- (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.

- Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton 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 House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

Thanks for being here.

- Hey, thank you.

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

We'll start with, we'll go through a lot of the issues, the session that has ended, and things that are maybe teed up for next year, and we'll go through some specifics and details, but I wanna start with a kind of a big picture question for you.

In a state that is as big and is from Appalachia to the Delta from, you were from Crossville, which is probably 10, 12,000 people, I think, in the city of Crossville to Nashville and Memphis.

I mean, the diversity of all states is dramatic.

In Tennessee, it's really dramatic just given the size and so on.

There are big differences between Memphis and Nashville, Nashville and Knoxville and Chattanooga.

It's not just city/rural.

And I'm curious, how do you approach that as Speaker when not everyone gets along, different communities have different priorities, different communities have different ways of living, and how do you as Speaker, not just representing your district, but as Speaker of the whole Tennessee legislature, balance those competing interests as best you can?

- Well, I think if you travel the state, so we travel the state a lot when we're out of session for the last three years being Speaker.

And when you talk to individuals across the state, whether you're in east, mid, west, southeast, if you listen more than you talk, which I think sometimes elected officials have that problem, but if you listen more than you talk, the same issues will bubble up that are of importance.

And a lot of times, it may be said a little different in east compared to middle compared to west, but the issues are very similar.

And so, that allows us to get a baseline.

That's how we moved criminal justice reform this last year when we traveled the state.

But I also will say, that's what makes Tennessee so unique.

And so when you're looking at why we're doing so well and why so many people wanna visit the state of Tennessee, each division of the state offers something different than the other part.

And so if you're wanting country music and that sort of stuff, it's in Middle Tennessee.

If you want the mountains and hiking and that sort of stuff, it's in East Tennessee.

If you want blues and barbecue and other things, that's West Tennessee.

So I think we're a very unique state that gives people a lot of different opportunities.

- As you've now gone, you're now three, we were talking before the show, three years as Speaker, twelve years in the legislature.

As you've now gone through your third session as Speaker, do you find yourself though with that diversity, and there is more, I think that's fair, there's this commonality that maybe gets blown out of, the differences sometimes get blown out of proportion, right, on social media, the media, and so politicians and so on.

But as Speaker, have you found that sometimes you've got to advocate for support, let go of resistance to a bill that as purely the representative Crossville, you might have really fought against, but you kinda of look at the bigger picture of representing the whole state and the whole legislature.

Have you had to do that?

Do you see what I'm getting at?

I mean, do you have to view some of the bills and some of the initiatives differently given your role over the whole legislature?

- No, I don't think so.

I mean, I think, I'm still a state representative, and I still represent an area in Tennessee and on the Cumberland Plateau, and so I have constituents that have certain things that they like or don't like, and so I'm supposed to represent them as well.

I'm elected by the body to be the Speaker.

And my role as Speaker is to also listen to Tennesseans, but also to make sure that we function and we move and we set up the processes to where we can be successful as a body.

And so what I think you've seen, and I think if you talk to Republicans or Democrats, what they've seen is a process where we all get along better, we don't hold grudges, and even when we have disagreements, it doesn't mean we can't work on anything after that fact.

And so my role as Speaker is trying to keep us more in harmony and moving and working on things that we can work on.

Also have a role as a state representative for my district as well.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- Mr. Speaker, there was a bill this past session that would have lowered the age for what is called open carry, permitless carry, to the age of 18.

It's currently at the age of 21.

It did not make it this time around.

What do you think the prospects are for that legislation in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas shooting and all of the discussion that that has prompted nationally?

- Well, I mean, I think there's a national debate going on, right?

And there's a lot of things.

There's people who are blaming the gun for what happened.

There's people who are saying we need more mental health.

I think what we need to do is set down with individuals and with stakeholders and try to figure out what is a solution to this.

'Cause you do have a 2nd Amendment right that a lot of people hold true, I hold true, that your right has to do that.

The other problem is you have people who can join the military when they're at the age of 18, and they have a lot of responsibility.

They become an official adult when they become 18.

And so there's conversations that you need to have that says, you know, is 18 an adult?

And if it's 21, then why are we letting them go into the military at a younger age?

And so you have all types of thoughts going on.

I think we need to sit down and talk about it.

I think we seriously have to talk about mental health in our state.

Not just because of those instances, just because of when you look at who's in prison and who's in jails with behavioral health issues, whether they're addiction or mental health, seventy percent of our jail is made up of that.

And so we have to do a better job.

- Should the AR-15 be banned?

- No, I mean, I don't think so.

I mean, banning certain guns doesn't stop violence.

It doesn't stop criminals.

You could ban guns all you wanted to and people are still gonna commit crimes.

You have right now, I think, with the Biden economy with high inflation, high cost, high gas prices, you're gonna see an increase in petty theft and crimes because people can't afford stuff.

I heard today, I was talking to people here in Shelby County.

I hadn't seen this in 40 years, I'm 50 years old, people siphoning gas out of tanks nowadays from people.

I hadn't seen that forever.

And so I think there's a lot of issues that play into that.

- And for someone who's 18 and who joins the service, they get some kind of training.

They get a lot of training in firearms to where they know every part of the gun, how it works, and what it will do, and what it won't do.

Should there be some kind of provisions added that require some kind of gun training that I think you heard about from our law enforcement officials here?

- Well, I think anybody who wants to carry a handgun should have training.

It should be up to them to make that decision.

We have a permit in place right now if you want to go to other states that require that, most people have that permit.

But I also think you need to have conversations 'cause if you're truly wanting to distinguish between 18 and 21 year old, what studies do tell you is the full brain doesn't develop 'til the age of 25.

And so why is someone just picking the age of 21?

If all these groups who want to ban guns or say that an 18 year old can't carry it, but 21's okay, why is it not 25?

At what age do they stop?

Where do they feel like there's more comfortable to allow people to carry?

And so I'm not here to make political points about gun control or banning guns.

It's really a bigger issue much more complex than just talking about guns.

- But there's also the part of this that I hear where people will say, if this person who shot up the classroom and killed 21 people in that classroom, if he had done this anyway, but didn't have access to an AR-15, didn't have access to several hundred rounds of ammunition, he wouldn't have done as much damage as he did.

He wouldn't have killed as many people.

- Well, no.

I mean, could you walked in with a shotgun with a hundred rounds and killed just as many people just more heinous?

I get what the people are saying, right?

But also in that instance, you have to look at law enforcement not coming in for 45 minutes.

You also have to look at the protocols that broke down.

You also have to look in K through 12, should we do active shooter training to teach people how to do that?

Just staying in the classroom and hiding in the corners is not the way to do that on all the different training things that I've done on active shooting.

And so that's where I get it's a bigger conversation than just talking about guns.

Everybody wants to talk about guns, but let's talk about that individual who did that.

What makes someone devalue life so much that they think walking into a fourth grade classroom and shooting 20 kids and teachers is somewhere in their mind a reasonable thing to do?

It's not.

And so that's where I get back to the mental health problems.

- In terms of the mental health, is that an argument for Medicaid expansion?

Because not everyone in Tennessee has access to mental health, and particularly people at the lower income levels don't have access to healthcare in many cases.

- Well, I talked to Commissioner Williams who's the commissioner of mental health in our state.

Every child in school has access to mental health.

Whether you're insured or uninsured, you have access if you need it.

You just have to ask the question.

You have to have people who see something and want you to get help.

- But does that extend to every adult?

- Well, not every adult.

That depends on the insurance and other stuff, but expanding TennCare program when you lose control may not be the best thing to do.

When I was back in the health chair, we looked at trying to do an addition into mental health services.

Because when you're looking at, to your points, when you're looking at mental health crises, what's driving up the ER wait times and what's driving up our health in costs are those people with mental health things.

And so I'm okay with paying, not having to expand.

My issue has always been it's not about the amount of money or who's paying for the policy.

If it's good policy, we should be willing to pay for it.

That's how I look at it.

- The state should be willing?

- The state should be willing.

So we can either pay for it in the Department of Corrections, Department of Human Services, Children's Services, or we can move that money to an earlier stage and do it that way.

- Segue to some extent, we've done, as crime has spiked nationally and has spiked here in Memphis, we've had, over the years, we've had I think every law enforcement official from the DA, to sheriff, to various judges, to the police, prior police directors, universally, the mayors, all of these people that we've had on the last six months will say that expansion of guns into cars, that that was part essentially, my terms, I'm not a lawyer, that having a gun in a car was an extension of the home.

And that was around 2018.

That is when violent crime totally took up and gun crime totally took an uptake.

But what people don't, so they all seem to agree on that and people can watch the shows locally.

What they don't all agree on is truth-in-sentencing.

And you all at the Tennessee legislature, a lot of people who come on the show and talk about crime, Mayor Strickland will talk about this, DA Weirich will talk about this, that we don't have the laws which are set by the state to keep people in jail.

And obviously, they have advocated hard for truth-in-sentencing.

That was passed.

Other people think that that will, and you talked about we're gonna pay for it later.

Other people worry, including Governor Lee, that truth-in-sentencing will flood the jails, increase costs, and not be effective.

Your take on that debate?

- How much is a life worth, right?

How many crimes could have been stopped if that person that had committed those crimes prior had had truth-in-sentencing?

Look at what happened at Rhodes College with the student.

That person had had a lot of criminal history.

They had aggravated burglary before they ever went in and killed him and wounded his girlfriend.

That crime would've never been committed if we had truth-in-sentencing, 'cause they would've been serving a minimum of 85% of that sentence.

That crime would not have happened.

So how do you tell victims that we have a criminal sentencing guideline that allow that person to get out and commit that crime three times.

And on the fourth time, he just happened to run in and somebody was home and shot and killed somebody.

How do you tell that family that their son's life was the one that finally got that person in prison?

- And so, again, Governor Lee, who is a Republican and conservative, I mean, he and others have been very, you just have a disagreement with him.

- It's just philosophical disagreement.

Look at it this way.

You have to separate violent from nonviolent, okay?

That's the first thing.

You can't lump them all into the same code.

There's differences.

Violent crime is a problem.

And if someone wants to do, especially aggravated robbery, kidnapping, second degree murder, attempted first degree murder.

I traveled the state talking to DAs, law enforcement, judges, and victims, and their families.

They all agree with truth-in-sentencing.

And US Sentencing Commission guidelines in 2020 came out with a study that said if they're in prison 10 years or longer, you have a 45% less recidivism rate.

So let's put the violent criminals in jail.

Let's protect our neighborhoods.

Let's protect our streets.

Let's don't have people die because we didn't take care of the criminal the first or second time.

- And so let's talk, it's a great clarification that these are violent.

I think there's 12 basic categories, if I remember right, 10 or 12.

Minor offenses, where do you on that?

'Cause some people like the old broken window strategy that you wanna put someone in jail for breaking a window because otherwise they're gonna break a window, break a window, and then they're gonna break in.

And there was a whole, New York really kind of-- - Yeah, I read that book.

- Yeah.

Where are you on that in terms of minor offenses and jailing people for minor offenses or diversion and so on?

- That's a great question, but let's just think about this.

Before someone commits a violent crime, you might have somebody who that may be the first crime they committed.

More than likely, based on everybody I talked to, they've had a long history of criminal activity that started small and got big.

So we need to focus on the nonviolent offenders, to your point.

You also know, as we said earlier, seventy percent of the people in the jails or in state penitentiary, I think 35% of the population, has a mental health addiction problem.

So this year, we passed mental health courts in our state, juvenile mental health courts in our state.

We already had drug courts.

So if you have these nonviolent offenders, low offenders coming in, and they need help because they're doing petty theft because of an addiction or mental health, let's get them the help that they need and let the court system put them in programs to give them the help and try not to get them to become adult offender.

- Let me, and I'm sorry, I was gonna go to Bill, but does that extend to?

I mean, back in the '90s, one of the things that flooded the jails nationally was the drug offenses.

The war on drugs, right?

Where do you stand on that?

On minor, we're not talking about somebody with 10 kilos of coke, we're talking about somebody with a small amount of marijuana, small amount of whatever drug it is, is that what drug court is for and diversion and not jailing people?

- Well, I think there's a difference between being high and committing a crime, but also trying to sell drugs on a street corner within 500 feet of a school, right?

And so I think there's varying degrees of what a drug crime is that we need to be very careful how we define it and not lump it in.

But what I will say is if you have someone who has a mental health or a substance abuse addiction, the worst place to treat them is in prison.

And so we want them to get better and not become violent offenders.

We have juvenile crime in our state on the rise 'cause adult offenders know if they entice the juveniles to come in, the juveniles have to be cited eight or nine times before they ever end up anywhere.

And the adult's not held accountable for that.

So we need juvenile intervention programs.

We need to put programs in our schools where the schools are at risk and you know that they're at risk to go into juvenile crime based on the activity there, and give them the mentors in relationships in K through 12 education.

Best thing we can do is work with Dr. Ray here in Shelby County and all over the state to make sure when people graduate high school, they're prepared, ready, have the skill sets and aptitude to get a job 'cause they won't be in the crime system and they won't be in poverty.

- And I should know, as before I go to Bill, Judge Michael, head of the juvenile court here in Memphis will be on the show next week.

Bill?

- All right.

Mr. Speaker, when the Democrats were the majority in the legislature in the '80s, I think the end of the '80s, they passed Class-X felonies, which was very similar to truth-in-sentencing.

And the outcome of that was that the prisons filled up and it actually made the problem worse.

How is this new law different from that?

- Well, what I will tell you, I don't know what they went through, but I know if you lock up the very bad people, right?

I don't know if they did just violent or if it was whatever it was.

They were in control for a hundred years in our state.

And I will say in the last 12 years, we're doing a whole lot better than the previous 100.

But saying that, I will say if, if you look at what we want to do is if you put the very bad people away, the violent criminals, and our jails are made up of prisons made up of, I think, 40% of nonviolent offenders.

And we can debate what that nonviolent looks like.

So half of our prisons are non-violent, half are violent.

Let's work on how not to get non-violent offenders into being violent offenders.

Let's give them the help that they need, but let's make prison for the violent offenders.

The most violent of the violent.

You don't have to tell me if I lock you up for 10 years and you try to kill somebody that we're not gonna be a safer community, safer society.

I just believe that's gonna lower crime, that's gonna help victims.

And if we need to build more prisons, I don't understand the concept of why people don't think we, building prisons is a, why is is a bad thing?

Why is it a bad thing?

- You had some very strong words when the governor indicated his hesitancy, and that's part of the give and take of the legislative process.

Will there be efforts to build on truth-in-sentencing in next year's session?

- There very well could be more things to look at.

We're gonna continue to talk to the DA's and law enforcement and victims and all them all across the state and see where we need to go to next.

I don't know what road we need to go to.

I do know when I've talked to the police chief here and the sheriff here and the DA here, who all in favor of truth-in-sentencing, one of the biggest issues that the state has and Shelby County has is juvenile crime.

And we don't have any programs in place, for the most part.

There's some nonprofit community groups here to do a juvenile intervention program.

If we want to reduce crime and reduce the number in prison, let's don't do it when they get to prison, let's work on when they're juveniles and when they're in school and let's give them the tools they need where they never become adult offender.

These people keep looking at our law is gonna put more people in jail.

Maybe it will, but also know if you're always focusing when they're in jail, you're never gonna have true criminal justice reform and lower crime.

- There's been a lot of discussion about truth-in-sentencing and the impact on big cities.

What's the discussion been like in the smaller towns and cities in the state?

The rural areas, the suburban areas.

What's the nature of the crime problem that you hear about there compared to the big cities?

- Well, it's the same thing, you hear it all over.

It doesn't matter if you're rural Tennessee or suburban or urban, it's the same people committing the crimes over and over again.

And so when I view this as a parent, right?

This is my example.

As a parent, if y'all have kids, I don't know, maybe y'all do.

Okay, you have kids.

Is when you're a parent and you punish your child, sometimes you punish them and you want to release that punishment sooner than what you punished.

But you know as a parent, you can't.

Because why?

Because you love them.

You want to show them compassion, but they need to know the difference between right and wrong.

And if you lessen it before they get to that point, the next time you punish them, they're not gonna believe you, right?

All parents know that.

Our criminal justice system in sentencing says, if I punish you and I put you in jail for 15 years for trying to kill you, and I'm a bad shot, and I don't kill you, I just nick you, and they give me 15 years, I only have to serve 30% of that.

Now, if you're the victim, I'm not sure you're gonna like that, right?

And then if I have good behavior, and as your kid, you punish them.

You tell your kid, hey, if you make up your bed and you eat all your food and you come home on time, I'm gonna reduce your sentence by another 30%.

That's what they do in the prison.

So you go from 15 years to 4 1/2, and you're out in three because you didn't shank a guard while you're in there, right?

You didn't spit on a guard while you're in there.

Good behavior is an expectation, not a reward.

And so we have a sentencing problem in our state where the criminals know if they commit the most heinous crime, and they try to kill you, but they don't, they could be out in three years.

I don't think anybody in our state wants that.

- Mayor Strickland, as you may have seen, was on this show a few weeks ago, and also had some very strong views on this and favors the truth-in-sentencing laws.

and one of the things he talked about is that he sees the criminal justice center, 201 Poplar, the most famous address in Memphis, as being basically a revolving door.

Is this a problem of a revolving door criminal justice system?

- I think it is.

I don't think it's a fault of any law enforcement officer, any DA, or any judge.

We have a sentencing guideline problem where back in, I think in the '90s, a little bit later than the eighties you were talking about, they had overcrowding, and they were told by the federal government that they needed to do this.

And so they lessened the penalties and made it easier for these offenders to get out of jail earlier.

Look at the Lorenzen Wright case here.

She got sentenced and what, after 10% she's up for parole?

What sense does that make?

What message are we sending to criminals?

What are we telling law-abiding citizens?

What are we telling people whose kids have to hide under the bed when they hear gunshots or their parents won't let them walk home from school because they're afraid something's gonna happen to them.

That's not the neighborhoods or the communities that we want.

Tougher sentencing works.

That's where I agree.

It's philosophical difference I have with some of these soft on crime groups.

I think tougher sentencing works, but there's other things you have to do in juvenile and other areas for non violent offenders and never get them to be violent.

- With five minutes left, we will move on to a couple things.

It looks like the US Supreme Court is gonna, the leaked potential ruling.

it looks like Roe v. Wade could easily be overturned this summer.

Tennessee has a trigger law that, if I have this correct, would make abortion a Class-A felony for doctors to perform, but not those seeking abortion.

Abortion would be allowed according to the law to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.

There are other restrictions that have been put in place of recent years on abortion underneath Roe v. Wade.

Do you see the legislature if Roe v. Wade is overturned going farther than what's in the trigger law in the next session?

- Yeah, I'm not sure 'cause there's two bills out there that's working.

There's the trigger law, I believe Susan Lynn had that bill that passed.

She's from Mount Juliet.

And then you had the governor's bill, which Lang Wiseman here from Memphis helped the governor write.

So it is a ladder system based on number of weeks.

So they're both out there, depending on what the decision is.

I think we're gonna have to defer to the AG and allow the AG to tell us where he thinks the state stands.

- That's the Tennessee-- - The Tennessee state, yeah.

- Where the state attorney general tells us based on the legislation where he thinks all that falls within Tennessee.

I'm sure there'll be people.

In the House, people get to file 15 bills.

I don't tell them what they can and can't file, you know?

So some sure somebody-- - Do you have a sense of the House that they want to push the restrictions farther?

Some states right now are passing bills that there are no exceptions.

There are criminalization of individuals who go and get an abortion.

I mean, do you have a sense that there is momentum in those directions?

- Well, no, we'll see.

You also have other states like Illinois who's trying to go the exact opposite way where you can do it at any point even up to birth almost, right?

And so think we're gonna have to wait for the decision and see what it looks like, but allow the AG time to tell us where we stand.

- People on the other side of the issue will say that that people of means will still be able to get abortions.

They will go up to Illinois or they will one way or another do that.

It's people of lesser means who won't be able to, which also in some ways gets to prenatal care, maternity care is, again, does there need to be some, if abortion's gonna be restricted, there are gonna be more births, probably, potentially.

Does the state have a responsibility to step in and provide, again, whether that's Medicaid expansion or that's some kind of healthcare for people of lower means?

- Well, we already have that.

We have TennCare.

TennCare does take on pregnant mothers who are uninsured and puts them on the rolls.

That's basically what makes up TennCare is children.

The vast majority of the people on TennCare are children.

So that's already in place if needed.

Now, should we do a better job on prenatal care, making sure they go to the checkups and that we have better births and we don't have babies born with drug addiction?

Absolutely.

We've been working on all that sort of stuff.

But it never hurts to do more prenatal care.

- One question just, again, with a minute left here, people in Memphis sometimes think the legislature doesn't like them.

That we get picked on.

What is the view of from your seat and from your caucus of Memphis?

Is Memphis an annoyance or is Memphis an asset for the state?

- Oh no, Memphis is an asset, right?

I mean, Nashville's an asset.

Chattanooga's an asset.

Knoxville's an asset.

Tipton County, rural Tennessee, Paris, Tennessee's an asset, right?

I think for whatever reason, I think sometimes everybody gets caught up, and Republicans and Democrats.

And people can say Democrats don't like rural Tennessee 'cause they don't represent rural Tennessee.

They don't understand rural Tennessee.

I don't buy that.

At the end of the day, we're all Tennesseans.

We all want what's best for Tennessee.

I know as a Speaker that if we have Memphis thriving and succeeding, and that's why it's important that we work with Mayor Strickland, which we've done a great job since he's been mayor.

Now, prior to that, I don't know how the relationships were with the General Assembly.

That was under Democrat control, and so that's a different story, but I can tell you our relationship with Mayor Strickland and his office and the people here in Memphis is fabulous.

We may not agree on every issue, but my job as Speaker is to make sure when we don't agree, we don't allow it to affect us next time.

And so I don't agree with Mayor Strickland on anything, but I know enough that I need Memphis to be strong for our state, just like I need Nashville to be strong.

And if we get both running at full throttle, we'll see success like we've never seen, and we've seen great success in 12 years.

- We didn't get to all kinds of things, vouchers and all kinds of other stuff.

We hope to get you back next time you're in Memphis or we'll do it virtually.

We appreciate you being here.

Thanks so much.

- Thank you.

Thank you, Bill, and thank you for joining us.

Again, as I mentioned, Judge Dan Michael from the juvenile court will be on next week.

If you missed any of the show today or any past shows, you can get the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, including at The Daily Memphian site or you can get video at WKNO.org or look for it on YouTube.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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