- (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.

- Newly elected District Attorney Steve Mulroy 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 Steve Mulroy, the newly elected district attorney of Shelby County.

Thanks for being here.

- Oh, thank you for having me.

- Bill Dries is on assignment of covering the announcement that Doug McGowan has taken over as head of MLGW, which we will certainly be doing a show on or shows on as that whole decision around where MLGW and TVA goes plays out over the next month.

But again, Steve, thanks for being here.

You were here with your predecessor, Amy Weirich, who you beat in the recent election.

Congratulations on your win.

And that was about, I would look back, it was, that was about June 30, July 1st, I think, is when that aired, and in that time, there'd been something like 60 homicides, give or take, based on Memphis MPD data that doesn't include unincorporated Shelby County or the suburbs.

In that time, two very high profile crimes, the Ezekiel Kelly shooting spree, Eliza Fletcher was abducted and killed.

But before that, Avan Nelson, a community advocate, was killed in Raleigh in July.

Reverend Autura Eason Williams was killed on a what looks like a carjacking in Whitehaven.

All this on the back of a big increase in violent crime.

What can you do now from your new seat, the seat you pursued and that you won, what can you do now to make people feel safer tonight?

I mean, that is a question I've had folks on over the last few weeks talking about this.

There are lots of talk, and we can get to that talk about intervention, about dealing with youth, about alternatives.

But people in this environment wanna feel safe tonight.

What can you do about that?

- Well, as you're correctly stated, violent crime has been increasing in Memphis and Shelby County steadily over the last decade to the point now where it's at record levels.

And so I understand why people are concerned.

They have legitimate concerns.

I can't promise that everything's gonna change overnight.

This is a problem, it's gonna take time to address, but I can say this, the people of Memphis and Shelby County should know that the District Attorney's office and law enforcement take this problem very seriously.

We are working around the clock on solutions to violent crime.

It is my absolute number one priority and will be as long as we have these high crime levels.

You know, if you're looking for silver linings, that horrific first week on my watch where we had those two high profile crimes you referenced, law enforcement, all the different agencies, federal, state, and local, really cooperated seamlessly to apprehend the suspects very, very quickly.

I mean, I was very impressed by what they did.

So we have some very dedicated people out there.

- I think one of the concerns people have about, and the specific incidents I mentioned, and I'm gonna guess you're not gonna want to comment on them specifically, they're all in your office.

But as general examples of the concerns people have, they in many cases involve either juvenile offenders or people who had juvenile records, serious juvenile records.

They, in most cases, while people who had been in jail or been had contact with police, sometimes multiple times, there's a sense that there, in the case of both, in the case of Eliza Fletcher, that helped bring to light this huge, this big backlog in rape kits and DNA testing at the state, and questions about why MPD didn't scream and yell, why, and I shouldn't just put that on MPD, why City Council, why the mayor's office, why county, why everyone didn't yell and scream, hey, we've got a backlog on these again, that could potentially have saved lives or gotten people captured who've committed crimes.

So while I think you're right, I think most people would say, yeah, was amazing that the way the police worked and that, the two high profile ones that the people were arrested and found the accused, why were they out there, is what people say.

Why are so many juvenile offenders out again?

Why are so many people going to jail and serving less than their full sentence and they're out again and then repeating, not petty offenses, but violent offenses.

- So it is always dangerous to try to make broad legislative policy decisions or policy decisions based on a couple of individual cases.

But if we are to take those two examples that you just mentioned, both of those are examples, Eric, of where we did in fact transfer juvenile defendants to adult court and gave them adult sentences.

And when they were released, as they inevitably will be, we're not giving these people life sentences for these crimes, they re-offended.

And so I think there as example of the failure of our policy where we take juvenile defendants and we don't provide any intervention, we don't provide any rehabilitative services.

We ship them off to adult prisons without really rehabilitative services.

We're sending them off to crime college where they learn how to become hardened criminals, and when they are released, the data shows they're more likely to re-offend.

So, you know, if we're gonna try to take lessons from those two examples, those two cases, that would be a lesson that we could draw.

Now, with respect to the rape kits, absolutely we've had a backlog and it's a resources issue.

We don't have enough technicians at TBI.

I personally would be in favor of having a TBI lab here in Memphis so that we don't have to ship samples back and forth.

I think that would speed things up a little bit, but we definitely need more TBI technicians.

And I know that, you know, Governor Lee recently announced in response to all of this outcry that they are gonna be hiring more technicians.

I commend him for that.

I think that's great.

And I have told TBI myself that when they're hiring these technicians, they need to prioritize people that know how to do DNA testing, which will help with violent crime and deprioritize those technicians that what they do is drug testing.

- With the, back to the first part of what you said with the juvenile offenders and how those are handled.

We have a new juvenile court judge for the first time in my, I think over a decade in Tarik Sugarmon who beat Dan Michael.

The juveniles, I mean, what are the alternative ways to deal with the juvenile who's committed violent crime?

And I get we're, and for purposes of this conversation, we're taking out truancy, we're taking out, I don't know, whatever we wanna call misdemeanors and petty crimes and so on.

We're talking about juveniles who sadly and tragically have committed gun violence, you know, assaults with weapons, potentially homicide or potentially murder, whatev- that level of stuff, sexual assault and so on.

What are the alternatives to dealing with in a juvenile, given the court system once that juvenile becomes, what, eighteen, nineteen, you're the lawyer and former law professor, but they, all that stuff gets washed away?

I mean, what do you do about those really violent, repeat offending juveniles?

- So, a couple of things.

You know, we are actually having a working session.

Judge Sugarmon and I are sponsoring a working session taking place on October 6th then, which we're having, and.

- We, and let be, I apologize, we're taping this on a Wednesday before that.

So there's a bit of a time warp period.

Go ahead.

- So we have experts around the country and around the state who are experts in exactly what you're just talking about, the interventions and prevention strategies for juveniles that can take them off that path so that they don't continue to re-offend violently.

We're gonna be meeting with representatives.

Mayor Harris is gonna be there, Judge Sugarmon, myself and others.

We're gonna be working on all precisely that.

But to answer your question, remind me again what you were saying.

- Yeah, no, no, it just violentt That's all good.

we'll have written about that by the time people have, see this again 'cause the time we're will have written about the session are, Julia Baker will be there and other folks will as well, so people can learn more about what was talked about there.

But again, what is, what are those alternative to violent - So two things, - Juvenile offenders.

- So two things, first of all, we haven't been doing a good enough job of intervening early enough, right?

You know, you're talking about how we lose jurisdiction at age 19.

The intervention needs to start much earlier.

You know, we have people who are getting in trouble as early as 14, as early as 11.

And we're not, the system hasn't really done anything with them.

There hasn't been really robust intervention.

We need to do it earlier so that we can get them right.

And if we do that, we don't have to worry about losing jurisdiction at 19, that's one thing.

The second thing is to address precisely the problem that you just mentioned, where there has been discussion in the legislature.

It's something that both Judge Sugarmon and I have talked about, blended sentencing and Bill Gibbons recently ahead of the Crime commission.

- And former preceded Amy Weirich in the DA's office.

- Correct.

And you know, so we're showing, we're talking about bipartisan support here, has talked about this because right now we have either two extremes.

Either we ship them off to adult prison where it's crime college and they learn how to become hardened criminals and then they re-offend later on, does not make us safer.

Or we keep them in the juvenile system where there's a broader array of rehabilitative services.

But if they're an, you know, 16, 17 year old, then we can say, well, we only get them for a couple of years, then we lose jurisdiction at 19.

Blended sentencing is a middle ground option where on a case by case basis on those, the difficult cases, the judge can decide to keep that person in the juvenile system past the age of 19 as long as perhaps to the age of 25 and 25 was picked because the brain science shows that teen brains are still developing up until the age of 25, and I think that middle ground option might help us for precisely those difficult cases you're talking about.

- I will say, and I hate to just promote Daily Memphian Bill Gibbons, again, former DA, former Tennessee Head of Public Safety, I can't remember the formal title.

He wrote a really interesting kind of breakdown of how, of the problems in the rules in the Daily Memphian.

He's written a number of things for us lately in from his role as guest columnist, from his role as Crime Commissioner that get into the weeds of this and the complications of this.

In terms of the interventions, what do you as DA, the DA's office have authority to say, I want this kid to go here and do this?

Or can you only make recommendations?

I mean, what are those intervention, barring changes at the state, which is its own challenge.

What are those interventions available to you now, you and your office for those kids you're talking about?

- In terms of the DA's responsibility, the DA would have, or the, you know, prosecutors would have authority to agree to plea deals that would keep them out of long adult prison sentences on the condition that they participate in these types of rehabilitative programs.

So that's, you know, the prosecutor can't order anything, but the prosecutor can agree with the defense to sort of a cooperative arrangement in which we work on a rehabilitative program for the juvenile and then take that to the judge.

- Your critics, and I mean, you won.

So, but I'm just, you know, trying to get both sides in here to, or multiple sides in here to whatever degree possible.

Critics are worried you're gonna be soft on crime that, you know, you're not gonna try, you know, you're gonna all about alternatives, not about being tough on people.

Does, you're now in the office, you know, elected, however long ago you're in the office a month as we record this, do you worry about a lack of faith or even morale or trust among the police, for instance, that, and I'll say CJ Davis, the Memphis Police chief was on after you were elected before you took the office and I want, people can get the full recording of it, but, on WKNO.org.

But there was some, she was pretty honest, there's some weariness, I mean, there's a new DA coming in.

Well, it's kind of a wait and see mode that what does it mean in terms of the kind of sentencing and the kind of actions the new DA is gonna take.

And what I think she implied, I shouldn't put it that way, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

They do all the hard work.

I don't think anybody says that the police don't do really hard work, really dangerous work of getting a criminal.

And it is very, it hurts their morale if they feel like these people are just gonna be released, if they're gonna catch someone and they're gonna plea down to a lesser sentence if they're gonna be out on probation.

And let's move away from the juveniles.

Now let's talk about repeat offenders and so on, which we talked a lot about with, with Chief Davis.

Do you have a good working relationship, is what I'm trying to get at with the police department, which is already, you know, by their account understaffed and struggling to hire.

We've got this big crime problem.

They get the criticism when, you know, people get out and people, you know, repeat offend, but it's your office and it's the court system that creates these plea bargains and creates these lesser sentences.

I mean, how do you build trust in a good working relationship with the cops?

- Yeah, there's just so many.

- I know, I know.

- There's so many premises in there that I want.

- It, but that's, but you know, that's what, and I'll give you the full time, but those are the things people say, right?

I mean that's what they say to me.

That's what they write in when we write about this stuff.

These are not my opinions, it's just what I hear from people.

So let me give you a lot of time to respond to those premises.

- Okay, 'cause there are, there's a lot in there, right?

So in no particular order, I have a great relationship with Chief Davis.

I think that she and I have very similar attitudes about a lot of things, and I have a great working relationship with her.

For example, when I suggested the cold case unit, the partnership with the Memphis Police Department that we announced last week where we're gonna be working on cold cases, she was very receptive to that.

She agreed very quickly.

I see that as just the first of a number of partnerships that we're gonna be having between the DA's office and law enforcement.

I have been meeting with law enforcement officials a lot since my first day on the job, and I've gotten along with them very, very well with them.

I think I foresee a very good relationship with law enforcement.

I think it's a false premise in part because from day one in the campaign I had been talking about a focus on violent crime, right?

So there is no reluctance to be, you know, if you wanna use that word, tough on violent offenders.

And as I've said repeatedly since that horrible first week in September, repeat violent offenders need to be dealt with very strongly.

And that's exactly what they'll get from the DA's office.

What I'm talking about is deprioritizing certain types of nonviolent offenses, especially those involving marijuana and being late on fines and fees as some examples.

I don't think you get any pushback from that.

You know, whenever I've talked about the idea of marijuana with law enforcement officials, they have all said, yeah, we don't have any problem with that.

You know, we understand the concern about marijuana to just take one example.

So, you know, the, I don't think there's really any disconnect when it comes to the idea of, you know, taking violent crime very seriously in terms of the types of sentences and as prison sentences that we need.

But at the same time, we know that what we've been doing hasn't been working.

Over the last 10 years, we have had a, you know, let's lock 'em up for longer.

Let's lock up more people, let's lock 'em up for longer over and over again.

That's been our response.

And the violent crime rate has continued to go up.

So clearly what we've been doing ain't been working, we need to try something different.

And that's where these prevention strategies and intervention strategies come in.

Not instead of punishing repeat violent offenders, but as a supplement to, so that we can reduce the recidivism rate long term.

Again, like I say before, you know, you can do what makes you feel good or you can do what works.

- Well, just, sorry, clarify.

I mean, so you, you will, there's no rule in your mind that you won't go for maximum sentences in the DA's office on certain cases.

- Well, it depends on the facts and the circumstances, right?

- But you're not gonna resist doing that on principle?

- No, there's no per se rule against going for a maximum sentence.

It depends on the facts and circumstances.

- And in terms of juveniles being transferred to adult court, because you, the blended sentencing stuff that you talked about, that's still dependent on some changes at the State House.

And that is obviously very complicated.

Are you saying there are no kids that I'm going to transfer to adult court?

- No, and even during the campaign, I made that clear.

You never say never in these situations.

There are those extreme circumstances where reluctantly you have no choice but to seek transfer to adult court.

Now remember when we're doing that, we're essentially giving up on this kid.

We're saying that they are irredeemable, they are incorrigible and it's okay to send them off to an adult prison where the statistics show they may be more likely to reoffend in extreme cases.

But that should be done as a last resort, not as a first instinct.

And my critique of my predecessor's administration was that it was done as a first instinct.

We did more adult transfers in Shelby County alone every year than all other counties in Tennessee combined.

Ninety-five percent of them were black.

And it wasn't just me, but an independent federal court monitor said that the way we went about doing it was not only wrong, not only excessive, but racially discriminatory.

There is room for improvement in Shelby County with respect to this policy, but that's not the same thing as saying that we will never do adult transfer.

- The other, [clears throat] excuse me.

The other part of this challenge of this criminal justice system is there are many, obviously many parts that are challenges.

But the court system, I think in the last year of having, you know, your predecessor on having all kinds of people, mayors, City Council, county commissioners, all kinds of folks have said, look, one of the big problems is the courts don't move fast enough.

They close out cases very slowly.

That creates a situation where I think the average time people spend at 201 Poplar is something like 500 days or something like that without a trial, again, wrong to everyone.

If there's someone innocent in there for 500 days, how terrible, if there's someone guilty, no relief, no justice for the family, for the victims and so on.

So what, if anything, can you do to speed up the judges in the court system?

- Well, there's not much that as a DA I could do to speed up the judges and the court system.

But there are things we can do to try to address the backlog.

And you know, what you talked about with respect to the wait of people in pretrial detention is something that I've talked about during the campaign.

You know, 1 out of every 4 people in 201 Poplar has been there for more than 500 days.

The longer you're there, the more likely you are to be black.

And remember, a large percentage of these people are in fact innocent and will be released without a conviction.

But by then you've basically disrupted their lives.

You know, if you're in there for 18 months, you've lost your job, your career, education, you know, disrupted your family life.

So clearly we needed to fix our broken bail system.

Now, fortunately, we've got this new bail order that's come and we're going to be doing two things.

First of all, we be be giving prompt hearings on whether this person needs to be detained, pending trial or not.

Prompt bail hearings in which they'll have the assistance of counsel and the judge will actually look into the person's ability to pay.

So we won't just arbitrarily set out numbers that are unaffordable, but more importantly, there's gonna be a strong presumption now in favor of pre-trial release, absent specific incredible evidence that that particular defendant is either a flight risk or a danger to the community.

And that's the way it's always supposed to have been.

That's the way the law requires it.

We're just now getting into compliance with it.

So with that, I think the number of people who will be detained pre-trial will go down and that will help a lot with that backlog.

Now there's also a backlog with respect to cases that have already started.

Some of that's related to COVID when the courts shut down.

There are some things that we're thinking about doing right now and the way we organize our cases internally in the DA's office that we hope will address that.

But at the end of the day, you know, I can't control what the courts do.

- With just five minutes left.

Sorry that I'm coughing here.

There's so many things I can talk to you about.

Back to, I think you mentioned earlier when we mentioned the rape kits and the backlog and the DNA testing, should the local city, county, should they look at setting up their own lab?

I mean, people have called for that or do you want to wait and see what comes from the governor?

- I wanna wait and see what we can get from the state because I do think it's a state responsibility.

And I think since it's acknowledged that Shelby County is, you know, the, has the greatest need for this kind of testing, and we used to have our facility in Shelby County before they moved it to Jackson.

The idea of creating a facility with state help in West Tennessee doesn't seem to be an unreasonable request.

Would there be city and county participation in that?

Sure, I mean we could think of a cooperative solution.

That would be my first preference, but, you know, it's not without precedent, you know, Metro Nashville, they have their own lab.

So it's something that we could do, but it's not my first choice.

And if I could just very quickly here, when you had that long question with lots of different premises in it, one thing I wanna mention is, you know, sentence length.

The data shows that sentences should be swift and certain, but they don't always need to be severe.

And you know, the idea that, you know, a 20-year sentence versus a 30-year sentence is gonna have a huge deterrent effect.

I don't know whether the data really supports that.

And what we've got right now with truth in sentencing is we're gonna be spending $40 million more every year according to the estimates on prisons.

If we're doing that, if we could spend a comparable amount of money on prevention strategies and intervention strategies, I think it would be even more effective in reducing crime.

- We talked about this some when you're writing truth in sentencing, which went in place I think in the summer was passed by the legislature, certain violent crimes.

The governor actually opposed this, but the legislature pushed forward with it.

Certain violent crimes are gonna have much higher mandatory minimums, is how I think of it.

Is there, are you going to push back on that in some form or fashion or are you stuck with the rules that the state has laid out?

- No, the law's been passed, You know, I'm going to follow the law.

All I'm saying is that what I expect to happen is, you know, we'll have longer sentences in Tennessee, that we will have to build more prisons.

I agree with Governor Lee when we tried this a few decades ago in Tennessee, crime didn't go down.

All that happened is prison budgets ballooned.

- Are you, is there a way for you though to say, well we're gonna charge this person with a lesser offense?

That is underneath the truth in sentencing standards, what criteria covers?

- So, you know, there's no intent to do anything other than follow the law, but clearly every prosecutor looks at, well what kind of time realistically will this person do?

And that has to be factored into what kind of plea deals you're willing to accept.

Clearly, I'm gonna take that into account.

- Yeah, am I right about this, amd apologies 'cause public defenders are under your office, is that correct?

Or is it a wholly separate office?

- No, no, they report to County Mayor Lee Harris.

- They're totally separate from that?

Your relationship with the Public Defender's Office and the chief public defender.

- Oh, very good relationship.

Phyllis Aluko and I think are, get along quite well.

I have a lot of respect for her.

And you know, some of my employees used to work in the public defender's office.

Some of the people I'm hiring are gonna be coming from the public defender's office.

You know, I see it most of the time.

Yes, it's an adversarial relationship, but it can also be a cooperative one too, where we try to work together on solutions that, you know, won't tie up the courts with a lot of unnecessary trials.

We'll try to reduce crime, you know, in an appropriate way.

- Do do you need more DAs?

- Yes, I do.

I do.

We've got a backlog.

But also I need better pay for my DAs.

We've got this strange system, Eric, it's really weird.

Some of my assistant district attorneys are state employees and some are county, but there is a big salary gap between them.

And sometimes two people can be doing the same work at the same seniority, but a big pay gap just because of that bureaucratic, you know.

- Right.

County employees are less.

- Yes, yes.

- So you gotta get, so is that a County Commission question?

- You know, I, again, I would prefer to get some help from the state 'cause I think it's primarily a state responsibility.

But if I can't get help from the state, then I can go to the county as well.

- The same question, I mean, people have talked about that there need to be more judges nor more courts more, should the number of courts be expanded back to that back log, which again, would probably be a state issue to get that done?

- That is the state issue, and I think, I think it's one possible solution, yeah.

- Yeah.

30 seconds left.

What, anything beyond the real tragedies, I don't mean this is a flippant question at the end, but surprises in the job?

- Yes.

One pleasant surprise, how welcoming the staff has been.

They have, you know, been completely receptive.

You know, they are open to the changes that I've been talking about and are willing to help me pursue my vision and I'm very grateful for that.

- All right.

Well, we appreciate you being here.

We look forward to getting you back in your next eight years or 7 years and 11 months in the job.

So thank you Steve Mulroy.

- Thank you.

- That is all the time we have this week.

If you miss any of the show today, you can get the full episode at wkno.org or you can go find it on YouTube.

You can also download the full podcast of this show and all the previous shows at The Daily Memphian site, iTunes, Spotify, wherever we get your podcast.

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

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