We reported on the behind-the-scenes manipulations of Caissa Public Strategy back in 2017. Our identification of the Caissa Seven at the time had predictive value, although we overestimated Kemp Conrad’s Caissa spend at a time when some documents were unavailable at the Election Commission. We also missed a year-end 2014 contribution of $500 by Caissa […]
Last week we had the tragedy of Brandon Webber, who was killed on June 12th by US Marshals in the driveway of his family’s Frayser home. His bereaved parents spoke out in a June 14th vigil at the site of the killing, attended by over 600 mourners. We are saddened by this violence.
June 21st 2019: Shelby County District Court Division VIII, Memphis. Judge Chris Craft, recent recipient of our Hammer Award, called Earley Story to the microphone at 09:55. Mr Story had filed a writ of Error Coram Nobis in an attempt to clear his 1998 conviction. Tony Carruthers had been subpoenaed to attend as a witness. […]
The DA’s office, long before Amy Weirich’s regime, has owned the Hammer Award. We’ll be awarding our Hammer Award to judges as well as prosecutors. Our June award winner is Judge Chris Craft, Shelby Criminal Court Division VIII. We outline his bio towards the end of this piece, but right now we’re going to […]
Last week, we saw how Jason White had been sprited to a state prison more than 1,000 miles away using the Interstate Prisoner Transfer Compact, an obscure contractual framework for prisoner rendition.
In April 2019, we wrote about Jason White, who was framed for a pound of meth by Bartlett detectives and ADA Chris Scruggs, recipient of our first Hammer Award for over-zealous prosecution. White was, until recently, serving 60 years at the West Tennessee State Penitentiary in Lauderdale County. White was spirited out of state Monday […]
Jumping ahead a little, it seems clear that Shelby County is ready for a brand new DA in 2022, one that is committed to dismantling Amy Weirich’s system of mass incarceration. Let’s suppose there might be an ad-hoc host committee formed to find the best possible candidate and provide her with the most and best […]
Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal has recently outed Mike Cross, former Collierville and Shelby prosecutor, and Judge Jim Lammey for racism on social media. We commend Mr Connolly’s enterprise and, seeing that we have our own research on prosecutorial and other criminal justice misconduct, we decided to follow his lead. Our criterion for membership […]
Updated 5/17/2019: We took the appendix of this book and showed how it could be a questionnaire that a hypothetical selection committee could put to candidates to gauge how committed they are to prosecutorial reform. “Prosecutors wield extraordinary power in the criminal legal system. How they exercise their power can be the difference between fairness […]
Jason White was sentenced to 21 years in 1999 for a burglary when he was 18 years old, and, in 2017, was serving the last year of his sentence. Jason Lamar White was indicted in April, 2016, by the Shelby County grand jury for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine along with his girlfriend, Kristina Cole. Another […]
