Sen. Brent Taylor should not go after Steve Mulroy, but instead find solutions to crime

Memphis residents are increasingly concerned about violent crime, and for good reason. For too long in Tennessee, we have not focused enough on the underlying issues causing violent crime, and instead bought into policies that suggest we can punish our way out of the problem. That's simply not working.

The Commercial Appeal recently reported that Tennessee Sen. Brent Taylor, a Republican Memphis lawmaker who is sounding the alarm about the city's rising crime rate, has requested state investigations into the actions of the Shelby County District Attorney's Office and a Shelby County Criminal Court judge in what appears to be an effort to lay blame for an uptick in violence on these officials.

But before any of us start finger-pointing, we must acknowledge that these problems are not new. Crime has been a concern in Memphis for decades.

In fact, Memphis has landed on or hovered near the No. 1 spot in the nation for violent crime per capita for years, overlapping with the tenure of the former Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich.

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DA Steve Mulroy is enforcing the law like his predecessor did

We can appreciate Senator Taylor's desire to address this serious problem impacting his city, but investigating Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy for protecting people with intellectual disability is not the answer. Tennessee law ensures that people who have intellectual disability are not executed in our state, a protection which was established by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Tennessee Supreme Court more than 20 years ago.

Earlier this year, General Mulroy agreed to a life sentence for Michael Sample, a man living with intellectual disability who had been on Tennessee's death row for forty years—again, a decision supported by both state and federal law.

It is worth noting that during her time as Shelby County District Attorney, Amy Weirich also enforced the same law and agreed to resentence a man who had been on death row who met the standard for intellectual disability -- Pervis Payne. No state lawmaker launched an investigation into her actions.

Regarding General Mulroy's decision to remove Mr. Sample from death row, Senator Taylor said, "The DA is the people's attorney, and the people's attorney convicted [Mr. Sample] years prior and it was the people's attorney's responsibility to protect that sentence."

This is a misreading of the law.

General Mulroy responded by clarifying the DA’s responsibility: “The prosecutor, unique among all lawyers in our system, has a heightened ethical responsibility to not just try to win but to do justice. He represents the community's interest in justice, not any particular victim or client. If the prosecutor has significant doubts about the guilt of somebody, or whether they're eligible for a particular sentence, then it's their job to make it right."

Memphis needs a multi-pronged approach to crime prevention

Playing the blame game is a distraction from the real issues and is not getting us where we need to be. We must rethink the "tough on crime" policies of the last 50 years that have failed to make us safer and have torn communities apart, particularly Black and brown communities.

We can all agree that we have serious problems to tackle, but we need new tools and approaches if we are to be successful. We need to invest in evidence-based policies that are actually getting results in other cities like New Orleans and Newark, which have created community-based systems of public safety, viewing violence through a public health lens.

These systems rely on a multi-pronged approach to address crime as a public health emergency. This approach includes peer mediation, youth centered trauma programs, and violence interruption programs. The violence interruption programs deploy “credible messengers” with lived experience of gun violence to hospitals, homicide scenes, or other areas to stop retaliatory gun violence before it starts.

The mayor of Newark even established the city’s first Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery. During their implementation, these policies reduced gun violence in both cities.

We can’t keep doing the same things and expect different results, but we can implement programs that are working in other cities, programs that can work in Memphis and any place in our state if we are willing to work together and focus on evidence-based solutions.

Rev. Stacy Rector is the executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP), an organization whose mission is to honor life by working to end the death penalty, prevent violence, and support those who experience harm.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy does not deserve legislative persecution