- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind The Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- A new Tyre Nichols trial and an update on MATA, schools, guns, and much more tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I am Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists talking about some of the biggest stories of the last few weeks, including Toby Sells, news editor with The Memphis Flyer, thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me, sir.

- Katherine Burgess is a reporter with MLK50.

Thank you for being here.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Laura Testino, reporter with The Daily Memphian, thanks for coming back.

- Thanks.

- And Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk, we have to talk through some of what is still unfolding with the new Tyre Nichols trial.

And so Bill and I, why don't we start and fill people in and then people can comment.

It is super complicated, but I will do the gist of it being that late last week, judge, Federal Judge Sheryl Lipman, who had been sort of taking over the trial of the police officers, the federal trial as Mark Norris, federal judge was recusing himself starting in the spring, summer, for reasons no one really understood why.

There were a lot of rumors, there's a lot of talk.

There were a lot of filings under seal.

And those filings were mostly released.

And basically what Judge Lipman came out and said, and I will say this poorly, is there was no real bad behavior, but in the abundance of caution, we're gonna have a whole new trial for the police officers.

What did I miss and how did I mischaracterize it?

- Well, she also said that the whole question about Norris's impartiality and whether his comments and what he did after his comments, whether that was a conflict of interest and prompted a new trial, was to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

She said if it were just a simple review, it would be fairly simple, no, there wasn't.

- And the part has also come out that the comments that Mark Norris made were about MPD being corrupted to the top, I'm paraphrasing, with gang members.

It came, that had been rumored that there was something about that with the, that it was negative comments about MPD being something to both the defense lawyers and to the US attorneys.

But it came out that there was a complicated, we've written about it, other people have written about it, a horrible shooting of a law clerk that had worked for Mark Norris, had come back to help with the trial.

And Judge Norris really being, it seems in the, even in the legal speak, very angry, very concerned, and very much wanting a further investigation of why that law clerk was shot and who was involved and what was going on.

- Yes, and in the paperwork that was unsealed, which was the whole purpose of the lawsuit, Judge Norris said that he believed that it was a gang related violent crime, and that he thought there was some evidence that one of the police officers on trial had connections to, or was a gang member, and that there might be some connection to this.

And he pushed it, he pushed it to the extent that there were meetings with the MPD brass about this, there was a meeting with him and the brass where the brass wanted to talk with him and say, "This is why we don't think it was connected."

And he said he would not meet with them because he thought the police department is infested with gang members into its upper ranks.

- And it is worth noting, I think US Marshals, FBI, others at the federal level, looked at this and found no federal nexus, found nothing to explore that there was, they seemed to conclude as best you sort of read through all the filings, that it was a tragic, awful, thankfully the person didn't die, act of violence by juveniles and so on.

Comments from anyone?

I don't know, Katherine, any thoughts on this?

And then maybe I'll go to Toby.

- Yeah, the one thing, well, I'm waiting to see a lot of things about this, but as another trial is about to occur, I'm really interested in finding out the question of whether or not they're able to try the officers who were, for the charges they were acquitted of.

I just saw yesterday that the attorneys for the officers are arguing because of double jeopardy, that they should not be tried on the charges they were acquitted of, only ones they were convicted of.

And I don't really know how that's gonna pan out, but that will drastically change the shape of the trial.

- And to be clear, this is the federal trial.

This is where the three officers were convicted, but there been a delay in civil rights violations, thank you.

The sentencing phase had been delayed, and that's where all this came out was sort of as it was going into sentencing.

- Right, and to be clear, the judge said a new trial.

Not just rethink the sentencing or someone else does the sentencing.

The other question is, what is the Trump administration Justice Department going to do?

Is that Justice Department going to pursue a retrial on these charges or not?

- Yeah.

- That's a real question.

- Yeah, Toby.

- Yeah, I just think folks are exhausted.

You read a lot of comments online and it's like, can we please just get some justice for Tyre Nichols and his family?

In any situation involving a judge that's gonna go out, I don't care what kind of case it is, and gonna make disparaging remarks against one side or the other, while that that case is still going on, even if it's a throwaway comment, folks are just like, that was wildly irresponsible to do that.

And so after that, and after this decision, the Nichols family, the police officers, our entire court system, the city of Memphis is gonna have to just go through, live that whole story one more time to finally get to the end and maybe get some justice in the Nichols case.

And that's just what I'm seeing all over the place.

People are like, they don't understand exactly why a lot, as y'all have explained here, it's really complicated.

There was no state charges, there were federal charges, and nobody understood why.

But yeah, folks were exhausted with this.

- And all of it against the backdrop of a video that all, probably everyone at this table, I totally understand people who don't wanna watch that video, put a video of a man being beaten to death.

I mean, it was the man, common sense, it's what happened.

You also have, I'll go back to you, Bill, I believe it's Martin, Officer Martin, who pled guilty, at least in some of these filings, his lawyer is starting to seem to be asking questions.

Well, wait, do we want to go ahead and continue that plea given these things and what they feel is bias that Judge Norris had going back in time?

So even the plea bargain, it seems to be somewhat at question here going forward.

- Yeah, it very well could be up in the air.

If this were a throwaway comment, the end of a long work day, someone's frustrated and says something that's inappropriate, maybe not.

But what the court records reveal was that this was a pretty deeply held scenario by the judge.

- Yeah, that's certainly what the, the officer's lawyers are saying that this clearly was so strong and so articulated that it went back in time before the trial started, so.

Other thoughts, or we'll move on, we'll obviously be following this all, our organizations and others will be following what happens next.

Sheryl Lipman has got, is the judge who is gonna handle things going forward.

And also one note is it seems likely, I mean, other things around MPD will sometimes come to the federal government in future case.

That Mark Norris will be a federal judge, one would think that in perpetuity will not be, will have to recuse himself from anything related to MPD, you would think.

So there are other federal judges, but just that side note.

Let's go to you, Laura, and for once, the Memphis-Shelby County Schools did not lead the behind the headlines round table.

Maybe talk, let's start with the district's sort of efforts to begin to push back against the possible takeover that's been proposed by Mark White and Brent Taylor.

We had the two legislators on the show some weeks ago.

You guys can get that at wkno.org or at The Daily Memphian.

Talk about the district's efforts.

- Sure, yeah.

So we saw for the first time last night, kind of their real pointed beginnings of a campaign against the takeover.

Interim Superintendent Roderick Richmond, still got that interim title, is basically like, went through this 25-year history lesson of beginning with No Child Left Behind, to kind of talk about local politics, local funding, all of the ways that the school district is at where it's at now in his point of view.

But one thing that he really harped on quite a bit in that lesson was the Achievement School District, really began to take aim at that state intervention, which by most, most evaluations did not meet what it set out to do, which was turn around some of the bottom five percent of schools in Tennessee and catapult them within 5 years to the top 25%.

There are some schools who shed eventually that priority designation that got them in the bottom five percent, but there are some who still did not.

And lawmakers eventually sunset the ASD this past session and replaced it with something different.

But we're really beginning to see that that is the way that the district is going to combat, I think what the state wants to do with this second, with this new style of takeover with a new board of managers over MSCS and reviving that in session this spring.

- And the other part of that, I mean, I guess they're separate, but there's some, they're very interrelated, is this notion that all the school board members locally who may or may not have much authority, there will still be a school board, but its authority is dependent on this potential takeover.

- Sure.

- Whether all of them, the terms will be changed and all of them will be up for election next year.

Do you or Bill wanna talk about where we are on that?

Because the County Commission has to take a vote.

This is complicated, so.

- There is a state law that was passed earlier this year that says that the county school, the county legislative bodies in Shelby and Knox Counties only can move all of the school board elections going from staggered to having all of those positions on the ballot at the same time.

At the same time as the county legislative body is up for election.

The County Commission has not made a decision on that yet.

It's back on the agenda for Monday.

They're awaiting a legal opinion from the Tennessee Attorney General.

The votes are really close on this, both sides are counting votes on it to see who gets to seven.

- And part of the issue here, Laura, is there, I've heard folks say, well, they shouldn't have been staggered, we should have a whole new group coming in.

Other folks saying you're just trying to shorten the terms of certain people you don't like.

- Yeah, we've talked before about how this is kind of an effective recall of some of the board members who voted to oust former superintendent, Marie Feagins, and that that's kind of what that push is.

I should say, the event that the school district held last night was in partnership with the Equity Alliance, with Memphis For All, with Stand for Children Tennessee, groups that have been in the advocacy space and are very active politically.

At the end of the meeting, Dr. Richmond told us that, it was not to his knowledge that this was anything more than a voluntary effort by these groups, that there's not an active contract or payment set up to do these things together.

But I think it notable because it, the Memphis Lift parent advocacy group really came out strongly in support of this takeover last spring.

And this is kind of where we're seeing where the district is going to lie and try and, build its efforts before session comes back.

- District is gonna lie, not not tell a lie, where they're gonna live- - Where they're going to live.

- Okay, I was like, wow they're lying.

- They are not lying, that was a poor word choice.

- Call the lawyers right now.

No, no, no, no, it's not, just for some clarification.

One more part of this Bill, what is it?

What is it called?

Companion, you told me this right before we started.

Candidates for the board, democratic candidates for the school board next year will have companion primaries, which sounds- - Yes they will.

- Interesting.

- The Republican Party, the local Republican Party made their decision earlier this year.

And about two weeks ago, the local Democratic Party's executive committee decided we're gonna do it too.

So that means there will be school board primaries on the May ballot.

The winners of those primaries advance to the August County General Election.

- How is that different?

- Well, I'll have to, if it's okay.

- Toby wanted me to ask.

- Yes, please.

- How is that?

- Oh, I mean it well, it effectively means, right Bill?

That we're going to determine who is going to be the school board member elect much earlier than usual.

- Oh, I see, okay.

- And especially on the heels of a germane of a session where we're expecting the lawmakers to decide how much role and responsibility these elected members have.

- It's like districts that happens at the house level, it happens lots of levels where it's just that, it's such a Democrat or such a Republican district that the primary is really the actual.

- And that's also.

- Okay, I've caught up.

- And that's another function of the change in state law.

State law until about a year ago, actually barred partisan primaries in school board elections and a much earlier state law required that school boards have staggered elections.

In the case of MSCS, four seats on the ballot in one even year, two years later, the remaining five.

- Last thing, does that leave really at least prominently City Council?

Memphis City Council is the last big nonpartisan.

- All city elections are nonpartisan.

- The mayor as well.

- Yes, the only elections at the Shelby County government level that are not partisan are judicial races now.

- Judicial races, okay.

- Let's go, 10 minutes left here, go to Toby.

There was talking about the state and an appeals court, gun laws that even, I mean this honestly, even the Republican AG is pushing back, like maybe we didn't want to overturn those two laws.

You wanna walk us through the laws that were overturned by this appeals panel and where we go from here?

- Sure, best I can.

A three-judge panel struck down a couple of laws in Tennessee state law.

One that says that banned guns from parks and rec places and city owned recreational spaces.

Another law was that they struck down was a law that said, struck down the intent to go armed part of state law, right?

And so with these two gone, that really opened it wide open in Tennessee, not only for constitutional carry, for almost the most pure form of Second Amendment gun rights carry that I could find in whatever research that I did.

And of course, the Tennessee Firearms Association, they were hailing this as a major victory.

The Associated Press story that I read at The Daily Memphian this morning about the appeals that came later said, that a 10-year-old, under this new the law struck down, that a 10-year-old could take a gun into a rec basketball game.

Or that a drunk man could take a shotgun anywhere he pleased, wherever he wanted to.

- And that was just, again, that was a Republican attorney general saying, characterizing it that way, who is by no means soft on, a gun control advocate.

- That's right.

- So that, just to give some context, but keep going.

- Yes, that's good context 'cause there was an appeal there.

And to have Republican anybody in the South, and especially in Tennessee, pushing back on gun rights legislation was a huge deal.

And we'll see maybe down the road if that's a bigger deal or not.

At the time that the lawsuit or that the ruling came out There's a Republican lawmaker from Dixon, Jody Barrett, who's running for Mark Green's congressional seat.

He calls himself the most conservative legislator in Tennessee history, that is on his X bio, I didn't make that up.

And he was hailing the ruling as this huge win for, sensible gun owners in Tennessee.

And he suggested that in the wake of that victory that folks should go fire off a few rounds at the range after work to celebrate.

Meanwhile, London Lamar here in Memphis, Senator London Lamar, was saying that it's gonna put people in more danger as you loosen these gun laws, and that police won't have any kind of intent to stop anybody with a gun because it puts it in a gray area.

- Right, and we've done polling, other people have done polling certainly in Shelby County and common sense gun reform, whatever you, however you wanna define that, is highly popular, supported across all demographics, all parties.

So it's in this city with a major gun problem, like many cities, especially in states with loose gun laws.

I mean this is not welcome news.

And it's worth noting that all the crime stats from MPD, from the Shelby Crime Commission, you can take them with a grain of salt if you want or whatever.

They've been trending down quarter after quarter after quarter in all kinds of categories, that makes all of us feel better, in terms of car break-ins, in terms of murders, in terms of all these things.

One of the ones that is not trending down is crimes involving guns.

And you can track that and people on all stripes, we've had Republicans on this table, former Bill Gibbons, lifelong Republican, former DA, former head of Tennessee Homeland Security, you can track it, that when they loosened the gun laws, when they got rid of the permits, the amount of gun violence and the amount of gun violations has continued to go up over time.

- So how does the Tennessee legislature fix this?

Because whoever proposes this, if they're a Republican, you've got this guy running for Congress who's an example of what's gonna happen to any lawmaker who tries to fix this bill.

They're gonna get primaried at least.

- Yeah.

- For sure.

And Bill, wasn't it last year that the state, the same group of people, that had this lawsuit that they stopped, you remember when Memphis had on the referenda, all those gun reform bills and stuff?

- They went to court to try to stop, they were one of the parties.

- Right, and they stopped us, right?

I mean they stopped.

They said, you can't put that on there, state law preempts any kind of local gun laws and all that.

So Memphis did try to fix it, but we were told no by the same groups.

- Let me go to Katherine, get an update on MATA.

We did a roundtable last week and we thought we were up to date on what was going on with MATA.

At the time, Alan Wade, the very powerful long time lawyer for the City Council said not so fast to the new MATA board that's been in office for less than a year.

We're gonna, we're not ready to take a look at the two candidates that board was ready to bring forward.

Then what happened?

- Right, so the two candidates, my understanding is they were already in town ready to be interviewed when the search was paused by the City.

So Wednesday was the day when they had expected to interview those top two CEO candidates.

They of course did not do so 'cause they had been told to pause the search.

And then Thursday, which was the last day for the contract for Interim CEO John Lewis, five of the nine board members resigned.

So that leaves them with no quorum on the board, no CEO.

They're being, MATA is currently being run by a COO who was hired last week and a chief administrative officer who has been in the role about a year.

And we're waiting to see who exactly the City Council is going to appoint as a trustee and what exactly that trustee role will entail.

I've been told that they could appoint one as soon as Council Tuesday, but still waiting to find out more.

- And I think we talked a bit about it last week, but we were talking before the show, you and Bill both that it's not like Council was beating on the table in these many, many meetings they've had about MATA, which is understandable.

They don't have the explicit operating authority, but they have the funding authority.

There is a ton of problems, I don't know that anyone's gonna begrudge MATA, the City Council wanting to have a really close hand on what's going on with the MATA given all the problems it's had.

But it's not like there was all these people on the board saying, this Council saying, "I don't like where this is going, "I don't like that the MATA board is getting ahead of itself in terms of proposing new CEOs."

There wasn't a lot of noise.

- Yeah, city code gives the MATA board authority to hire a manager or a CEO.

Hiring a CEO was part of TransPro's, part of their deliverables that the mayor- - The consultant that was brought in after the disaster.

- Yes, the consultant, the mayor, the Council, they've all talked about those deliverables.

It wasn't until those final two candidates were announced and were in town that all of this unfold.

- And again, it wasn't Council, I'll go to Bill now, it wasn't Council saying this, it was Alan Wade, the lawyer kind of coming out being the point person on this.

- Right, right.

What's interesting about this is the Council's involvement.

The Council was told in August in committee by John Lewis with TransPro, that "Hey, "I'm out of here on such and such a date.

"We've already got a CFO, we've got a COO, "next comes the chief executive officer of the Transit Authority, that will be forthcoming."

The Council members who heard that, said nothing.

They didn't say, "Wait, hold on, public meeting."

They said nothing about that, that indicated they had any problem with that happening.

Now, the Council has been unhappy with the interim running of the Transit Authority, but they said nothing about this.

So the question is where is this coming from and what is the excuse going to be for this not being a public meeting at which this was discussed?

- Yeah.

- If I could add, I've spoken to both the chair and the vice chair of the transit committee on the City Council, so that's Edmund Ford, Sr. and Jerri Green.

And neither of, both of them said this did not come from them.

- Yeah, interesting.

All right, a couple minutes.

We also have an op-ed in the Daily Memphian this week from Anna McQuiston, one of the five board members who resigned talking about some, not so much what happened, but her experience of what, some 10 months on that board, 300 days.

Let's go to you, Laura, briefly here and talk about some things going on with the schools, the vacant schools, we've talked a lot about that, you've written extensively about it.

Give us a quick update on some of the things the district's trying to do.

- Sure, so the board passed a $612,000 contract to beef up security at its vacant schools, which was a kind of a drumbeat that philanthropists who support some of the schools going to charter schools have talked about that lawmaker Rep. Mark White has talked about some.

- Some hosts of Behind the Headlines have talked about probably inappropriately and beat the drum on.

[Laura laughs] - So there's funding that's going to address that.

One of the most prominent vacant schools at this point is Humes Middle School, alma mater of Elvis Presley.

It's over there in North Memphis.

There's actually now two competing offers for that building.

A long time offer from New Ballet that's been adjusted to about $250,000 as is for the building, which has supposedly had a lot of more damage since it has been vacant post that it's end in the Achievement School District about a year ago.

But we also have a new offer from MLGW for the $1.4 million appraisal value of the building for the utility to build a substation that would support St. Jude's expansion, other expansions in that uptown area, not demolishing the building, but using land adjacent to it.

- And the group that, this kind of outside group that's coming together to kind of make decisions, where did, about the many vacant buildings and possibly future vacant buildings, where does that stand?

- Yes, they'll be meeting a second time this evening to talk about closing, consolidating, repurposing schools.

I should note on this show, Natalie McKinney, who is co-chairing that committee, has said that that deadline for that plan will get pushed behind September 1st.

So we don't have a new deadline yet, but it is delayed from what the board initially intended.

- And I should note we're recording this on Thursday, so that's tonight.

That is all the time we have.

We didn't get to stories that Toby's doing about plastics in the Mississippi, but go to the memphisflyer.com and get those.

Other stuff that people are writing about, you can get at the websites.

Thank you very much for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can go to wkno.org.

You can go to Daily Memphian, you can go to YouTube, or you can download the podcast of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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