12Sep 2015

Tennessee Legal Opinion is Latest Entry in Police Shooting Controversy

According to a legal opinion from Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, the Memphis City Council cannot subpoena the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s records over the shooting of Darrius Stewart in July.

The opinion which was made public last week and dated august 25, received attention statewide due to the fact that it hinges on the absence of a comma in the relevant state law.

Furthermore, it is also the latest entry in a story that begun in July 17 when Connor Schilling, a Memphis police officer shot and killed Darrius Stewart who was pulled over for a traffic violation. When combined with the shooting of Sean Bolton also a Memphis police officer 2 weeks later, allegedly by Tremaine Wilbourn. The two occurrences have become topics of an already talked about local version of the national discussion about how police conduct themselves while on duty.

The State Rep. Antonio Parkinson of Shelby County Tennessee, sought after the attorney general’s opinion, three months after Amy Weirich the District Attorney General turned the case over to the TBI and seven days after the TBI concluded its investigation into the case and sent a 600-page report to Weirich.
Since the District Attorney General’s office is still reviewing the report, Weirich has not yet released information on the conclusion of the investigation.

Investigative records cannot be made public since the TBI has been barred by Tennessee law to do so.

Only through an order of a court or in compliance of with the subpoena can the records be made public.

Since there is no comma after the word “subpoena,” interpretation of the word either means an order would have to come from the court or a subpoena.
If the word ‘subpoena’ had a comma to separate it from the sentence, then it would be read as a disjunctive rather an as a coordinating conjunction, which means that the adjectival phrase would then properly be read to modify only ‘order,’ wrote Slatery.

Due to the state law’s provisions for secrecy, Weirich faced a lot of criticism when she took the case to the TBI for investigation.
Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. backed Weirich’s verdict, while supporting her, Wharton said that the policy should be that any incident involving a police shooting and civilians die should be investigated by an outside agency.

He further added that the city may hunt for the kind of court order needed to release the investigative records; he also noted that the state law is not specific on which court can grant such an order.

Finally Wharton has also called for reforms on how passengers are handled by the police during traffic stops.

2 responses on “Tennessee Legal Opinion is Latest Entry in Police Shooting Controversy

  1. Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good. https://accounts.binance.com/sk/register?ref=RQUR4BEO

  2. I have read some excellent stuff here Definitely value bookmarking for revisiting I wonder how much effort you put to make the sort of excellent informative website

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *