Recent editorials from Tennessee newspapers:
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May 10
The Knoxville News Sentinel on an unusual court case:
Plea negotiations in criminal cases in Knox County generally evolve behind the scenes and usually become public only when the accused and the prosecutor reach a deal.
The accused evaluates the chances of going to trial and the potential outcome and compares that to what the district attorney general is offering without going to trial. The prosecutor is seeking what would be best for the state - as in, we the people. Usually, that’s the way it goes.
Of course, nothing has been usual in the case of Allison Burchett, the former wife of Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett and girlfriend of Bandit Lites owner Michael Strickland.
She is accused of seven felonies and six misdemeanors for allegedly stealing Nicole Strickland’s identity and using it to take money out of her bank account, get her electricity shut off, apply for loans in her name and post her own personal photographs of her body after her double mastectomy. The Stricklands are locked in a bitter divorce.
The charges and the lawsuit are public record. The plea negotiations were secretive until now.
Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen has offered Burchett two possibilities:
Plead guilty to four felonies but get them wiped off her record.
Accept six misdemeanor convictions on her record.
Both offers are conditioned on agreement to four years of probation, the maximum probationary period under the laws at issue in the case.
Burchett has until Wednesday to decide.
Allen seems to be taking two different stances on her office’s relationship with victims in high-profile cases, according to records obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee.
In the case of former University of Tennessee football linebacker A.J. Johnson and a fellow teammate, Michael Williams, accused of rape of a female student-athlete, Allen’s office contended it had a right - and a duty - to stand up for victims and help them refuse defense requests for social media history.
An appellate court last month told the DA she was wrong, saying, “The prosecutor is not an advocate for the victim of a crime or the witnesses for the State but is instead the representative of the sovereign state of Tennessee charged with safeguarding and advocating the rights of the people.”
Perhaps that’s why a letter from assistant prosecutor Bill Bright informed Strickland, who wasn’t happy with the proposed deal for Burchett, that prosecutors aren’t advocates for victims, they only have to keep them informed and listen to their opinions.
The decisions do seem at odds with Allen’s tough-on-crime and victim advocacy stances, but she has declined to explain the differences.
What has emerged are dueling letters between Strickland’s lawyers and Allen’s office, revealing an unusual, bitter division replete with allegations of lies and mistreatment and distrust.
Burchett may decide to reject both proposals. If she does, Bright says it makes no difference the friction between the parties, he’ll go to trial in June.
Perhaps, that’s best.
Online: https://www.knoxnews.com/
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May 12
The Leaf Chronicle of Clarksville on bounty hunting:
Imagine you’re sitting in a car with some friends in a parking lot. Maybe you’re waiting for another friend to come out of a store or restaurant. Maybe you have the radio on. Maybe you’re chatting about plans for next weekend.
In the mirrors, you see men rushing toward the car, guns drawn. They smash your windows. They hold guns to your face, and maybe they yell the two words that are supposed to make this OK: “Bounty hunter.”
What would you do? How would you feel?
That’s roughly what happened to Jalen Milan and his friends just after midnight on April 23, according to Clarksville police and attorneys representing Milan’s family.
Yes, Milan’s family. Because Jalen Milan is dead, killed by gunfire as the car he was in sped out of the Whitfield Boulevard Walmart parking lot.
But it didn’t end there. The bonding agents, seven of them in four cars, then chased the car down Fort Campbell Boulevard before the group came to a stop.
Oh, and it turns out they were looking for someone else who wasn’t even in the car, police say.
Does that matter?
There were no police. The police had no idea what was going on until the 911 calls started pouring in about massive amounts of gunfire in a public parking lot and a chase down a major highway in Clarksville.
There are so many things so completely unacceptable to this community about what happened here.
First, while the four bondsmen involved were registered as required by law, the three bounty hunters were not, according to court officials. In fact, no bounty hunters have ever registered in Montgomery County, despite the requirement that they do so.
Second, being a registered bounty hunter in Tennessee means you have a background check and do eight hours of certification training per year. Eight hours. You get to hunt civilians down, kidnap them at gunpoint and take them to jail with only eight hours of classroom training. To the police officers who go through rigorous and ongoing training for the right to wield a gun while enforcing the law, that’s an insult.
Third, why is this even legal? Would it surprise you that just across the border in Kentucky, bounty hunting is considered kidnapping? When you use a bonding company to get out of jail, you should not be able to give someone the right to hunt you down and kidnap you at gunpoint if you fail to show up. That’s a job for police, not untrained, unregulated civilians.
Fourth, bonding agents are supposed to inform police of their plans before they carry them out. Does anyone think Clarksville Police would have OK’d an armed ambush in a public parking lot, followed by gunfire at a fleeing vehicle and a chase down a major highway? That’s probably why they didn’t inform police of their plans.
Fifth, they had the wrong person. The wrong person. That shouldn’t matter - this whole situation is a disaster on so many levels even if they had the right person. But it does. Because Jalen Milan could have been you. Or your son. Or your husband or father.
He was somebody’s father, by the way. A son and two daughters, ages 2, 3 and 4, who will now grow up without their daddy.
Instead, Jalen Milan was your neighbor.
He was a fellow citizen of Clarksville killed by a murky corner of the criminal justice system that we have allowed to exist, here in Montgomery County and across Tennessee.
That system has to change.
Rigorous enforcement of the scant existing laws would be a good start, but it’s not enough. Putting civilian lives at risk for commercial profiteering off the court system shouldn’t be legal.
Or is this what justice looks like in Tennessee?
Online: https://www.theleafchronicle.com/
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May 16
The Memphis Commercial Appeal on the Tennessee Promise program:
Congratulations are due to the Tennessee Promise program’s first graduates, who are raising prospects for a more fulfilling future for themselves and helping to boost Tennessee’s national ranking for educational achievement.
The initiative launched by Gov. Bill Haslam two years ago, which admits recent high school graduates to community or technical college free of charge, attracted criticism in the beginning for a commensurate reduction in the value of the HOPE scholarship, another state lottery-funded scholarship program, during its early stages.
Time will tell what the net effect of that trade-off will be, but in Memphis, for example, something needed to be done to help fill vacant high-wage positions that require technical skills that can be acquired in community and technical colleges.
And it’s safe to assume that some of the people filling those positions never would have advanced beyond high school without the encouragement that Tennessee Promise provides.
Haslam was in Memphis Saturday to give the commencement address to the first group of Southwest Tennessee Community College students graduating through Promise and Tennessee Reconnect, a no-tuition program for students who are older with some previous college experience.
Both programs could turn out to be instrumental in meeting the goal of Haslam’s Drive to 55 initiative, an effort to raise the percentage of Tennessee residents with some type of post-secondary degree or work certificate from 37 to 55 percent.
Another benefit: The program has raised Tennessee’s profile on the national stage as a state with new ideas about education.
Promise was held out as a model for other states to follow during a recent conference call hosted by Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo and Haslam.
A glance at the data on Tennessee Promise students seems discouraging on the surface. Of the 1,300-plus students at Southwest who started Promise two years ago, only 63 were still in the program and earned diplomas this semester.
That figure, however, doesn’t include students who failed to qualify for the scholarship at some point beyond their first semester, students who qualify but haven’t met graduation requirements or students transferring to another school with credits earned while they were on the Promise scholarship.
And it is hard to measure, but there can be little argument that Tennessee Promise has the potential to change the state’s culture, giving more Tennesseans the economic and intangible benefits that follow an academic pursuit of two to four years or beyond.
Online: https://www.commercialappeal.com/
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