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- A residency lawsuit, juvenile crime and much more tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by a couple of journalists from The Daily Memphian.

First up is Julia Baker.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Bill, we'll start with you and a lawsuit that was filed.

We're in a year where there's a mayor's race.

There's also City Council, as well, but we'll focus on the mayor's race.

Some 10-ish or so, depending on how you want to count it, candidates have declared or formed committees.

They haven't been able to pull petitions and formally begin the process yet, but there was a question that came up in the fall.

It's been growing around what the charter, what the law says about what it means to be a resident of Memphis and are you eligible to run for mayor and the Election Commission took a move on what, February 28th.

Walk us through all this and then we'll get to the question how could this possibly be unclear at this, in this day and age.

But- - Okay.

- I'll kind of give a preview of the later one.

- Yeah.

- The reason that this is unclear is because there are conflicting legal opinions on this and all of those legal opinions and court rulings, as well, including some by the US Supreme Court point to different standards for this.

So, you could kind of see where we are coming a mile away.

What triggered this is on the last day of February, the Shelby County Election Commission said, in effect, when we start issuing petitions on May 22nd, we are going to enforce a residency requirement to run for mayor that you have to have lived in the city for at least five years from election day and they linked to a legal opinion from an attorney named Robert Meyers, who is a former chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission as their reason for saying it is the five-year residency standard.

Several days after that, you had a lawsuit filed by Floyd Bonner, Shelby County Sheriff, 1 of the 11 or so candidates for mayor in Chancery Court.

His attorney, Robert Spence, a former city attorney, contends that Allen Wade, the City Council's attorney who's already issued the opinion on this, Allen Wade's opinion is that you have to be a resident of Memphis if and when you win the election as mayor based on a 1996 charter change referendum that Wade himself drafted the language of.

And just to, there are three candidates, three of the better known candidates, I would say, who are raising quite a bit of money, at least two of them are, Floyd Bonner, currently sheriff, who's lived in Bartlett.

- Bartlett.

- And there's no hiding this.

He said I've lived in Bartlett for 20 years.

He and his wife have bought a home in the city limits and are moving to that because they are, you know, Bonner and Bonner's people say well, the interpretation that Allen Wade has.

Van Turner also lived in unincorporated Shelby County, former county commissioner and he has moved in, as well, in the last 6 to 12 months.

- Right, right.

And both Turner and Bonner on earlier campaign finance reports listed the addresses that were outside the city of Memphis.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Two of the most recognizable names in the race for mayor at this point.

- And just, I hate to do the money thing, but it is about money to some degree in terms of viability.

In the first filings we got, Bonner had raised somewhere around $300,000.

Van Turner, something like $150,000, something like that.

The other candidate this could potentially impact is former mayor Willie Herenton.

- Yeah, here the case it is not as clear as it is.

What you're dealing with are basically that Harrington has his name on several pieces of property, including a home in Collierville that he sold in 2020.

There was no challenge of Herenton's residency in the 2019 election when he owned this home in Collierville.

All of his campaign finance reports for the 2019 run listed an address in South Memphis.

And he started the campaign with listing an address of a home in Banneker Estates off Horn Lake Road, which is a subdivision that he built.

- Yeah.

- So, not as clear cut there, again, because his residency was rumored about being in question, but it was never actually challenged.

- This has been, the first lawsuit has been filed.

It will move, I mean, let's go through the dates here.

Petitions, the formal petitions that people, that candidates can pull, that doesn't happen until May 25th.

- Right.

- And the Election Commission statement is, and pause me if I'm repeating this, it said we're not issuing petitions to anyone who's not a resident for five years, right, so ostensibly Floyd Bonner, Van Turner, possibly Herenton could show up and say and the Election Commission at this point and say we can't give you a petition.

Thus, they cannot be put on the ballot.

That's why they want to move quickly through the court.

And that, we assume that that, this is, we're guessing here, this legal case probably goes up to the Tennessee Supreme Court relatively quickly.

- Yeah, we have about six weeks until they start issuing petitions and that's like that target date when, I think, everybody wants this settled one way or another.

If someone who loses in the Chancery Court decision decides to appeal, what is like to happen is that everybody will seek an expedited hearing by the Tennessee Supreme Court and bypass the appeals court level, which is between the trial court and the Supreme Court.

- We'll segue way to crime, but I want to stay with you for just one second.

You were at a forum last night as we we record this on Thursday, so on Wednesday you were at a forum for the candidates where they're, and then crime came up, and we'll seque way into some more of more of Julia's spin to it.

- Right at the very end of the forum, someone in the audience told the four candidates who were there at Bridges, Frank Colvett, Michelle McKissack, JW Gibson and Joe Brown, said I wanna know, I want a yes or no answer from each one of you.

If you're elected, will you keep CJ Davis as the Memphis Police Chief?

And Colvett and Brown said without any qualification, no, absolutely not.

For Brown and McKissack, they said- - For Gibson and McKissack.

- Yes.

Right.

[all laughs] - Every once in a while, in 13 years, like once a year, I get to correct Bill, so it's fun for me.

- We're done.

[Eric laughs] Early in the year.

- Those two said, McKissack and Gibson said more qualified answers.

They'd wanna assess.

And I thought the interesting thing, 'cause we talked about this earlier was their point was getting rid of the Chief of Police, even if you do that, don't assume everything changes.

- And it doesn't answer the questions that they have and each of them, Gibson and McKissack, each expressed some dissatisfaction with how Davis has handled this situation since Tyre Nichols to date.

- Yeah.

- It's also worth pointing out that every mayor who's been elected since we had a police director, since the position was created in 1972, has usually appointed a new police director after they have taken office with some kind of hold over of the previous director while they do the search for the next police director.

- Bring you in Julia, most of the candidates are talking a lot about crime and, again, in this election year.

Paul Young, who's another candidate, again, if you do it on the money and that first reporting period, it raised about $300,000.

He is very much leading on crime and talking about other issues.

You've been covering crime for us for the last year.

Obviously a lot going on.

And just recently, at Daily Memphian, we have an ongoing series about juvenile crime and I'll tee up the kind of, the framework is that the number of juveniles charged with crime is actually down from its high.

The high was at 2019, but there's a 25% increase overall in serious crimes among juveniles over the last two years.

There's what, 130% increase in car thefts involving juveniles.

The juveniles according to the police are getting younger and there are a lot more guns involved and there's some other stats where there are big increases.

The series is as much as anything kind of tragic, right?

I mean, there aren't a lot of answers, but talk about what you've been writing about and what you've been hearing from the people you've been interviewing.

- Yeah, so, you know, it's actually even more of a decrease from 2011.

It's gone down 47%, so that's something, you know, that kind of gives you perspective.

So it's not that juvenile crimes are necessarily increasing, but like you said, it is getting more serious.

When I talked to officials, you know, former police chiefs and district attorneys, you know, who remember what it was like in the 1970s, you know, back in the 1970s, juvenile crime typically involved, you know, petty thefts, shoplifting, maybe car thefts.

But now you're seeing these juveniles who are stealing guns from cars, they're pulling guns on people.

You know the carjackings in 2022, nearly half of them were carried out by juveniles.

So, you know, that's really saying something.

I know I talked to Bill Gibbons the other day and he's the former DA.

He said that, you know, back in the day carjacking was something that people never even thought of happening to them and that's becoming a bigger issue in Memphis and car thefts is also a big part of juvenile crime.

They are also taking up like about, I think 38% of car thefts.

So, you know, they are increasing in number in these serious crimes.

So, yeah, it's more major property crimes that we're seeing with some violent crimes that are being carried out by them.

- And we had, two weeks ago, you and I interviewed Bill Gibbons, former DA, former head of Tennessee Department of Safety, now head of the Crime Commission, also former police director Buddy Chapman and now the head of Crime Stoppers.

And we talked about those issues quite a bit and I should note, too, that we have folks from the Justice and Safety Alliance, who have a very different take on this and we had them on in the fall, I believe, talking about crime, talking about more long-term strategies, talking about intervention, talking about much more of this is about poverty and this is about race, and so that's next week.

Josh Spickler, Aniyah Watkins and Cardell Orrin will be on talking from the perspective.

But, for now, one of the many things that you wrote about and one of the things that people get frustrated by or point to and say there's no other choices, this notion that for non-violent crimes, but still very serious crimes, car thefts and so on, generally juveniles are, they go to juvenile court and they are pretty quickly released and called back to some sort of hearing or summons.

It, for some people drives them crazy.

They can't quite get their mind around it.

How could they possible go, you know, a group of kids go steal five cars or carjack someone or whatever and be "out", in short order.

So, in terms of solutions to that or approaches to that, there isn't a clear cut solution to that challenge.

- Yeah, and usually you're seeing, you know, some of the more violent crimes that are going into detention.

You know, law enforcement and the juvenile court, they go by a detention assessment tool and their score has to be at least 19 and that's usually reserved for, you know, first-degree murder, second-degree murder.

Sometimes carjacking, but you're seeing a lot of carjacking suspects being released within maybe 24 hours.

So that's definitely a concern for people.

People are concerned that these juveniles are encouraged to repeat this behavior and that might be part of why we're seeing this increase in carjacking.

As far as solutions, you know, I think that's something that the police department, you know, they've said, you know, we don't really know the exact solution and it's multifaceted.

You know, maybe it could be change in legislation, 'cause one interesting thing that Bill Gibbons pointed out to me the other day is that, you know, for instance, I did a story about data transparency and, you know, the public can view some juvenile case files, but, for certain violent crimes, but two of those do not include carjacking and aggravated assault, which are some of the bigger juvenile crimes.

But, yeah, you know, I did another story where, you know, Mayor Strickland and Mayor Harris, you know, they're kind of taking more of a community approach and Judge Sugarmon, he really wants to start doing restorative justice, which is where the victim and the juvenile delinquent, they meet and they, you know, discuss what happened and the victim has a part in what, you know, what kind of rehabilitative services the juvenile takes part in.

- Yeah, and that's Judge Sugarmon, the relatively newly elected juvenile court judge.

Bill, your thoughts on this on this series.

You contribute a history of juvenile court and all the changes over time and other parts that you contributed to the series, thoughts on where we are?

- Yeah, and to Julia's point about access to juvenile court records, it's a basic, it's a bedrock of juvenile justice that juvenile proceedings are not just adult proceedings for children, that there is actually a philosophy here that the information is limited because you don't want this to be a permanent record.

However, it is a permanent record.

The other thing that strikes me about the great reporting that Julia has done on this is that it shows, I think, more and more that we have an either or situation.

You're either in juvenile detention for serious crimes, a detention system that even people who disagree on the way to approach this agree is not good for the children who are charged whatever they have done or not done.

It's either that or it's okay, be on your way, here's a summons, show up for this court date on such and such a date.

You're on the honor system.

There's really nothing between those two and there's a lot of discussion about what to put between those two.

The county has the center now out in Raleigh in the old library there for parents and children who are detained by police to go to after they're issued a summons, but it's voluntary and we only got to that center after a first try at this, which was just quite frankly disastrous because you had a policy, a state law actually that when police transported a juvenile, they have to be in handcuffs and you had professionals who were saying, no, we want this system to be apart from the court.

The purpose is not to have them exposed to juvenile court and to a juvenile record and so that just basically blew up on the launching pad.

- Also, and we'll segue way out of juvenile crime, but there is an effort at the Capitol in Nashville to change the rules around what's called blended sentencing and this is an effort that, you know, Steve Mulroy, to, you know, Bill Gibbons, who are kind of on different ends of generally of some of these topics agree on, which is, to Bill's point, it's either this or that.

There is sentencing that would, you can either, you know, sentence a youth for a violent crime as a juvenile and the record is washed away or you put them in the adult system.

Blended sentencing would create some middle ground and some other strategies.

That's moving forward.

No guarantee that's gonna pass, but that is moving forward.

But I wanna say with criminal justice with you, Julia.

We talked on the show, you've written about it numerous times.

A new approach to bail.

This is not just specific to juveniles.

It's just bail.

There's a new room that's opening within the Justice Center and a whole new approach.

Describe this new approach.

It was, again, one of these kind of bipartisan people across the board supported this reform, what is that reform and how is it going a few weeks in?

- Yeah, it's a reform that has garnered support from, you know, District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who's a Democrat, as well as former District Attorney Amy Weirich, who is a Republican.

And it came about because of a lawsuit that was threatened by, you know, groups such as the ACLU and Just City, which is led by Josh Spickler, which is a reform-minded group, but it's, you know, instead of suing those parties and the Shelby County government agreed on a bail reform order, you know, that part of that comes with a new bail hearing room, which launched on February 17th, and they had issues with the elevator, so they haven't, you know, really used the new room, but they're still using the new practices and the premise of that is, you know, initially when someone's arrested, a judicial commissioner sets a bond and if that bond is deemed unaffordable, then the defendant is in the new bail hearing room and then they will have their bail looked at and then they'll be present, prosecutor will be present, defense will be present, judge will be present.

The public can come look.

You know, their friends and family members can come view the hearing.

And the idea is to kind of assess that bail and see if it's unaffordable and we might be seeing lower bonds.

I know the first day that it launched, I was in, you know, it was held in Karen Massey's courtroom that day, but somebody, I think they were accused of shoplifting or something and they had a $1,000 bond and then they ended up being released on their own recognizance, so we are potentially seeing a decrease in bond and, you know, one thing that I think is interesting in that change in bond, you know, Gregory Livingston was accused of killing Alvin Motley back in 2021 and he was initially charged with second-degree murder and he was given more than a million dollar bond, but then you have these five officers who are accused in the murder of Tyre Nichols, they are also accused of second-degree murder in addition to other charges.

They're only given I think a $250 bond or a $350 bond and they're all out.

- Two hundred and fifty thousand.

- Yes, thousand, sorry.

- Yes, no it's all right.

- And they're all out on bond.

Gregory Livingston is still in jail.

He's now been bumped up to first-degree murder but, you know, initially was given that bond with the second-degree murder charge.

- Thoughts on the bail reform and the bond room?

- I think the bail court is very much a work in progress.

This is not only new terf for the prosecutors and the defense, it's new terf for the judges who have been used to an entirely different standard and the judicial commissioners, as well.

These were decisions that were often made prior to this opening last month in February that were made in a video hearing without all of the sides represented at the hearing.

There's also some conflict.

Originally, this was supposed to be a 24/7 court.

And that was said several times during the planning stages for this and announcing it.

It's not a 24/7 court, which I think raises questions about how long people wait in jail for their hearing and what decisions are made in the interim.

After all, the bail court was formed specifically because of these issues about people lingering in jail until they could get before a judge for a full-fledged hearing.

- With just five minutes left, we'll pivot away from crime and talk for a minute.

There's an update on the search for a new superintendent for Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

You wanna give us a quick update there, Bill?

- Right, Erin Fleming with us has been keeping an eye on that and really watching this very closely.

We don't know the names at this point, but we do know that 18 people have applied to become the next superintendent of the school system.

The goal here is for the school board to select a new superintendent, a permanent superintendent sometime this summer to have them on board in time for the start of the school system this coming August on that.

The reason we don't know the names is because the school system, like many other public entities uses a private search firm for this, and because they use a private search firm, the names are not made public.

There's a whole lot of speculation.

One of the things that people will be anxious to see when and if a list of the names in this public process for a public position are out there is whether or not the current superintendent, Toni Williams, has applied for this job.

- Yeah, the current interim.

And we're trying to get her and the chief, the head of the school board on sometime soon.

I'll also say with education.

At the legislature, there's an amendment to the bill that was passed a couple of years ago that would essentially hold back third graders who aren't reading at a certain proficiency level and had the potential to impact tens of thousands of third graders across the state.

Some people argued, hey, if they can't, they're not at a certain level, they need to stay in their grade until they get to that proficiency level.

Other folks said, look, this can be a disaster and other states have tried this and it ends up really, holding back kids can be very damaging for them and counterproductive for them.

This would, it's a bill that I believe Mark White, the state House rep is leading on the House side at the legislature that would allow for other tests to be used, to changed the standard somewhat and to provide for a lot of tutoring, which is something that, interesting, everyone has agreed on it.

Look, if you're gonna say these kids can't go forward, you've gotta give them help, so there's even more, tutoring is a possibility of this compromise that's coming through.

I'll come back to you, Julia, there was going to be a release of more video of the horrible Tyre Nichols incident that got held up.

What's going on with that?

So, the judge who's presiding over the case for the five officers accused in the Tyre Nichols case signed a motion that was submitted by the defense attorneys for those five officers, basically asking for that additional 20 hours of video, you know, in the Tyre Nichols case, as well as personal files for the additional officers who where there.

The motion called for that to be delayed while the defense, you know, viewed the footage and the records.

So, we don't know, we don't know what will happen with that.

It seems it will be delayed.

We don't know if, you know, there might be an additional motion signed that will completely end it and so we'll see, but Jennifer Sink, who's the chief legal officer for the City of Memphis did reveal that, you know, there was an additional officer who was terminated from the police department, one retired before he could be fired and he's still getting his pension, which is interesting.

Two of the officers who were under investigation had their charges dismissed and three were suspended and they'll be able to come back after a certain amount of time.

- None of those are the five, just to be clear- - Right, none of those are the five officers.

- Charged with second-degree murder.

- Right, right.

That's in addition to the five officers.

And then we have a total of four Memphis Fire Department personnel, as well, and that's including the three that were already announced before.

- And just for the minute left, the ordinances, as coming out of the Tyre Nichols tragedy, I mean, the horror, the City Council had wanted to change some of the procedures or the policies for MPD, when they can pull people over, what conditions they can pull them over.

Is that passed?

Did I miss that?

- There was a package of six ordinances.

The ones that would, the specific ordinance that would say the cops can't pull someone over for minor traffic violations.

A final vote on that has been delayed.

The five others have been approved on third and final reading, but the Council is now in the process of kind of legislatively welding all of those together into a single ordinance that would replace the five separate ones that they gave final approval to.

- Okay, thank you both.

Thank you for joining us again.

Folks from the Justice and Safety Alliance on next week talking about root causes of crime, other approaches to addressing crime.

That's next week on Behind the Headlines.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get it at wkno.org or on YouTube, or you can download the full podcast of the show, wherever you get your podcast.

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

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