Memphis For All – Memphis Flyer

This story is co-published with MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit Memphis newsroom focused on poverty, power and public policy — issues about which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. cared deeply. Find more stories like this at MLK50.com. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

With 10 months before voters choose the next Shelby County District Attorney, the push to unseat Republican incumbent Amy Weirich heated up Wednesday with the launch of what organizers call a public education campaign about the prosecutor’s controversial record.

A handful of canvassers handed fliers to the dozens queuing to get inside the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center on Poplar Wednesday morning, as a mobile digital billboard labeling Weirich a “Repeat Offender” circled the center. The campaign is coordinated by Memphis Watch, a newly formed organization that doesn’t have a web presence and does not appear to be led by Memphians.

One of the billboard panels reads: The Tennessee Supreme Court on Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich’s behavior in a murder prosecution: “Flagrant violation,” “off limits to any conscientious prosecutor,” “not at all clear why any prosecutor would venture into this forbidden territory.” The partial quotes were taken from a 2014 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that excoriated Weirich for her conduct during the 2009 high-profile murder trial of Noura Jackson. The court would later vacate Jackson’s conviction; she was released after spending 11 years in prison.

The billboard’s messages are a condensed version of AmyWeirichFiles.com, which offers a blistering assessment of Weirich’s actions, some of which have drawn intense scrutiny, criticism and in one instance, a reprimand from the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility days before she was to face an examination of her behavior during Jackson’s trial.

Across the country, advocacy organizations and activists are calling for prosecutorial reform, a movement that’s gotten a boost from philanthropists including George Soros, who has spent millions on district attorney races in recent years in an effort to reimagine the country’s criminal justice system.

The campaign comes at the same time that Memphis is experiencing a surge in gun crime, including Sunday’s off-campus killing of a Rhodes College student and last month’s Collierville Kroger shooting that left the shooter and a victim dead and more than a dozen others injured. These incidents and the resulting flurry of news coverage may make residents more receptive to Weirich’s tough-on-crime stance; research has shown that media coverage of crime can lead to increased public support for punitive criminal justice policy.

Outside the justice center Wednesday morning, canvasser Victoria Terry with the progressive nonprofit Memphis For All shared specific criticism about Weirich’s record with passersby.

“When she should do DNA testing, she doesn’t,” Terry said. “She tries kids as adults all the time.”

“There’s another election coming up. So we’re doing everything we can to put somebody better in office, someone who actually cares about our community.”

“Have you heard about our district attorney? She’s the worst in Tennessee,” canvasser Victoria Terry told those waiting to enter the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center Wednesday as she handed out fliers about Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich’s prosecutorial record. (Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50.)

Weirich’s office has opposed DNA testing in the case of death row inmate Pervis Payne and in the case of Sedley Alley, who was executed in 2006. She has also transferred dozens of children accused of violent crimes, most of whom are Black, to adult court where they face stiffer penalties, a practice she defended as recently as Sept. 28, when the DA’s website listed a detailed explanation for each of the 25 cases her office has transferred to adult court this year.

In an email, Larry Buser, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said that “it would be inappropriate for me to comment on campaign issues.”

Intense outside attention to this local DA race is to be expected, said Cardell Orrin, executive director for Stand for Children Tennessee and a community advocate.

“I think it’s reflective of what we’ve been hearing for quite some time from local and national groups of a real concern about the egregious violations that have occurred from Weirich and her office during her tenure,” Orrin said. He said he was aware of Wednesday’s campaign but Stand was not involved.

“We’ve also heard from other national organizations that have said, in context of what’s happening around the country and in other (district attorneys’) offices, you have a problem with your DA that can hopefully be solved.”

“We definitely have to look to see if there’s an alternative.” In the past, Stand has endorsed candidates for office and expects to do so in the DA’s race.

Orrin is also a part of Memphis Nonprofits Demand Action, which graded Weirich and other elected officials on progressive criminal justice policy issues following a number of local protests sparked last summer by the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Weirich received a D for her failure to drop charges against peaceful participants arrested in demonstrations and an F for not investigating accusations of police misconduct during those protests.

One woman took a flyer from Terry, but couldn’t stay for much explanation. Although the woman wasn’t familiar with Weirich and the upcoming August election, she only needed answers to two questions to decide how she would vote.

“Is she Black?” asked the woman, who is Black.

“She’s white,” Terry answered.

“Do we trust her?”

“No,” Terry replied.

“We’re going to get her out of there then,” said the woman, who was at 201 Poplar to handle minor marijuana possession charges.

Memphis Watch’s senior advisor, Alex Bassos, called Weirich one of the nation’s worst prosecutors; an assertion echoed in a 2017 Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project report which ranked her as the state’s most overzealous prosecutor.

“So we want her and the political elite in Memphis to know we are here, we are watching, we are loud and we don’t go away or play by polite norms for exposing people’s records.”
Alex Bassos, Memphis Watch senior advisor

According to Bassos’ LinkedIn page, he is project director at Justice Research Group. A Google search for an organization by that name did not return any results. An attorney, he was also chief of products for The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that closed earlier this year and is reopening as a worker-led publication.

“So we want her and the political elite in Memphis to know we are here, we are watching, we are loud and we don’t go away or play by polite norms for exposing people’s records,” Bassos said by phone Wednesday. “It’s too important. It’s life or death for the people harmed by her and her office.”

In 2012, Weirich was elected to finish the term of her boss, Bill Gibbons, now executive director of the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis and president of the nonprofit Memphis Shelby Crime Commission. Weirich ran for re-election in 2014 and handily beat her Democratic opponent Joe Brown, formerly a Shelby County Criminal Court judge and host of the syndicated Judge Joe Brown reality show.

Weirich’s prosecutorial errors in the Jackson case, including withholding evidence that could have helped the defense, and her office’s practices were the focus of a lengthy 2017 New York Times article by journalist Emily Bazelon. Weirich responded with a tweet storm with the hashtag #ProCrimeNYTimes.

In 2019 Bazelon published “Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.” The book primarily tells the stories of two prosecutors, one with a more restorative justice approach, and at the other end of the spectrum, Weirich.

Shelby County, which is 54 percent Black, has never had a Black prosecutor. Weirich has one declared opponent, Linda Harris, who was a former Memphis police officer and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District. Harris is currently in private practice.

The deadline to qualify to run for district attorney is Feb. 17, according to the Shelby County Election Commission. The primary election is May 3 and the general election is Aug. 4.

Tennessee has the longest elected prosecutor terms of any state in the nation, at eight years. If Weirich wins in August, the next time the office will be on the ballot is 2030.

Wendi C. Thomas is the founding editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at wendicthomas@mlk50.com.

Carrington J. Tatum is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email him at carrington.tatum@mlk50.com

Perhaps the least exciting fact I can now share about myself is that I think that early voting is the bee’s knees. I’ve lived in Memphis for more than 15 years, and while I’m not eligible to vote and sometimes I use idioms I’ve picked up without 100 percent confidence that I’m using them correctly, I still hold that early voting is the most wonderful time of the year (sorry, winter holiday enthusiasts and Andy Williams admirers).

Think about it for a second. In this past municipal election, there were 18 early voting locations that, with the exception of the Shelby County Office Building, were open six days a week to all voters. There aren’t any assigned locations during early voting, so an eligible voter could walk into any early voting location with their ID and vote instantly. Heading back home after work, school, or the grocery store, and feeling informed about local politics and candidates? You could just pop into any location and cast your vote. It’s probably quicker than going through a drive-thru (which would be a great idea for a polling place if the election commission hasn’t considered it yet). Isn’t that so exciting?

Jitdreamstime | Dreamstime.com

Well, it was for me when I learned about it, and as it turned out, even though early voting has been around in Memphis for at least 20 years, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how it works. In the couple of weeks leading up to the October 3rd elections, I canvassed with Memphis For All, an independent political organization that works to improve voter participation and create progressive infrastructures that address the important issues that affect Memphians across racial and class lines. In this short time, I learned a lot about our city, local elections, people, and myself.

Like many Memphians, I’m still a bit lost on how the geography of districts works. I talked to some people at the edges of the city who forgot they could vote in local elections or maybe hoped that by moving far out enough they could avoid it altogether. For others, it was obvious they were in the city limits but they weren’t familiar with the candidates running for mayor or city council. There weren’t any campaign or election yard signs, door hangers, flyers, or anything of the sort in some of these neighborhoods that would suggest that campaign teams had canvassed the area before.

Given the history and current state of restrictions on voting that have disproportionately affected racially and ethnically marginalized communities, early voting is, of course, a great step toward increasing voter turnout by making voting times more accessible. But how was this information, or any general information about local elections, not reaching all Memphians? As we made phone calls, sent individual texts, and knocked on doors, it became clear that face-to-face time with folks was important for candidate name recognition and to bring more attention to the importance of local elections.

We knocked on thousands of doors and walked up and down countless neighborhood hills and apartment complex staircases. We talked to Memphians on their porches, front lawns, and, to some who initially thought we were trying to sell them AT&T internet, through their window blinds and storm doors.

We talked about public education, health care access, living wages, voting rights, and much more. I learned that people didn’t know the early voting locations and some were unsure about their assigned polling location for election day. While the list I worked from had many voters on the younger side, most of the people who answered the door were over 35. A handful of the people I talked to weren’t eligible to vote because of a felony conviction and wanted to learn more about voting rights restoration. Once I got into a conversation where the person realized I wasn’t trying to sell them cable, they opened up about their experiences on elections and voting. Each day the summer heat was unrelenting, but as we walked back to our cars as the sun went down — with fewer flyers in hand and more voter pledge cards filled — I packed up feeling energized about my city and her people.

I’ll continue to think through the fact that this year we had the second-lowest turnout in city elections ever because it’s a reality we cannot afford to shrug off. Yet, the results of the elections have not diminished how I feel. If anything, it has made me feel more confident in the work we did through Memphis For All. Of course, we’ll all look back and think about all the “should haves” that could have increased those numbers: “We should have done this. We should have done that.” But it’s in these numbers that we also had some of the best conversations with Memphians.

There are lessons in each exchange we had where we learned about the questions, concerns, and visions for our city from folks of truly all age backgrounds. If I had to do it all over again with weather forecasts in mind, I would pack more Gatorade in my bag and head back out to have those conversations. In one neighborhood, we met a group of young black girls around the age of 6 who, taking a break from their apartment’s playground, confidently approached us curious about what we were talking about to the adults. They wanted to learn more about what mayors and city council people are and what they do, and as we were heading back to the parking lot, they ran up to us with the Memphis For All door hangers in hand. They each pointed at the photos of Tami Sawyer and Michalyn Easter-Thomas and eagerly proclaimed, “That’s me.”

Aylen Mercado is a brown, queer, Latinx chingona and Memphian exploring race and ethnicity in the changing U.S. South.