- (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.

- The spotlight on crime, the race for city mayor, and much more tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] - I'm 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 week and the month.

First up, Toby Sells from the Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you, sir.

- Marc Perrusquia's with the Institute for Public Service reporting.

Thanks for being here again, it's been a while.

- Yeah.

- Abigail Warren is with the Daily Memphian covering the suburbs for us.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me back.

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

We'll talk about crime and the fallout.

I mean, it's just still the biggest stories, but we'll get to some other things this week.

I think there are many parts to touch on with crime and the fallout from the Eliza Fletcher abduction and murder and the mass shooting and the exposure of this rape kit backlog.

I'll start with you, Marc.

I mean, you're reporting, you, you... You got to the victim of Cleotha Henderson Abston who is accused of abducting and killing Eliza Fletcher.

You were, you along with Ben Wheeler from our staff were able to track down the woman that he is accused of raping a year ago.

This gets into the DNA from that incident in 2021 was not tested, was not expedited by MPD, was kind of exposed.

There's about 300+ backlog of Memphis-related DNA rape kits and, and so on at, at the state.

Another 300 or 400 from other places around the state.

Your thoughts on it and, and what did we learn, both of this woman's story, but also just what this says about where we are with crime and criminal justice, not just in Memphis and Shelby county, but the state's role in it and so on.

- Well, as you know, Eric, this has been a, a wild ride since September 2nd when Eliza Fletcher disappeared.

And it's a story that touches on so many different aspects of where we are in society.

Kind of the new twist to it, of course, is the whole equity injustice issue that here you had a lady who had reported a rape.

Alicia Franklin, she's gone public, so.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We can use her name.

- That's a good thing to clarify.

She wanted to go public.

- She wanted to go public.

She wanted to tell her story that she had met Cleotha Henderson Abston on a dating app and met him at his apartment out there at the Lakes at Ridgeway.

They were gonna go on a date, out to a restaurant, and it turned horribly wrong.

She timely reported this rape to the authorities.

They did a rape kit.

Now, she's already sued the city like a couple days after Ben and I interviewed her down in Vicksburg.

Raises all sorts of questions about how that case was handled.

The kit, you know, as we know now, we've all reported, and I think the public knows this, was not tested until, nearly a year until after this happened.

So it sat in an unknown suspect queue, even though the police had all kinds of great leads about who this person was.

She gave him, she gave the police his phone number, the dating app information.

He lived evidently right next door.

This was in a vacant apartment where this happened, and it's almost mind-boggling that they were not able to put this together and do it very quickly.

There's all kinds of issues and a lot of this is still unfolding.

We don't have all the answers to it.

Why, why this wasn't moved very quickly, but they didn't ask for the DNA to be expedited.

They can do that.

Evidently there's some cost to that.

There's just a million questions that- And this is another thing too that gets to one of my pet peeves as a longtime reporter in this town is secrecy in this town, government secrecy.

It's never been as bad as it is now.

And granted, you know, the authorities say, "Well, this is an ongoing criminal investigation."

They can't talk.

That's true to a point.

You know, prosecutors, police, mayors, call press conferences all the time about things that they want the public to know about.

And if there's ever a time for the public to know about something, it's now.

And the public needs answers.

And I've had all kinds of community leaders tell me the exact same thing from, you know, we quoted TaJuan Stout Mitchell, Megan Ybos.

- Steve Cohen.

- Steve Cohen, on and on and on.

And it's, it kind of sounds like from Steve Cohen's comments that he wants to launch an inquiry.

He stopped short of saying that, but.

- Yeah, and we've heard it, the stories we've done, the full story, all these are on the Daily Memphian's site.

And Marc has done great work with the, at the Institute, which has partnered with the Daily Memphian, and Ben Wheeler from our staff has been working with you as well.

Abigail, you, we talk about the fallout.

We talk about all the reactions.

You've been tracking in part, along with, you know, everyone at the table, but the state legislature has a big role in this in a number of ways, right?

They are...

The lab, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation lab, is run by the state under the governor.

It's, it's funded by the legislature.

And then all, you know, the majority of the laws that define how from truth in sentencing to how people are handled to the number of prosecutors there are in Shelby County to funding of the prison system, etc, all that comes from the state.

The state has a big role in this.

What has been the reaction of state legislators to what has come out over the last few weeks and what has happened over the last few weeks?

- The reaction from state legislators has been heavily had there been truth in sentencing Cleotha Henderson Abston would've been, still would've been behind bars for a kidnapping he had committed earlier.

Now, that attorney who he kidnapped... - Kemper Durand.

- Yeah, he was able to, he was able to get away and survived.

It didn't end as tragically as Fletcher's did, but they said had he still been behind bars as his sentence called for, had he not gotten out early, that maybe Eliza Fletcher would still be here.

Or they, they didn't say maybe.

They said she would still be here.

And so they kind of used that to say like, "Hey, look at what we've done, we did truth in sentencing and look at what happens when there's not that in place."

- Truth in sentencing, which was passed- passed in the last session, went into effect July 1st, I think, says that for certain types of violent offenses, there's no early parole.

There's no early release for good behavior.

Cleotha Henderson Abston from that kidnapping 20 years ago was out three, four years before the full sentence.

It's a little like, apologies for not having the details.

And people have said the same thing about Ezekiel Kelly who, I guess, he's not alleged to have gone on a shooting spree.

I mean, it was pretty well documented, but anyway, he has not been convicted yet.

But the shooting spree that happened, same thing, he was out early and he had pled to lesser charges and it raises all these questions about that.

Toby, thoughts.

- Yeah, you know, the, another sub, you know, kind of the rhythm of this episode so far, of course we had shock, outrage.

We're still kind of in the, in the blame part there.

And you know, in another subtext other folks say if we didn't have this backlog that we might have gotten, we might, you know, might have gotten him earlier.

He would've been off the streets and, and maybe Eliza Fletcher would be alive today.

We're kind of still in that.

A lot of state legislators have moved on to the solutions part of, of the entire episode.

And a lot of state legislators have come out saying, you know, this is a continuing problem.

Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally said it was, "simply unacceptable and that the evidence that we have now is extremely troubling."

House Speaker Cameron Sexton said that the whole thing was "atrocious and unacceptable."

And he vowed resources to get the turnaround time for these rape kits to under 30 days, is which what he called acceptable.

And Representative Vincent Dixie, he's a Nashville Democrat.

He said that the $45,000 salary for an entry level TBI scientist was shameful and weak.

So I expect there to be a lot of, a lot of heat, a lot of focus on this in the next general assembly up there.

According to some stats from a story from Sam Stockard in the Tennessee Lookout, the TBI said, "Right now we have four scientists assigned to the unit to handle West Tennessee's sexual assault kits."

According to his analysis, the TBI crime lab needs 71 more of these scientists to do the job.

TBI, they requested 40 new scientists in this fiscal year and they only got 20, so.

I expect there to be a lot of heat on this, a lot of focus.

- Yeah, I mean, they, they, Bill, they, they, TBI requested a bunch- millions, tens of millions of dollars for, to do this in the last session.

They got half of what they requested.

Now, there's all this, you know, spotlight.

Toby here is quoted Cameron Sexton, who was on the show, whatever, you know, 2, 3, 4 months ago, saying, under 30 days, he gave- the statement he gave, Joe's like, it was a long week or 2 ago was 30 to 60 days.

I think I've certainly heard from readers and other people, under 30 days is unacceptable, 60 days is unacceptable.

Like, why can't this be done in an incredibly short period of time, given all the money and focus and just the, the sort of sense of justice of this, that, that anything less than rapid turnaround is not gonna be acceptable for the people in Memphis.

- Well, and the other, the other thing that comes into play, and this came up during the City Council debate, the City Council is considering some kind of request, which would be a resolution that's not binding on the state, but would...

They're exploring asking for state funding for the Memphis Police Department to have its own forensics lab to do this themselves and there, and there is a lot of support for that on the Council.

But as I said, that resolution would not be binding on the state.

The other thing that came up in the Council discussion is, well, the TBI says, "Well, the police department didn't say that this was a priority for them."

And some of the Council members said, "Whose rape, whose sexual assault is not a high priority in terms of turning around the testing?"

There's also the other element in the case of Ezekiel Kelly, who is accused in the 12 hour crime and shooting spree that happened five days after Eliza Fletcher's murder, that he was initially charged with two counts of attempted first degree murder.

That was pleaded down to aggravated assault.

- And this was a few years ago.

- This, this was in 2021.

- Yeah, thank you.

- And, and, and, he was, he agreed, he pleaded guilty and the sentence was three years and he only served 11 months of that.

So you have Governor Lee who comes into town and he talks about all of the laws that have passed that, that he's backed.

He leaves out truth in sentencing, which he allowed to become law without his signature, but, but didn't veto.

No mention of the truth in sentencing law at all.

And he specifically takes aim at the plea deal in Ezekiel Kelly's case.

A plea deal that was made by a Republican district attorney, Amy Weirich.

Then we hear from Amy Weirich, who says, "I didn't have a, I had an eyewitness to this "that would've allowed us to possibly go forward "with the two counts of attempted first degree murder.

"But that witness was uncooperative and this was the best deal that, that we could get."

And then you had Cameron Sexton who later that same evening came on Twitter and said, this, you know, amidst all of this rhetoric about soft on crime prosecutors, Cameron Sexton says, "Amy Weirich is not a soft on crime prosecutor.

That's not what we're talking about here."

The discussion on those broad levels is mirroring what I think a lot of us who have reported on this for a lot of years have seen.

And that is, as Marc said, when the police have, have a case solved and come out to do the press conference on it, the very first thing that they say in every case, before they even tell you who they've charged, why they've charged them, what they've charged them with.

The first thing they say is, "We're all gathered here together "because we have worked together.

We have cooperated with one another."

When something like this, I'm not gonna say what this is explicitly, when something like this hits the fan, we don't hear about the cooperation.

We also don't get answers from this group of criminal justice system leaders as a group.

What we hear is, "That's not my department.

You'll have to talk to someone else."

- Yeah.

- Well, if I could just jump on what you're saying.

In this case, you're right.

Not only did they not have a press conference, but they also, it's almost like a disinformation campaign because it was so confusing the way this happened is that... A couple reporters found out by looking at the criminal court website where the indictment was posted, there was no announcement.

It's like, I was, I was working on this story already, but it was like late on a Friday- - When, when the, when the, when the news, just to clarify, when the news came that there was a previous, there was an indictment of the, the- - Exactly!

- Alicia Franklin, what turned out to be Alicia Franklin, a full year earlier, that there was DNA, that there was all that.

As we were, as the, the Fletcher case was- - Right, right.

I was talking to some defense attorneys that night and everybody's going, "What is this?"

Because she, he had already been charged.

Cleotha Abston Henderson had already been charged with Eliza Fletcher's murder.

And then all of a sudden, here's this rape charge.

And it's like, and you're looking, and the date- All there is is a date on it, September 21st, 2021.

What is this?

Spent the next, all that night Friday and Saturday- - I have vague memories.

- You remember that, yes.

- Being on the phone with you - Trying to put this together.

What is this?

And so, really, I mean, if there's an important message to come out of this show it's this is that our public officials need to be direct and honest about this information.

The public deserves answers.

And this is really, it's almost seems to me to be a disinformation campaign.

There's nothing there to, to explain this.

- Toby.

- Now, I will just say that I'm so glad that we have so many great reporters in this town to do things like that.

When I saw that, it was a complete shock, where did this come from?

And it was great to have all this information, to have all the information that we can start maybe formulating some solutions here.

And I'll just say, I've had so little cooperation with MPD over the years that I've even just stopped asking.

You know, and I don't really cover that closely that much anymore, which is fine, I'll let others do that.

But when I see a thing where a reporter has to go dig for this affidavit and, and figure out what all this means, it's tough.

- Yeah, and we had Chief Davis on relatively, what, she's a year plus in, it took a year to have her on.

She was on and it was, it was very good.

People go to www.WKNO.org and, and hear from her.

She is, you know, an impressive speaker.

She talked in detail, she owned things they've done- they don't do, the things that they'd like to do better.

I mean, there's a, I don't wanna say spin, I mean, there's a point of view that she has, but it was incredibly helpful, I think, when crime is on people's mind to have Chief Davis here.

It took a year for some reason.

I don't, we complained, we asked, we prodded quietly and loudly, like just bring- I mean, Chief Davis had nothing to fear coming on here to talk to me and Bill.

And that, that sense of like, let's be more forthcoming.

And the other thing I'll say on this point is over the last year and a half as crime has gone up, Bill and I have done many, many shows on- with DAs, with judges, with Council people and commissioners, with all the mayors.

And there is a kind of sense of, well, we only do this part.

- Mhm.

- They do this other part.

The state sets the laws, the sheriff, the sheriff does the jail.

Well, we, we don't, we don't have the staffing.

I mean, there is a sense that all these little parts of the criminal justice system, they come, they work together sometimes.

I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt, they are well-meaning people, but the system is set up as, like I've said, it's like an archipelago.

- Right.

- I mean, they're all over the place.

Abigail, any other thoughts on this and then move on.

Just when Bill was talking about the governor not vetoing truth in sentencing, it's gonna be interesting to watch next year.

I think there may be some, it's not gonna be harmonious, I think, between the legislature and the governor.

And it's important to note that he rarely vetoes laws because it only takes a simple majority - Right.

- for the house and the Senate.

It's not like in the US where it takes a super majority.

So the governor in Tennessee rarely vetoes laws, because if it goes back to the House and Senate, they can say, you didn't think we meant it the first time?

We meant it the first time.

And just vote like they did before.

- I do think that, that overall what we've seen in the reaction to this, we've, we've had this kind of a buildup, these kind of blockbuster, very sad, very tragic events that have happened before.

I think the reaction this time has been significantly different.

Usually when something like this happens, it's, we have to get tougher on sentencing.

We have certainly seen that sentiment, but we have also seen people who campaigned for and won office on the basis of reforming criminal justice who have not backed down from that or retreated or said, let's just wait this out and then come back.

They've remained in the spotlight too.

And I think that some of this is a function of the pivotal election in particular, the race for district attorney general, that we saw just before these two events happened.

These are, these are very interesting times for this iteration of our historic problem with violent crime.

- And we, I believe we've reached out to Steve Mulroy's office, the new DA, to get him on.

He was obviously on during the campaign, we did debate with he and Weirich here.

And, you know, obviously he's, you know, walked right into it in terms of, of this, but you had a DA who was talking about alternatives, reform, and, you know, it's not just Ezekiel Kelly and Cleotha Abston Henderson.

It's also other prominent killings.

People who've been killed, Yvonne in Raleigh, and, you know, Reverend Eason Williams in Whitehaven, carjackings by juveniles, which gets into Tarik Sugarmon who took over, who won the election against Dan Michael saying, "I wanna be a reformist.

We don't wanna jail all our kids."

but you've got these horrific, I mean, just in the last three months, horrific murders that are gonna, if nothing else, challenge that idea that- And Cleotha Abston had some sort of really pretty bad juvenile record.

It looks like Ezekiel Kelly probably did too.

Those records are kind of vague.

Any, any other thoughts on this?

We got just a few minutes.

- Well, just before we leave crime, I know that, you know, in the solutions forming process here, I know that they're, you know, we're gonna start coming up with new crime plans.

I know Mickell Lowry has said that he's gonna dive in and try to find a countywide plan.

I know the Crime Commission, Shelby County Crime Commission, has one.

I know that there's one under consideration that a few Council members have.

So I think we're gonna be in that planning phase.

And probably Chief Davis has another to say, how are we gonna do this and look at this a new way?

So I think that's what we can expect down the road.

- And I will say, I don't always do this, but Bill Gibbons, we talked about DAs, former DA here in Shelby County, was head of what the Department of whatever it is, Public Safety at the state for six years under Haslam.

He wrote a column for us, it comes out on Friday, that is a really interesting set- You talked about solutions, which was helpful, about changes that he, from there, he's now, whatever president, executive director of the Crime Commission.

Things they'd like to see done differently from his perspective, failings of the system.

A lot of really interesting detail about why plea bargains happen, right or wrong, and how the courts work.

It's a very interesting, very long, but very, very detailed, interesting column in the Daily Memphis from Bill Gibbons.

We'll move on.

We'll stay maybe for a second here with just six minutes left.

So, but, you know, this stuff's been important.

Maybe city mayor, Bill, we've got three candidates.

At least two declared, one looks like she may declare.

- Right.

The latest is Memphis Shelby County Schools Board Chairwoman, Michelle McKissick, who said she is undertaking an exploratory campaign.

There are several phases of considering a run for office.

There's the outright declaration, there's, "I'm running for it."

Somewhere in the middle is the exploratory campaign.

Basically, dipping your toe in the water, to speak figuratively here.

She joins Paul Young, head of the Downtown Memphis Commission, and former County Commissioner Van Turner, who are both declared and have been out there campaigning all of this month at the Southern Heritage Classic, the Orange Mound Parade, the Cooper Young festival.

Turner and Young are out there campaigning.

- Yeah.

- Still waiting in the wings is Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who has not talked publicly about this.

As well as Keith Norman, the pastor of First Baptist Church on Broad, who is also kind of seeing how things go here.

Keep in mind, this is not on the ballot until October of 2023.

- Yeah.

- It's over a year away.

The candidates cannot even begin pulling petitions until next May to even get on the ballot for that race.

But nevertheless, there's no incumbent.

Jim Strickland, the incumbent, is term limited serving his second term.

So this is a wide open race and for a lot of these candidates, it's essential to be out there early.

- Right, yeah.

- And Karen Camper's been rumored.

- Karen Camper, the Democratic House Leader.

- Yeah, thank you.

Also elections in the suburbs when, that are coming up not next year, but... - Soon.

- It's soon, very soon.

- Soon, so early voting starts October 19th, which is less than a month away.

It's interesting in Lakeland and in Germantown, the mayor races are unopposed.

Lakeland will have a new mayor in Josh Roman.

Palazzolo, Mike Palazzolo will essentially, a few votes will seal his reelection in Germantown.

There are some- all the school board races in Germantown and Collierville are contested.

There's, in Collierville, you've got four people running for an open seat as Frank Warren decided not to seek reelection.

And it's interesting to see some of these national issues make their way into these local school board elections.

Issues such as parent voice and what that looks like more.

Well, I mean, library books is one that the state has taken up and is- made its way into the school board election and something that school boards are talking about, but that has also come up in campaigns as well.

- Yeah and I, apologies if you mentioned it, Bartlett also has a pretty significant mayor's race because Keith McDonald is not running for reelection, so it'll be a whole, and he's been in for what 15, 20 years or something like that?

- 20, yeah, 20 plus.

- You talked a bit about the books and librarians, - Right and we were talking before the show, you know, there's kind of a strain on a lot of teachers now that have book collections in their classrooms.

They're figuring out what they can and and cannot have in their classrooms.

And that brought up a search yesterday that I saw that Laurie Cardoza Moore, she's from Nashville, she was reappointed to the State Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission, a very succinct thing.

[laughing] It was reappointment by- - It sounds like a literary.

- House Speaker Cameron- - Speaking of books.

- It was, it was written by it, anyway.

- That's a Dr. Seuss title.

- She was, she was appointed last year and that was controversial because before she ever come into that spotlight, she ran, runs a nonprofit.

She fought a mosque being built in Murfreesboro.

She was anti-Black Lives Matter, she was a vaccine hoaxer.

And then in a lot of YouTube videos, she fanned the flames of the January 6th insurrection.

And so she just got reappointed for another one year term by House Speaker Sexton.

And she is now and has been for a year helping to choose our children's library books.

- It's important to note that- - School books.

- Yeah, just the wow from Marc said it all.

- I mean, it's important to know the librarians review books every year.

So there was a lot of outcry.

There was a bill that was sent to Summer Study.

And so Collierville had kind of flagged books and set them aside to review in case that law passed.

Books that they might have to take off shelves due to that law, but- It's important to note librarians review books every year.

Collierville said they just pulled out the Hardy Boys out of their library because it hadn't been checked out in 10 years.

So like they do review of books every year, but- - No one's reading the Hardy Boys anymore?

- Right.

- No one's reading the Hardy Boys.

- Toby and I were like, "What?

What?"

- Yeah, but Nancy Drew's hanging in there.

- Nancy Drew's hanging in there.

- But I mean, it's, the librarians have been trained to do this and now parents can say, you know, "We don't like this book."

With the age appropriate materials act that just passed, school boards have to set policy of, what does it look like when we review a book?

If, if we think it's immature.

But also it doesn't, the law doesn't really say what defines mature.

And what's mature for a 10 year old girl is very different than what might be mature for 10 year old boy.

- And I think this is interesting because it's not just books.

It's also curriculum guides.

This television station is, is, is airing just a phenomenal series, Ken Burns series, on the Holocaust and the United States.

And at the end of every episode, there is a, a, a message there that if you want a- "If you're a teacher and you want a curriculum guide "to teach hat is portrayed in this series, "lease send us and we'll be happy to send you a curriculum guide."

How does that curriculum guide and telling students to watch this series square with the state law?

- And we leave it there.

- That's a good question.

- Thank you all, thanks.

There's much more.

The Memphis Flyer has "370 Great Things in Memphis" that everyone should check out this week.

So, thanks to Toby.

Thank you all for being here.

Next week, join us then.

If you missed anything, you can get the full episode at www.wkno.org, or you can download the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks, we'll see you next week.

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