Tag: Shelby County District Attorney

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Nichols Video Expected Soon, TBI Director Says ‘It’s Absolutely Appalling’

Posted to Facebook by Hunter Demster.

Video of the Tyre Nichols incident will be made public sometime after 6 p.m. Friday, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said during a Thursday press conference. 

The video belongs to the city of Memphis, Mulroy said. It is a mix of body-worn police camera footage and footage from a nearby SkyCop camera, he said. 

Much has been made of the video, with Nichols’ family and members of the public pushing for it to be made public immediately. Many have worried that once the video is made public, civil unrest may follow. That’s one reason that nearly every public leader who has spoken about the situation and the video has asked that any protest that follows be non-violent. 

The timeline of the video’s release was not made public by Mulroy Thursday. The exact timing of its release is in the hands of city leaders. But Mulroy expected a statement from the city Thursday afternoon. 

TBI Director David Rausch said he’s been policing for 30 years and has devoted his life to the profession. But at the moment he was grieved and “shocked by what I saw.” 

“I’ve seen the video and as [Mulroy already] stated, you will, too,” Rausch said. “In a word: it’s absolutely appalling.” 

Mulroy kept a tight lid on details of the incident that led to Nichols’ death, focusing mainly on the charges made against the five officers directly involved in the incident. 

However, the timeline of that evening’s events got a bit more color (but not much) after a question from a reporter. Here’s what Mulroy said. 

“I suspect that all of your answers along those lines will be forthcoming once you have a chance to view the video for yourself,” Mulroy said. “I know that a lot of this has already been publicly released, but there was an initial traffic stop. And we won’t comment right now on the presence or absence of the legality of the stop, but there was a traffic stop.”

Mulroy continued: “There was an initial altercation involving several officers and Mr. Nichols. Pepper spray was deployed … Mr. Nichols fled on foot. There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols. After some period of time of waiting around afterwards, he was taken away by an ambulance. Beyond that I don’t really think we should go into any further details.” 

A reporter asked if the police waited to call an ambulance, to which Mulroy replied, “I believe that if you watch the video, you’ll be able to make that judgment for yourself.”

Mulroy’s main goal with the news conference was to outline the charges against the officers and explain how those charges were made. He said his office and a team of other law enforcement offices worked “quickly to expedite this investigation because of the extraordinary nature of the case compared to the average investigation and prosecution. For decisions in a case like this, we worked swiftly, but also fairly, and most importantly, in a way calculated to ensure that we have a strong case.”

For this, Mulroy said he quickly called in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to ensure the case had an independent investigation. He also called in the newly formed Justice Review Unit within his office, but that works separately and independently, “to make a truly objective recommendation about whether criminal charges were appropriate.”

On Thursday, the grand jury returned indictments on the five former MPD officers involved in Nichols’ death: Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith. 

They were charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping resulting in bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping involving the possession of a weapon, official misconduct through unauthorized exercise of power, official misconduct through failure to act when there is a duty imposed by law, and official oppression.

”While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Mulroy said.

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Politics Politics Feature

Down to the Wire

Tuning it Up: GOP state Senate candidate Brent Taylor at campaign kickoff last week with country singer John Rich (Photo: Jackson Baker)

As the August 4th countywide election cycle winds down, the marquee race is still, as before, that for district attorney general between Republican incumbent Amy Weirich and Democratic challenger Steve Mulroy. The race remains the focus of attention in local politics. It has also engendered significant statewide and national attention.

A quiet moment in a turbulent campaign (Photo: Jackson Baker)

The Tennessee Journal, a weekly which is the preeminent statewide source for political news across Tennessee, featured the race in its lead story for the July 15th issue. Editor Erik Schelzig recaps some of the significant charges and other back-and-forths of the contest, highlighting the two candidates’ major differences regarding the state’s new “truth-in-sentencing” law, which eliminates parole in several major violent-crime categories.

Weirich, who boasts her years-long efforts on behalf of passing the law, points with pride. Mulroy sees it as a case of vastly increasing state incarceration expenses while blunting possible rehabilitation efforts.

In the several recent debates between the two candidates, the challenger notes that his skepticism puts him on the same page regarding “truth-in-sentencing” as opponents like the American Conservative Union and GOP Governor Bill Lee, who declined to sign the bill, letting it become law without his signature. Weirich seizes upon Mulroy’s mentions of that fact as an opportunity to advertise her purported independent-mindedness, noting that she also disagrees with Lee (and the Republican supermajority) on such issues as open-carry gun legislation. “I don’t care what the American Conservative Union says,” she adds.

All that being said (and it’s consistent with her would-be crossover slogan, “Our DA”), the race as a whole is between Weirich’s right-of-center hard line and Mulroy’s highly reform-conscious point of view. Mulroy wants cash-bail reform and systematic post-conviction reviews, the latter including DNA testing. Weirich is open to modifications in those areas but not to major changes.

The two have battled over the matter of alleged racial disparity issues in the DA’s office, with Mulroy charging, among other things, that Weirich has an 85-percent white staff of attorneys prosecuting a defendant population that is 95 percent Black. Weirich says she’s trying to alter the ratio but cites the difficulty of competing with better-paying private law firms in efforts to acquire African-American legal talent.

Both contenders have seemingly forsworn the Marquis of Queensberry rules regarding the etiquette of competition. With no real evidence to base her claim on, Weirich’s ads consistently try to saddle Mulroy with the onus of being a “Defund the Police” enthusiast. He answers that he would like to see more police hired, and at higher salaries, and given “better training.” His ads portray Weirich as being a Trumpian (a stretch) and the “worst” district attorney in Tennessee, one saddled with several citations for misconduct from state overseeing bodies and with an ever-rising violent-crime rate during her 11-year tenure that is the worst in the nation.

The two candidates took turns in verbally pummeling each other in a series of almost daily formal debates the week before last. The venues were the Rotary Club of Memphis, the Memphis Kiwanis Club, and an Orange Mound citizens’ association. Neither gave any quarter, each attacking the other along lines indicated above.

Much of the aforementioned Tennessee Journal article is dedicated to the two candidates’ fundraising and campaign spending. In the second quarterly disclosure of the year (April through June), Weirich reported raising $130,400 and spending $240,400 — much of it on the Memphis consulting firm of Sutton Reid, where her blistering TV and radio ads are prepared. She began the quarter with nearly half a million dollars on hand and ended it with $361,00 remaining.

Mulroy raised $279,000 in the period, a sum which included a loan from him to his own campaign of $15,000. He spent $194,000 and had a remainder on hand of $159,000.

As noted by the Journal, Weirich has gotten almost all her funding from within Tennessee, all but $1,600. Mulroy, who has the avowed support of such celebrities as singer John Legend and author John Grisham, is also boosted by several national groups with a professed interest in criminal-justice reform. Some 35 percent of his funding has come from out of state.

One key venue for Mulroy is New York, where he has traveled twice recently, attending public occasions in tandem with such supporters as criminologist Barry Scheck, mega-lawyer Ben Crump, and entertainer Charlamagne Tha God. Mulroy’s travels and his funding sources are reportedly the target of a new Weirich TV spot which begins this week. It should be noted that the vast majority of Mulroy’s trips out of town during the campaign — all unpublicized until now — have been to Pensacola, where he drives down regularly to look in on his elderly mother.

With early voting about to expire and a week to go before the judgment day of August 4th, polling information is being held close to the vest by both principals, though Mulroy publicized an early one showing him with a 12-point lead.

A fact that looms large to all observers and to both participants and their parties: The position of district attorney general, is, as of now, the only major countywide position held by a Republican. Early voting statistics gave evidence of serious turnout efforts by both parties.

• There are other key races, to be sure. The race for county mayor, between Democratic incumbent Lee Harris and Republican challenger Worth Morgan has been something of a back-burner affair, with neither candidate turning on the jets full-blast in the manner of the DA race. Harris basically is resting on what he sees as a high productive record, and Morgan, though he challenges that, saying the county “deserves better,” has not featured many specifics beyond Morgan’s ill-based claim that Harris has — wait for it — defunded the police (strictly speaking, the Sheriff’s Department).

A recent TV ad shows Morgan in interview mode, chatting about his life and outlook and looking and sounding likable. Given Harris’ edge in incumbency and party base, that is probably not enough for now, but it does bolster Morgan’s name and image for later on.

In the race for Juvenile Court judge, Dan Michael’s incumbency works for him, while his opponent, city Judge Tarik Sugarmon, has a well-known local name and an active Democratic party base working on his behalf. Michael is heavily backed by the GOP in what is technically a nonpartisan race.

Few surprises are expected elsewhere on the ballot, though Democratic County Clerk Wanda Halbert, who has fumbled the issuance of new automobile plates, may get a scare (or worse) from Republican opponent Jeff Jacobs.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Political Ads Gone Awry — Cases in Point

County DA candidates Amy Weirich and Steve Mulroy. (Photos by Jackson Baker)

Yes, “Defund the Police” was a terrible idea and a genuinely stupid slogan. Any true believers in it are deserving of whatever comeuppance they get.

But the fact is, the unjust  linking of the term to political adversaries has turned into the latest political smear. It’s McCarthyism on steroids — right up there with a previous era’s “Soft on Communism.”

A solid piece of fact-checking by The Commercial Appeal’s Katherine Burgess conclusively made the case against County Mayor candidate Worth Morgan’s allegation that incumbent County Mayor Lee Harris, whom he opposes, defunded Sheriff Floyd Bonner’s budget, to the tune of some $4½ million. The accusation turned out to be so much jiggling of budget numbers, and Morgan has since owned up to having made an “error.” The clincher is that the Sheriff himself disowns any such complaint.

The “defund-the-police” smear has meanwhile become an increasingly prominent aspect of incumbent District Attorney Amy Weirich’s campaign against her Democratic challenger, Steve Mulroy.

It is the linchpin of a currently playing TV commercial on Weirich’s behalf, one in which Mulroy is not only accused of having advocated defunding the police — something which he denies and for which no credible record exists — but is represented, through a highly creative juxtaposition of images, as having marched in a parade with activists carrying “Defund the Police” signs.

Fact: a still photo of Mulroy holding a picket sign (but obscuring what the sign says) quickly segues into a video of the aforesaid defunders’ march. The reality is that his sign (and his march) belonged not to that affair but to a wholly different one, on behalf of Starbucks employees’ efforts, ultimately successful, to unionize their workplace.

Similarly, the same commercial misrepresents Mulroy’s support, during a severe phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, of ongoing  litigation to secure improved safety precautions for at-risk jail inmates. The ad would have us believe the suit, by Mulroy himself as the litigant of record, was against Bonner for the simple purpose of releasing criminals  — any and all criminals, it would seem — from jail.

This is not to suggest that Mulroy himself, or his own ad-makers, are wholly innocent of misrepresentation. An  ad on his behalf yoked Weirich together with Donald Trump and the ex-president’s  “mobs”  on the occasion of Trump’s recent appearance in nearby Southaven. Yes, Weirich is running for reelection as the Republican nominee, but there is little in her record to suggest that she is a party-line Republican, much less a Trumpian fanatic.

The balance of Mulroy’s ad is more defensible. He alleges, correctly, that violent crime has risen during Weirich’s tenure as D.A., and viewers of the ad can decide for themselves whether that upsurge has occurred because of, or in spite of, her crime-fighting techniques. It is also true, as the ad suggests, that Weirich has been accused by official tribunals more than once of professional misconduct.

On a recent prime-time evening, the two ads ran back-to-back on local television — Weirich’s first, followed without a break by Mulroy’s. To say the least, the combined effect did not add up to an ideal instance of the Socratic method at work. (Not that TV advertising of any kind is totemic with regard to truth.) And, in fairness to the two candidates, head-banging distortions of the sort described here  seem to be the rule, not the exception, for political advertising in particular.

POSTSCRIPT: Despite the fact-checking in the CA, a TV ad continues to push Morgan’s claim that County Mayor Harris “defunded the police.”  The “defunding the police” claim put forth by Weirich against Mulroy is still extant as well. Meanwhile, the Mulroy ad mentioned above continues to appear, though both he and Morgan have aired new commercials.

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News News Blog

Parents Indicted After Accidental Shooting

The office of Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich announced today that Latria Johnson, 28, and her boyfriend Lindsey Williams, 27, have been indicted on charges of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment following the accidental shooting death of 9-year-old Xavier Jackson by his 13-year-old cousin, the son of the couple. 

District Attorney Amy Weirich

The shooting occurred in March at the Canterbury Woods Apartments near Cordova while the couple were out shopping.

Inside the apartment, the unnamed 13-year-old picked up his father’s loaded handgun from the master bedroom. The gun discharged accidentally striking Jackson in the face and killing him. The gun had been left unattended and unsecured.

The case is being handled by Stacy McEndree of the District Attorney’s Vertical Team 6, which prosecutes cases in General Sessions Division 15 and in Criminal Court Division 10.

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News News Blog

Parents of Truant Students Given Second Chance

CREDIT: Thomas Favre-Bulle

Thomas Favre-Bulle

Parents who have pending court summonses for their child’s chronic truancy will be given a chance to resolve those issues next Monday without the threat of jail time.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Department Fugitive Squad has summonses pending for parents of 117 Shelby County Schools students who have missed five or more school days without an excuse. On Monday, January 11th, those summonses will be addressed during Operation Safe Surrender at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church between 4 and 7 p.m. At that event, parents will be placed on a General Sessions court docket, and a remedy plan will determined for each case.

“No one is going to jail,” said Megan Pietrowski, program coordinator of the Shelby County District Attorney’s Mentoring Based Truancy Reduction Program. “This will be a safe environment.”

Parents of students who have five or more days of unexcused absences can be charged with a misdemeanor and sentenced to up to 11 months and 29 days in jail or fines of up to $2,500.

Through the D.A’s office’s truancy reduction program, truant students are paired with mentors, who provide encouragement and support for at least one year. The program has assisted more than 4,000 students since it began in the 2006-2007 school year.

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News The Fly-By

Injunction Issued Against Dixie Homes Murda Gang

A violent drug-trafficking collective known as the Dixie Homes Murda Gang has become one of local law enforcement’s latest targets.

Following a 10-month investigation, a gang injunction was issued against the group, prohibiting them from publicly congregating within an established “safety zone” north of the city’s Medical District. The area is bound by Jackson, I-240, Poplar, and North Danny Thomas. Encompassing less than a square mile, the zone has been identified by law enforcement as the primary boundary in which the gang operates.

A press conference was held last week in front of Byrd’s Grill, a known meeting location for the gang, to announce the injunction.

Fred Winston, operations commander for the West Tennessee Multi-Agency Gang Unit, said the high volume of gang-related crimes occurring north of the Medical District motivated them to request an injunction.

“We looked at the types of crime being committed in the area [and] the number of police calls for service in the area,” Winston said. “We looked at arrest tickets and other data to see who’s committing these crimes and what are there commonalities.”

Approximately 45 members of Dixie Homes Murda Gang have been identified by law enforcement as having previously engaged in gang activity in what is now the designated safety zone. The injunction forbids members of the gang, which is primarily composed of 47 Neighborhood Crips, from publicly associating together, intimidating or assaulting witnesses to gang activity, possessing guns, distributing narcotics, trespassing on private property, or preventing members from leaving the gang.

If a member is deemed to have violated the injunction’s terms, they can be fined and receive community service or jail time. However, a gang member may opt out of the injunction by declaring in writing that they are no longer a member of the gang and do not endorse the gang lifestyle.

For those concerned that the gang injunction will abuse the constitutional rights of people who aren’t gang-affiliated but reside in the area, law enforcement assures the court order is solely based around gang-related criminal activity.

“If officers are driving down Decatur Street and they see somebody standing out on the corner wearing dark blue and light blue colors, unless that person is one of the named individuals in our injunction, they can stand on the corner,” said District Attorney General Amy Weirich. “It’s just the named individuals who can’t. Nine times out of 10, the officer is going to know [if] the person has previously admitted their membership in the gang.”

Locally, gang activity has increased over recent years. To date, there are 9,100 documented gang members and 170 documented gangs and subsets in the area, according to the Tennessee Gang Investigators Association (TNGIA). This number does not take into account undocumented members, which authorities say could double that figure.

In September 2013, the city’s first-ever gang injunction was issued against the Riverside Rollin’ 90’s Crips in South Memphis. A safety zone was established against the gang in a 4.6-mile radius bordered by South Parkway, West Mallory, I-55, and Florida. Since enforcing the gang injunction, violent crime in the zone has been reduced by 52 percent, according to Multi-Agency Gang Unit data.

Ed Stanton, U.S. Attorney for West Tennessee, said the community can expect more criminal actions to be filed against gang members in the future.

“We’ll use every resource at our disposal,” Stanton said. “We don’t want to be just reactionary, kind of showing up after the fact but really build high-level investigations to dismantle these gangs. And we’re starting with the highest-ranking individuals.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Dubious Justice in Shelby County

Just based on his dubious record of courtroom failures, Erle Stanley Gardner’s literary fictional prosecutor, Hamilton Burger, the tenacious but inept antagonist of the brilliant defense attorney Perry Mason, wouldn’t seem to have been seen as an icon of jurisprudence. Yet, despite all his embarrassing setbacks as a Los Angeles district attorney, the author still respected Burger enough to label him as being a “stubborn, but honest” public servant in the pursuit of justice.

However, it was Burger’s errors in judgment that came to mind as the Tennessee Supreme Court again ruled in favor of a retrial for a convicted Shelby County inmate sentenced to the state’s death row.

In 2009, I reported on the gruesome double murder trial in the deaths of an elderly Bartlett couple, Clarence and Lillian James, at the hands of sadistic drifter, Henry Lee Jones. The evidence against Jones was overwhelming. He befriended the unsuspecting duo before tying them up, strangling both, and then slashing their throats. It took a jury only three hours to come back with two first-degree murder verdicts.

In overturning the verdicts, the Tennessee justices noted a trial error by former Shelby County Criminal Court Judge John Colton in allowing prosecutors Tom Henderson and John Campbell to tell jurors of Jones’ alleged killing of a 19-year-old man in Florida, just days before the Bartlett murders. They tried to link the cases together in an effort to show the details of the Bartlett deaths indicated the style of “signature crime” Jones committed in Florida. The justices didn’t agree with the comparison, declaring it was too prejudicial to have been introduced at trial.

The Jones case becomes one of four murder convictions now requiring retrials that were judicially kicked back into the lap of the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office within the space of less than a year.

In December 2013, the state justices reprimanded Henderson, a 38-year veteran Shelby County prosecutor, for withholding evidence in the 1998 trial of convicted murderer Michael Rimmer. Rimmer was accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, Ricci Ellsworth, in a case in which her body was never found after disappearing from her work as a motel clerk. Henderson, as the lead prosecutor, was cited for not divulging to the defense that another witness had seen a different man at the crime scene where Ellsworth was last seen. A lead detective was also accused of providing false testimony. However, despite the high court’s ruling, Henderson was not reprimanded or censured by his boss, Attorney General Amy Weirich.

In 1999, Robert Faulkner was convicted and sent to death row after bludgeoning his wife with a skillet during a domestic dispute. At the time of the trial Faulkner showed no remorse, earning the nickname “Skillet” after telling homicide investigators his spouse got what she deserved. Only, this year, it was discovered that the foreman of the jury that convicted Faulkner had intentionally withheld the fact she herself had been a victim of domestic abuse. With a tainted jury, the justices had no recourse but to overturn the conviction and order a new trial.

Also expected to be retried is Noura Jackson, convicted of stabbing her mother Jennifer Jackson 50 times at their home in 2009. But, the justices decided that conviction was tainted by several legal irregularities, including another withholding of evidence charge, this time leveled against Weirich, who was the lead prosecutor at the Jackson trial.

I’m not naïve enough to think that in a county where prosecutors have sent three times as many people to death row as any other county in Tennessee, the majority of the convicted don’t deserve to be where they are. But, I have heard from more than one defense attorney in Memphis that the current atmosphere in this district attorney’s office is “win at all costs.”

The mistakes made in the cases of Henry Lee Jones and Robert Faulkner might be ruled “technicalities,” but the flagrant withholding of evidence is not only disturbing, it’s at best, unethical, at worst, criminal. The district attorneys are supposed to be beacons of the law. Their misbehavior means putting families of the victims through the agony of reliving the gory details of the heinous deaths of their loved ones. And that’s not to mention the many thousands of dollars it costs taxpayers to retry these cases.

I respect stubbornness, but we should never pursue convictions at the expense of surrendering justice for all. Even a perennial loser like Hamilton Burger understood that.

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News The Fly-By

Same-Sex Domestic Violence Numbers Are Up in Tennessee

Overall domestic violence numbers dropped by four percent in Tennessee since 2008, according to the latest Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) numbers. But for same-sex couples, those numbers actually saw a 44 percent increase since then.

That may not actually reflect an increase in incidents but rather an increase in reporting due to changing attitudes by the general public about homosexuality, said Phillis Lewis, a witness coordinator for the Shelby County District Attorney’s office’s domestic violence unit.

“I think people have become more comfortable reporting,” Lewis said. “I think before people were afraid of letting officers know their status and that [the perpetrator] is their significant other.”

In 2012, Lewis started the “Love Doesn’t Hurt” fund, which provides emergency funding to same-sex domestic violence victims. The money can be used to help victims with anything from housing and relocation to food and gas.

“In the first case we dealt with, the person had completely left the home and needed somewhere to go,” Lewis said. “We housed that person in a hotel for a week, and then they decided they wanted to leave Memphis. So we helped that person get out of town. We want them safe from violence. The last thing we need is another homicide.”

They also collect hygiene products to hand out to victims.

“When you’re running from your wife, you’re not going to think about grabbing some deodorant,” Lewis said.

When she started the fund two years ago, Lewis had begun noticing an increase in reported cases. But she said there was nowhere she felt comfortable sending LGBT victims for help.

“A lot of the agencies [that deal with domestic violence] are faith-based, and I sent one client to a place where, instead of focusing on the trauma she’d been through, they were focusing on her sexual orientation,” Lewis said.

Enter the Family Safety Center of Memphis and Shelby County. The one-stop shop for domestic violence victims opened in 2012, and various agencies that assist victims, such as the Shelby County Crime Victims Center and the Mid-South Sexual Assault Resource Center, are now located in one building on Madison.

The center’s executive director Oliette Drobot-Murry said she has worked to make sure the Family Safety Center is LGBT-friendly. Her staff has trained with the Tennessee Equality Project, and they partner with the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC) and HIV/AIDS nonprofit, the Red Door Foundation.

“We go to [Mid-South] Pride, and we sponsor Red Door events. And now through word of mouth, we’ve had more LGBT folks coming through here,” Drobot-Murry said.

The Family Safety Center is now in charge of doling out money from the “Love Doesn’t Hurt” fund on a case-by-case basis to same-sex victims who file reports there. Although the fund is primarily raised at an annual benefit each March, Lewis said anyone can donate to the fund at any time by sending a check to the Family Safety Center and specifying that the donation should go into the “Love Doesn’t Hurt” fund.

To help prevent same-sex domestic violence, the MGLCC hosts a twice-monthly support group called Cultivating Priorities in Relationships to help people identify toxic relationships.

“I thought we should call it something other than a support group for victims because that scares people,” said Martavius Hampton, MGLCC’s HIV Services Manager. “We promote it as a healthy relationship group, so it’s like prevention rather than waiting on something to happen. We talk about what’s a positive partner and what’s abusive and controlling.”

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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

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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.”