Memphis Rotary – Memphis Flyer

Where matters of law are concerned, it is obviously useful to have a consensus on what this or that law or legal regulation means. We say this at a time when, at the national level of government, we see diametrically opposite approaches to matters of standard legal procedure.

Take the word “subpoena,” derived from Latin roots meaning “under penalty,” as in “under penalty of law.” If you and I receive a subpoena to appear in court, we had best have our buttocks down there on a bench or we’ll likely end up sitting on a concrete slab in a jail cell. The word — and the authority behind it — has historically been regarded that way in Washington, as well. When President Nixon was suspected of running afoul of the law, several important members of his administration received subpoenas to appear before a specially appointed congressional investigating committee. They showed up. We still remember the names: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Dean, and many more. Nixon himself was never asked to testify. He resigned before the then-ongoing impeachment process could compel him to do so.

One of his successors, President Bill Clinton, did testify in his own impeachment matter, albeit voluntarily. Had he not — had he declared himself inviolable to the investigatory process — he would likely have been not only impeached (as he was), but convicted by the Senate.

Fade to today, when a president suspected of criminal behavior, along with every member of his administration, are total scofflaws to the legal process, treating legitimate congressional subpoenas as (in President Trump’s words) “cookies,” to be taken or rejected at one’s pleasure.

Slatery

It was in the shadow of such shameless contempt that the chief legal officer of the state of Tennessee, Attorney General Herbert Slatery, came to Memphis this week to address the Rotary Club, and though Slatery never addressed the national impeachment crisis, he clearly made a point of underscoring the sanctity of the legal process that is being so flagrantly violated in Washington.

Slatery said enforcing the law is not a matter of right vs. left, but of right vs. wrong. He discussed several ongoing legal cases before the state — Mississippi’s suit against Memphis and the state of Tennessee regarding the water aquifer that the Magnolia State claims for itself; the opioid crisis, in which several overlapping jurisdictions have a stake; and several pending capital cases.

With regard to the latter matter, Slatery said that the state constitution and legal precedent mandate that his office “shall” set dates to carry out the sentence of execution, not that it has free will in the matter.

Clearly, opinions differ on the viability and morality of capital punishment, and, just as clearly, the issue is always going to be thoroughly litigated. But, whatever the outcome, the attorney general’s opinion is that he has no option but to follow the law. And what’s true in a matter of life and death surely applies as well to the survival of a presidency.

Among the most intriguing revelations made to members of the Rotary Club of Memphis on Tuesday by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director Mark Gwyn was that
the T.B.I., the Volunteer State’s equivalent of the F.B.I., originated in a newsman’s imagination.

TBI Director Mark Gwyn

This was John M. Jones, the longtime publisher of the East Tennessee Greeneville Sun, who, while covering a murder at some point in the 1950s, became so incensed at the way local police had mucked up the site of the crime (“contamination of evidence,” we call that these days) that he lobbied then Governor Frank Clement for a state-run professional investigative agency. Clement in turn went to work on F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover, who gave the idea his blessing, and — voila! — the T.B.I. came to be.

In those days, the agency had but three employees — one for each of the state’s Grand Divisions — but when then Governor (later prison inmate) Ray Blanton began being accused of crimes of his own in the late ’70s (selling gubernatorial pardons and liquor licenses) and siphoning off agency records, the climate was right for the next Governor, Lamar Alexander, to oversee the expansion of the T.B.I. to its present dimensions as a fully staffed and independent investigative unit, with criminal and forensic divisions of various kinds, all armed with up-to-date technology.

And, as Gwyn explained to his luncheon audience at the University Club, the agency’s directors are appointed to six-year terms in cycles designed to make them independent of specific gubernatorial regimes. (Gwyn himself, originally appointed by former Governor Phil Bredesen, is now in his third term.)

The director addressed three areas of principal concern for the T.B.I — drug trafficking, human trafficking, and cyber crime — all, as he maintained, currently on the rise.

Gwyn claimed credit for a crackdown on methamphetamine production in the state that has reduced the number of meth cases from well into the thousands down to a few hundred. He said the newest specter in Tennessee is heroin and, beyond that, in street doses of heroin cut, in potentially lethal proportions, with the painkiller Fentanyl. (Tennessee has for many years ranked first or second among the states in opioid addiction.)

As for human trafficking, the T.B.I. — commendably — has a policy of regarding young women entrapped into sexual servitude more as victims rather than as criminals, and the agency’s investigative efforts are focused on pimps and customers.

Gwyn came off more as a traditionalist than as an idealist, however, and he got a bit of audience reaction to his statement that he still regards marijuana as a gateway drug as well as to his questioning of legal protections currently enjoyed by users and manufacturers of cell phones — as in the famous Apple case involving the contents of an accused terrorist’s iPhone.

Those are both cutting-line issues, and how they’ll be resolved is still to be determined. But we appreciate Gwyn’s candor and willingness to discuss these points publicly, as he did on Tuesday.