Tag: Brent Taylor

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Punching Down

Brent Taylor (Photo: Senator Brent Taylor | Facebook)

It surely hasn’t gone unnoticed that state government is continuing to flex its muscles vis-à-vis local government in Memphis and Shelby County. 

Officials aligned with the administration in Nashville are threatening outright takeover of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) system at the same time that state Senator Brent Taylor and helpers continue to implement their would-be coup d’état against the county judiciary and the office of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

In the case of MSCS, the sudden out-of-nowhere power struggle between an apparent school board majority and first-year superintendent Marie Feagins has prompted what amounts to an ultimatum from Governor Bill Lee and the presiding officers of the state legislative chambers: Keep Feagins or else!

And Taylor has enlisted the same officials in his campaign to oust Mulroy, involving them in his bill of particulars against the DA at a press conference last Thursday that followed by a day a quickly improvised “summit” called by the senator to consider the case for a new crime lab in Memphis, something Mulroy has put forth as a major need for facilitating effective local law enforcement.

The list of invitees to the crime lab conference, styled as a “roundtable discussion,” included Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director David Rausch and a virtually complete roster of public figures, state and local, who could be considered stakeholders in the matter of law enforcement.

There was one glaring omission, however: DA Mulroy, who was not only not invited; he was not even informed of the meeting, which was held at the City Hall of Germantown and concluded with Taylor suggesting an ultimate consensus that processing of local crime data in sensitive cases could be easily expedited via an existing crime lab in Jackson, obviating the need for a new Memphis lab.

A cynic could be pardoned for assuming that the entire thrust of the meeting in Germantown was to undermine the absent DA’s call for such a lab.

There was no doubt about the senator’s minimizing motive in his press conference the next day at the Memphis Police Association headquarters. It was overtly to “reveal the causes to be considered for the removal of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.”

Taylor’s bill of particulars against Mulroy was a duke’s mixture of complaints, ranging from prerogatives asserted by the DA that could be, and in several cases were, countered by ad hoc state legislation to innovative procedures pursued by Mulroy, some of them reflecting purposes that Taylor acknowledged sharing himself.

A case of the latter was an agreement reached by the DA with Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon to allow trial court judges access to Juvenile Court records. Taylor had sponsored a bill to do just that in last year’s session of the General Assembly.

A similar instance was Taylor’s inclusion in his list of Mulroy’s declared support of gun safety referenda placed by the Memphis City Council on the 2024 general election ballot and overwhelmingly passed.

“Many of us” could sympathize with the referenda points, Taylor said, but his point was that the referenda — calling for local ordinances on behalf of gun permits, an assault rifle ban, and judicial confiscation of firearms in at-risk instances — ran counter to state law.

Sponsors of the referenda had made it clear that they called for “trigger” laws that could be enforced only if and when state law might be amended to allow them.

And there’s a further anomaly here, given Taylor’s stated goal to “Make Memphis Mattter” and safeguard the city from crime.

One has to wonder why he isn’t pursuing an altogether different strategy, one calling for a legislative “carve-out” of Shelby County from current state law prohibiting the immediate implementation of the ordinances called for by the referenda.

Such a course would be consistent with the principle of home rule; it would also be supportive of a position taken by Mulroy’s Republican opponent in the 2022 DA’s race, then-incumbent Amy Weirich, who inveighed against the iniquitous consequences of the state’s increasingly permissive stripping away of gun safety regulations. 

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Early Heat

Terry Roland (Photo: shelbycountytn.gov)

As no one needs to be reminded, the year 2025 is starting off with near-arctic temperatures, but enough political action is ongoing or forthcoming in the near future to generate a bit of heat.

• The executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party will convene in Nashville on Saturday, January 25th, to pick a new chairperson, and no fewer than seven candidates have been nominated for the honor. They are:

— Rachel Campbell of Chattanooga, currently serving both as party chair of Hamilton County and vice chair of the state party. She is one of two co-favorites in the race.

— Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a state representative and, most recently, the Democrats’ unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2024. The other co-favorite, she has good name recognition and a residual network within the party, but there is some question as to whether her legislative service would disqualify her from the fundraising duties required of a chair.

— Brian Cordova of Nashville, the state party’s current executive director, and a veteran of numerous Democratic electoral campaigns. In the event of a deadlock between Campbell and Johnson, he is seen as a possible fallback choice.

— Vincent Dixie of Nashville, another state representative and a former chair of the party’s legislative caucus. Like Johnson, he, too, might be conflicted on the issue of fundraising.

— Alec Kucharski, a veteran of Tennessee political campaigns and currently a resident of Chicago, where he serves as a liaison with the Democratic delegation of the Illinois legislature.

— Todd Frommeyer of Pulaski, an activist, lawyer, and Navy vet.

— Edward Roland of Chattanooga, said to be a salesperson. 

All these candidates will participate in a forum at 1 p.m. on Saturday, to be streamed on Facebook via the Tennessee Democratic County Chairs Association.

• It will be noticed, by the way, that this fairly sizeable field of Democratic candidates contains no aspirants from Memphis.

One longtime member of the Democratic state committee from Shelby County, David Cambron, takes note of this, saying in a text, “We are not Big Shelby any more.”

Cambron maintains that the Memphis area’s “last chance of relevancy” was lost in the 2006 U.S. Senate election, which saw Democrat Harold Ford Jr. lose to Republican Bob Corker.

And, in Cambron’s view, the problem has bipartisan dimensions. “It’s the same reason every statewide discussion of possible Republican gubernatorial candidates doesn’t mention Brent Taylor.” 

The reference is clearly to state Senator Taylor’s seemingly nonstop campaigning for more assertive state authority over law enforcement in Memphis and Shelby County. Often, such intentional omnipresence in media attention bespeaks an intention to seek higher office.

Yet, as Cambron points out, Taylor’s name is rarely to be found in public speculation about the 2026 governor’s race.

(In fairness, it should be pointed out that when the Flyer queried Taylor about a possible ambition to run for governor, the senator replied, “The short answer is no. The long answer is hell, no.”)

• As it happens Saturday, January 25th, is also the date for a GOP chairmanship decision, this one for the leadership of the Shelby County Republican Party, the issue to be decided at the Venue at Bartlett Station.

The two declared candidates are former Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan and longtime GOP activist Naser Fazlullah. As noted previously in this space, Morgan has been the beneficiary of a hyped-up PR campaign involving numerous public endorsements from influential local GOP figures.

All of that has gotten the goat of one prominent Republican, however. Former County Commission Chairman Terry Roland of Millington, who praises Fazlullah’s “selfless” service to the local party, denounces the pro-Morgan faction’s “Revive” campaign as nothing more than an “elitist” plot to suppress grassroots Republicans.

And Roland, who has headed up local campaign efforts for Donald Trump from 2016 on, levies what may be the worst charge in his vocabulary against Morgan, whom he calls a — wait for it — “Never-Trumper.”

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State vs. Local

JB Smiley at Germantown Democrats’ picnic (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Most people are familiar with an adage, often attributed to the late Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O’Neill, that “all politics is local.”

Until it isn’t. 

Tennesseans are becoming uncomfortably aware that state government is muscling into as many local government prerogatives as possible — in areas ranging from education to healthcare to social policy to, increasingly, law enforcement.

A number of current circumstances reflect what seems to be a war of attrition waged at the state level against the right of Memphis and Shelby County to pursue independent law-and-order initiatives.

Memphis City Council chairman JB Smiley spoke to the matter Sunday at the annual picnic of the Germantown Democratic Club at Cameron Brown Park.

Said Smiley: “You know, recently, I’ve been, against my will, going back and forth with someone in the statehouse who doesn’t care for Shelby County called Cameron Sexton. Yeah, he doesn’t believe that Shelby County has the right to exercise its voice.“

Sexton, of course, is the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives who recently threatened to withhold from Memphis its share of some vital state revenues in retaliation for the city’s inclusion on the November 5th ballot of a referendum package soliciting citizens’ views on possible future firearms curbs.

The package lists three initiatives — a reinstatement of gun-carry permits, a ban on the sale of assault rifles, and the right of judges to impose “red-flag” laws against the possession of weapons by demonstrably risky individuals.

All the initiatives are in the form of “trigger laws,” which would be activated only if and when state policy might allow the local options. As Smiley noted, “That’s what the state did when they disagreed with the federal government when it came to abortion rights. As soon as the law changed in the country, [their] law became full and effective. That’s what we’re going to do in the city of Memphis.” 

Simultaneous with this ongoing showdown between city and state has been a determined effort by Republican state Senator Brent Taylor and others to pass state laws restricting the prerogatives of local Criminal Court judges and Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

One piece of Taylor-sponsored legislation, passed last year, would transfer authority over capital punishment appeals from the DA to the state attorney general. Litigation against the law pursued by Mulroy and an affected defendant resulted in the measure’s being declared unconstitutional in trial court.

But the state Appeals Court reversed that judgment last week, seemingly revalidating the law and causing Taylor to crow in a social media post over what he deemed a personal victory over Mulroy, whom he accused of wanting to “let criminals off of death row” and whose ouster he has vowed to pursue in the legislature.

The fact is, however, that there will be one more review of the measure, by the state Supreme Court, before its ultimate status is made clear. 

Some of the immediate media coverage of the matter tended to play up Taylor’s declaration of victory over Mulroy, ignoring the ongoing aspects of the litigation and overlooking obvious nuances. 

One TV outlet erroneously reported the Appeals Court as having found Mulroy guilty of “inappropriate” conduct when the court had merely speculated on the legalistic point of whether the DA had appropriate standing as a plaintiff (a point that was conceded, incidentally, by the state Attorney General).

Mulroy’s reaction to the Appeals Court finding focused on the issue as having to do with governance: “The Tennessee Constitution says local voters get to elect a local resident DA to represent them in court. This law transfers power over the most serious cases, death penalty cases, from locally elected DAs across the state to one unelected state official half a state away. This should concern anyone, regardless of party, who cares about local control and state overreach.”

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Investigation Urged on State Sen. Brent Taylor’s Online Posts

State Senator Brent Taylor (R) Memphis district 31 Shelby County, during the 113th general Assembly | Photograph by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout

A West Tennessee prosecutor has requested a state investigation into a Memphis senator for allegedly breaking state law by posting documents online containing a defendant’s personal information, possibly after obtaining it from the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office.

District Attorney General Fred Agee confirmed to the Tennessee Lookout he filed a complaint with the Comptroller’s Office and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, asking them to investigate whether Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) put information on X showing a man’s birth date and Social Security number, which would be a Class B misdemeanor accompanied by nearly six months in jail.

Agee, a Republican whose prosecutorial district covers Crockett, Haywood, and Gibson counties, requested the appointment of a pro tem prosecutor to look into the matter. He said the items were posted online for at least 10 hours.

“With all the identity theft that goes on daily, I felt I had a duty to report it and to also ask for a special prosecutor since [Taylor’s] social media post was directed toward me,” Agee told the Lookout.

Taylor responded to questions by text message Tuesday, saying he posted the public record “for the benefit” of constituents and West Tennesseans to show an example of “outrageous plea deals” Agee reaches. He reiterated his claim that Agee and Mulroy are “soft on crime.”

“When I discovered one of the dozens of documents, that have been passed around more than a joint at a Willie Nelson concert, may have possibly contained a Social Security number, I quickly replaced them with newly redacted documents out of an abundance of caution,” Taylor said.

As part of the investigation request, Agee said he asked the state’s investigative agencies to see whether the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office gave the information to Taylor. Separately, Gibson County Sheriff Paul Thomas has been indicted in connection with directing inmate labor to an outside company he owned as part of a $1.4 million scheme.

The situation stems, in part, from an op-ed Agee wrote Aug. 6 for The Daily Memphian supporting Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy, a Democrat accused of being soft on crime and threatened with an ouster by Taylor and House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville). Taylor has said he will file legislation to have Mulroy removed from office during next year’s legislative session.

Taylor posted documents within the last two weeks to paint Agee as a liberal prosecutor by detailing a plea agreement Agee’s office made with Brewston Lamonte Cole, who has been convicted of multiple DUIs, drug possession, firearms possession, violation of the sex offender registry, and violation of probation. Cole was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but that was suspended for probation or supervision by Community Corrections. He had served nearly four months in jail already after having his bond revoked and will receive a harsher sentence if he doesn’t comply with probation requirements.

As part of that post, Taylor put up three Google Drive links containing the plea agreement document that listed Cole’s birthday and Social Security number. The Lookout has obtained screenshots of Taylor posts and those links, which have since been removed, and the documents reposted without the personal information.

The state Comptroller’s Office declined to confirm it has been requested to investigate the matter.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

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Tennessee Lieutenant Governor Backs Mulroy Ouster

Steven J. Mulroy is the District Attorney for Shelby County, Tennessee July 25, 2023. (© Karen Pulfer Focht/Tennessee Lookout)

Tennessee’s lieutenant governor is backing a Memphis state senator’s move to force the ouster of Shelby County’s prosecutor for “dereliction of duty” in connection with felons caught carrying weapons.

Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) issued a statement Monday saying he “wholeheartedly” supports efforts by Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) to dismiss Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy from office for “failing to properly prosecute convicted felons in possession of a firearm.” 

Taylor sent McNally a letter Monday notifying him he plans to file a Senate resolution after the November election to remove Mulroy from office. The district attorney general said recently he plans to adopt a policy allowing non-violent felons to avoid being prosecuted for possession of weapons.

McNally said Mulroy’s “explicit refusal to prosecute criminals with guns is inexcusable and unconstitutional. While district attorneys have prosecutorial discretion, that discretion is not a license to override or subvert the law of the land. DA Mulroy’s record of refusal to prosecute laws he does not personally care for is longstanding and clear. I believe it is time for him to go.”

State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) during the 113th general Assembly Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout

Even though district attorneys general are elected by a county’s voters, the Legislature can oust them with a two-thirds vote, according to a state law cited by Taylor in his letter.

Taylor and House Speaker Cameron Sexton made social media posts last week calling Mulroy soft on crime for his new policy to provide “diversion” from conviction for non-violent felons caught carrying weapons.

Mulroy, a Democrat serving his first term after defeating Republican Amy Weirich, told the Tennessee Lookout last week the DA’s Office continues to prosecute illegal gun possession cases, including possession of a gun connected to drug crimes and possession of a Glock switch, which makes those types of handguns fully automatic. His office did not respond to questions Monday.

The district attorney, though, noted his office is “open to offering a diversion track, on a case-by-case basis for those defendants who have no history of violence or significant criminal history and seem reformable.” 

Those types of offenders would be prosecuted but could avoid conviction by meeting “stringent requirements” for rehabilitation, he said. The policy is designed to free up prosecutors to focus on offenders who “use a weapon,” he said.

Taylor acknowledged Monday that district attorneys general have “prosecutorial discretion” but contended that state law prohibits felons from possessing weapons and argued if Mulroy thinks non-violent felons should be excluded, then he should lobby the Legislature to change the law. He denied that his effort to remove Mulroy is a political move and maintained that the district attorney has “abused his prosecutorial discretion.”

It looks like every local official is now on notice not to cross powerful state politicians – or else. Memphians are sick and tired of seeing their local elected officials run over by state politics just for doing the job they promised to do.

Sens. Raumesh Akbari and London Lamar, Memphis Democrats, in a statement

“He’s attempting to enforce and prosecute the law based on how he wishes it were written, not how it’s actually written,” Taylor said. “District attorneys are obligated to enforce the law the legislature enacts.”

Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) and Minority Chairman London Lamar (D-Memphis) issued a statement in response calling Taylor’s effort an “unconstitutional attack” on Shelby County’s district attorney and saying it “sets a dangerous precedent.”

“It looks like every local official is now on notice not to cross powerful state politicians – or else,” they said. “Memphians are sick and tired of seeing their local elected officials run over by state politics just for doing the job they promised to do.”

They contend crime didn’t start with Mulroy’s election and said, “it’s beneath the Legislature to threaten local officials over a policy debate.”

Sen. Taylor and state Rep. John Gillespie (R-Memphis) passed legislation this year overturning a Memphis City Council ordinance stopping police from making “pretextual” stops such as driving with broken tail light. The measure was designed to prevent violent incidents between police and motorists such as the death of Tyre Nichols who was pulled over for reckless driving and beaten by five police officers, according to video of the stop.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

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Sen. Taylor Reveals Plan for Ousting DA Mulroy

Brent Taylor exiting the SCEC (Credit: Jackson Baker)

State Senator Brent Taylor confided to the Memphis Flyer on Sunday the basic outlines of the procedure he intends to set in motion to remove Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy  from office. 

The plan, as the senator indicated,  will depend on legislative action in a coming session of the General Assembly, either a regular session or a specially called one. 

Taylor, a persistent  critic of Mulroy for what the senator considers laxity in local law enforcement, says his plan is based on Article VI, Section 6, of the state constitution and would call for a removal  resolution to be passed by both chambers of the legislature, to be followed by gubernatorial action to appoint a successor as Shelby  DA.

State House Speaker Cameron Sexton has also acknowledged discussing the idea of ousting Mulroy with state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Taylor promised to elaborate on details of his thinking and Sexton’s at a press conference at 2 p.m. Monday at the headquarters of the Memphis Police Association on Jefferson Avenue.

Both Taylor and Sexton fired off condemnations last week of Mulroy’s announcement of a diversionary program for non-violent previous offenders charged with illegal possession of firearms.

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State and Local

Karen Camper (Photo: capitol.tn.gov)

When Karen Camper, the Democrats’ leader in the state House, ran for Memphis mayor last year, she discovered that, her impressive credentials notwithstanding, she lacked the citywide name recognition of locally based officials.

Consequently, she never developed enough traction to compete effectively for the mayoralty. And her name recognition problem was exacerbated further by the fact that members of the General Assembly are prohibited from active fundraising during the course of a legislative session.

The reality, especially in the case of the minority party statewide, is that state legislators, however much they may shine in the environs of Nashville, simply lack enough day-to-day connection with local voters to become household names on their home front.

A possible exception to that rule may arise in the case of a legislator whose public activities impinge directly on a festering local issue — as in the case of Republican state Senator Brent Taylor, whose nonstop efforts as the sponsor of bills to affect the status of local law enforcement have doubtless earned him a certain local notoriety.

Taylor’s party cohort John Gillespie, equally active on similar issues in the state House of Representatives, is on the fall ballot as a candidate for re-election and has attracted similar attention, for better or for worse.

The aforementioned Rep. Camper, meanwhile, is attempting to familiarize her constituents in House District 87 with the activities of state government by means of an innovation she calls “State to the Streets,” an event she will unveil on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at New Direction Christian Church.

She calls it “a unique opportunity” for residents of District 87 to engage with more than 20 state and local government agencies, ask questions, voice concerns, and receive assistance on a wide range of topics, including healthcare, education, employment, and social services.

Among the services that will be spoken on by representatives of the affected state agencies are:

• Job search opportunities from the TN Department of Labor and Workforce Development

• SNAP benefits and Families First assistance from the TN Department of Human Services

• Help processing REAL IDs from The TN Department of Safety & Homeland Security

• Mental health, addiction, and substance abuse counseling from the TN Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and the TN Sports Wagering Council

• Legal advice from the Memphis Bar Association

• Expungement and Drive While You Pay assistance from the General Sessions Court Clerk’s Office

• Help searching unclaimed property listings from the TN Department of the Treasury

• Voter registration and information from the TN Secretary of State’s office and the Shelby County Voter Registrar

“This is a great chance for me to talk with my constituents and hear their thoughts about the recently concluded legislative session and the direction of the state,” says Camper, and she may have something there.

• With the fiscal-year deadline approaching, Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission saw action on many matters — including the county’s proposed tax rate and numerous budgetary items — deferred for further discussion at the commission’s June 12th committee sessions, but one long-standing uncertainty was finally dealt with.

This was the question of $2.7 million in funding from opioid-settlement funds that had been embedded in the sheriff’s department budget, pending the commission’s decision on where to route them — whether to a proposed program for remedial medical treatment of inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial, or elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the answer, with $5 million going to CAAP (Cocaine and Alcohol Awareness Program), and another $18 million to juvenile court, where it will pay for a variety of wraparound services for youthful wards of the court.

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Snapshots of the Moment

Photo: Representative John Gillespie | Facebook John Gillespie

John Gillespie, the Republican incumbent in state House District 97, has kept a relatively moderate profile in the two terms he’s served since winning his seat over Democrat Gabby Salinas in 2020, focusing on non-ideological matters like drag-racing bans and deviating from GOP orthodoxy on gun legislation.

But all that may be changing. Gillespie is now following the lead of the House Republican leadership and another Shelby County GOPer, state Senator Brent Taylor, in sponsoring hard-line crime legislation destined to strip away local law-enforcement prerogatives.

A controversy arose last week after a cell phone video was circulated of a conversation in Nashville in which Gillespie appeared to be assuring the visiting parents of the late Tyre Nichols that he would hold up on seeking an immediate vote on his bill to nullify city council restrictions on the kind of preemptive traffic stops that would end in the savage beating death of young Nichols by MPD officers who are now facing trial for murder.

Instead, Gillespie put the bill on the floor for a relatively quick party-line passage.

The incident may loom large in this year’s legislative elections, in which Gillespie will be opposed by businessman Jesse Huseth, a Democrat who has already released a statement deploring Gillespie’s conduct of the matter.

• Tami Sawyer, recent winner of the Democratic nomination for General Sessions Court clerk, is keeping her activist’s hand in, blogging her discontent with both a pending appearance at the University of Memphis by Kyle Rittenhouse, the youth acquitted of killing two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest event, and Rep. Gillespie’s short-circuiting whatever commitment he may have given on rolling his bill.

• A hat tip to my daughter Julia Baker of The Daily Memphian for noting that the aforementioned Brent Taylor, notorious for his constant verbal and legislative targeting of local DA Steve Mulroy, is on the same page as Mulroy regarding the need for a new crime lab in Memphis.

• Veteran watchers of presidential State of the Union addresses over the years are used to seeing 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen ready on or near the aisle for banter or conversation as the president — of whatever year or whatever party, for that matter — is either headed to the podium or finishing up afterward and headed out.

Those aisle seats have to be staked out well in advance, and Cohen, using staffers early on to help hold down a place, is something of a master of the art.

Sometimes he shares local artifacts with the passing chief executive. In 2008, he was seen on national television handing George W. Bush a University of Memphis booster’s cap to be autographed. Watching at home, then Tiger basketball coach John Calipari saw it all and later got in touch with Cohen, putting in a bid for the cap and pledging to get it into the U of M Sports Hall of Fame. Cohen turned it over, but the cap never made it to its intended destination. Not long afterward, Coach Cal — cap presumably in tow — decamped to the University of Kentucky.

Always Cohen manages to have something to say. Last Thursday night, he caught Biden going in and took the time to encourage the president to pitch his remarks to the Democratic side of the assembled audience of lawmakers and to give the Republicans hell. Presumably Biden already had that strategy in mind. In any case, that’s what happened.

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Taylor Still At It

Brent Taylor (Photo: Senator Brent Taylor | Facebook)

State Senator Brent Taylor, who is functioning as a sort of self-appointed scourge of Shelby County’s existing law-enforcement infrastructure, is at it again — attempting to prod state government into intervening against “the slow movement of cases” through the county’s criminal justice system.

“Crime in Memphis has risen to a level that requires immediate action to save the city,” Taylor proclaimed in a newly released letter to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. He cites figures appearing to show that processing of criminal cases in the county dropped to a level of 40 cases last year, down from “approximately 200 per year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Taylor’s letter poses four questions to the attorney general:

“(1) Does the Governor of Tennessee have the authority to assign judges from one or more judicial districts to other judicial districts for purposes of trying criminal cases?

“(2) Does the Governor of Tennessee have the authority to temporarily assign judges from a certain judicial district to try criminal cases in that same judicial district?

“(3) Does the Governor of Tennessee have the authority to require Shelby County Circuit Court Judges to handle criminal matters in Shelby County?

“(4) Who has the authority to require certain Shelby County Circuit Court Judges to assist with and/or try criminal cases?”

Taylor, who represents state Senate District 31, said in the letter that, if the governor is deemed to have such authority to assign judges — whether from other judicial districts or from other courts within the same district — to help process criminal cases in Shelby County, then he would request the governor do so immediately.

“By prosecuting criminal cases quickly, we will remove violent and repeat criminal offenders from the streets of Memphis so that the law-abiding can raise their families in peace and safety,” he wrote in the letter.

Taylor, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote, “I am determined to pursue any legal avenue available to tackle our serious violent crime problem.”

This new letter is the latest in a series of public statements in which the senator, who was elected to his first term just last year, has inquired of other state officials about the possibility of extending state power into areas that have previously been reserved for local authorities.

In previous missives to the governor, to House Speaker Cameron Sexton, and to the state board of professional responsibility, he has proposed such actions as sending the National Guard into Memphis and reducing the supervisory power of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

The senator has introduced a legislative package in Nashville that, among other things, would change bail laws, require law enforcement to report undocumented immigrants, and reclassify stolen gun charges.

Another of his proposals would exempt Memphis police from having to uphold a city council prohibition against preemptive traffic stops for suspected minor infractions. At the moment, this matter has achieved hot-button status in city government.

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Measure for Measure

Photo: Adisx | Dreamstime.com

As many readers may know, there is an ongoing cold-turning-hot war between Republican state Senator Brent Taylor and Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy over various matters of crime control.

Taylor has aimed several initiatives, rhetorical and otherwise, in Mulroy’s direction of late. Representing himself as a zealous advocate of strict law enforcement — a proponent of “aggressive” approaches as against “progressive” ones — Taylor has complained to the media and to Governor Bill Lee and other state officials and agencies, including the State Board of Professional Responsibility, that the Democratic DA has allowed the Memphis crime rate to skyrocket by undue emphasis on restorative justice concepts at the expense of law enforcement per se.

A fresh quote volunteered by the senator via text: “I am not trying to prove whose dick is bigger. But I am trying to show that more voters aligned themselves with my position of aggressive prosecutions.” 

Whereupon he cited vote totals from his successful 2022 senate race versus his Democratic opponent — apparently unaware that his victory margin in that district race depended on fewer votes overall than were achieved by Mulroy in his defeat of Republican Amy Weirich in the DA’s race.

Similarly, the senator’s case against Mulroy on the law enforcement score is, to say the least, debatable. As is ever the case, some crime statistics are up; others are down. The senator acknowledges that the DA’s recently launched campaign against gang-led “smash-and-grab” assaults on local businesses has achieved some results. “We just need more arrests,” he says grudgingly.

Current points of contention between the two include the matter of bail-bond policy, which Taylor considers too lax, though current bail policy was arrived at jointly by Mulroy and Weirich, his Republican predecessor. Taylor also professes to be steamed by what he calls “collusion” between Mulroy and Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan in a pair of cases involving the reduction or elimination of sentences imposed on defendants. The senator vows to impose correctives in the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, one of which involves expediting the transfer of juveniles charged with capital crimes to Criminal Court.

Interestingly, in the several months before Taylor and Mulroy acquired their current offices, they had enjoyed a warm, and even cozy, degree of collaboration with each other.

That was in the period of 2021-22 when Taylor, who was already eyeing a district Senate seat that was about to slip out from under the legally vulnerable GOP incumbent Brian Kelsey, was head of the Shelby County Election Commission (dominated 3-2 by Republicans though ostensibly neutral). Mulroy, an activist Democrat par excellence, was pursuing one of his favorite causes, that of local voting via paper ballots.

On several occasions, Taylor, whose party members tended (at that time, anyhow) not to favor that idea, nevertheless exercised what Mulroy considered exemplary fairness in presiding over discussions, in matters of scheduling, and in his parliamentary decisions. In the process, the two of them, quite simply, became buds.

At the moment, that relationship seems fractured — broken on the shoals of partisan differences, political ambition, and state-vs.-local considerations.