The event will begin at 1:30 p.m.

The gathering will be catered to kids ages six-12 years old; lessons on the importance of maintaining school attendance, avoiding gang involvement and making wise decisions in life overall will be provided.

In late 2013, the Tennessee Department of Education released its first-ever “Bullying and Harassment Compliance Report.” According to the report, 7,555 cases of bullying were reported during the 2012-13 school year in the state. Approximately 73 percent of those cases, or 5,478, were confirmed as bullying cases after investigation.

Memphis and Shelby County school districts (before the merger) accounted for more than 2,000 of the state’s reported cases, according to Dr. Randy McPherson of Shelby County Schools (SCS). Manager of behavior and student leadership for SCS, McPherson said 2,247 of the state’s reported incidents took place in the Bluff City. Memphis City Schools (MCS) reported 1,982 bullying incidents. However, SCS only reported 265 bullying incidents over the 2012-13 school year.

Weirich and the Globetrotters are partners in the “National Campaign to Stop Violence” and the “Do The Write Thing Challenge.”

As part of their 2014 “Fans Rule” World Tour, the Globetrotters will stop by the FedExForum on Saturday, January 11th to entertain the entire family. The show will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $22 and are available for purchase at harlemglobetrotters.com.

Follow me on Twitter: @Lou4President
Friend me on Facebook: Louis Goggans
Check out my website: ahumblesoul.com