House Speaker Cameron Sexton seeks removal of Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said Friday he is in conversations with the state Attorney General’s office to seek the removal of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy for “dereliction of his office.”

Mulroy recently started a new diversion program in which felons caught with guns in Shelby County who do not have a history of violent offenses — and are facing nonviolent gun possession charges — would face less severe punishments, focusing on rehabilitation instead of incarceration, in an effort to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

"Most people understand treating violent offenders (different) from non-violent offenders is something we need to be doing at a time when we need to be focusing on violent crime," Mulroy said during a news conference Tuesday.

Mulroy's announcement prompted public concern and ire from state Republican officials including Sexton, R-Crossville, who called the DA “soft on criminals” and accused him of “kowtowing to criminals once again.”

But Sexton is going beyond a war of words. In an interview with the USA TODAY Network - Tennessee, he said that he is in conversations with Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to consider seeking Mulroy's removal.

“He can't just arbitrarily say, 'I'm not going to prosecute anybody for that.' He cannot do that,” Sexton told The Tennessean. “So we're investigating it, and we're going to talk to the AG to see if that rises to the level of him being removed.”

State law changed in 2021, empowering the state attorney general to ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to replace local district attorneys if they “peremptorily and categorically” refuse to prosecute charges under certain criminal offenses regardless of the facts. To remove a district attorney from office, they must be impeached or defeated in an election.

“He's not fulfilling the duties of his office. I mean, he's not prosecuting violent criminals,” Sexton said in the interview.

“His lack of holding felons accountable for owning a firearm – which they cannot do – is a dereliction of his office. He cannot do that,” Sexton said. “Basically, what he's admitting is he's not going to prosecute anybody.”

Sen. Brent Taylor, R-Memphis, also condemned Mulroy’s planned diversion program as “a misguided attempt to appease Restorative Justice schemers.”

“In a city plagued by gun violence, the thought that our DA will not aggressively prosecute felons in possession of a firearm is not only nonsensical, but it is dangerous,” Taylor said. “I used to think our District Attorney’s professorial views were simply misguided, unrealistic ideas that should only belong in a law school classroom, but now I’m beginning to wonder if his intentions aren’t more sinister.”

'We're going after people'

Mulroy, in an interview with The Commercial Appeal Friday afternoon, called Sexton's description of the diversion program "a fundamental misunderstanding."

"I am not categorically declining to prosecute anything," Mulroy said. "We are still prosecuting all kinds of gun offenses. We're going after people who have guns in connection with a drug offense. We're going after people who possess Glock switches — seeking higher penalties. Even with respect to felons in possession of a gun, we're still prosecuting all of these cases.

"All we're saying is that on a case-by-case basis, we can consider — still prosecute — but be open to an alternative to prison time for people who don't have a significant criminal history, don't have a violent criminal history and seem reformable."

Mulroy added that the program will allow his office to free up prosecutors to focus on "people who actually use the guns and are a public safety threat." The program, he said, will be so selective that even people slightly suspected to have been involved in a violent crime, or gang activity, would not be allowed in.

In a "concrete example" of a case that would fall into this diversion program, which Mulroy said would be better described as a "supervised gun offender program," the Shelby County DA pointed to a man who was arrested and charged with felon in possession of a firearm. That man's felony conviction was a nonviolent marijuana conviction from about 15 years ago.

"There's no indication that they have been involved in criminal activity," Mulroy said. "What do you do with that person? Well, yes, you could try to send them to prison. But is that really going to make it less likely that they go back and commit another crime or would it be better to try some sort of rehabilitation, rehabilitative intervention?"

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Mulroy said he spoke with Taylor over the phone Friday morning about Sexton's request of the attorney general, but said he had not heard from Sexton nor Skrmetti.

"It was very respectful and friendly," Mulroy said of the call with Taylor. "Sen. Taylor and I consider each other friends, I think. I'm not saying he agreed with me. I don't want to misquote him, but it was a respectful conversation — you know, a frank exchange of views."

What led to this?

Sexton requesting the AG look into removing Mulroy from office comes about eight months after the Tennessee Lookout reported that the Tennessee House Speaker was pondering his removal. At the time, Mulroy said he was confident he would be able to speak with Sexton, but said Friday that meeting was never able to take place and he wasn't sure if a meeting would take place now.

"I'll be happy to try it again. As a general matter, whether we're talking about Sen. Taylor or Speaker Sexton or anybody else that does public criticism, it would really be helpful if they would reach out to me or my office first," Mulroy said. "A lot of times, when you actually hear the details of what we're doing and what we're not doing, it may not completely change their minds, but I think it will somewhat temper the tone of that criticism."

In June, Taylor sent a letter to Skrmetti requesting that the AG answer whether an agreement between the Shelby County DA's office and the U.S. Department of Justice to not prosecute aggravated prostitution is a legal agreement between the DOJ and state of Tennessee.

Mulroy, a Democrat, was elected in 2022. Since his election, Mulroy's office has overseen high-profile prosecutions including that of the man alleged of kidnapping and killing Eliza Fletcher, a man who is charged with a number of felonies in connection to a spree shooting and the five now-former Memphis police officers charged with Tyre Nichols' death.

Mulroy also started a Justice Review Unit, a subsection of the DA's office that reviews potential wrongful convictions and is a large part of the decision-making process in evaluating potential prosecution for police shootings.

The Shelby County DA is also a party in litigation against the AG's office over a state law that allows the AG to handle collateral review death penalty cases, which have traditionally been the purview of locally elected district attorneys. That case is currently being reviewed by the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals after a Shelby County Criminal Court judge ruled the law unconstitutional.

“You've seen Memphis turn into, unfortunately, a gangland, and it's happening every single day, and I put the blame on him,” Sexton said.

Though seeing a rise in crime in 2023, including record homicides, the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission reported that crime began trending downward in the last quarter of the year. That downward trend, the crime commission later said, has continued into 2024.

"I hope that trend continues. Obviously, we can't bank on it because things fluctuate. I'd also say that it's coming down from an unacceptably high rate, so we can't rest on our laurels. We have to continue to work hard on pushing down that crime rate, particularly the violent crime rate," Mulroy said. "But I think the alarmists who said that any notion of reform is going to make things 10 times worse — I don't think our experience bears that out."

Sexton does not anticipate a special session on the matter, so any potential removal would not happen until January.

“It’s going to take some conversations, and we’ll have to wait till we get back in January,” Sexton said. “His policies are trying to turn Memphis, unfortunately, into Washington, Oregon and California ― which actually have changed how they do their policies now because of how much crime they've had.”

Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at [email protected]. 

Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at [email protected], or (901)208-3922, and followed on X, formerly known as Twitter, @LucasFinton.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee House Speaker seeks removal of Shelby Co. district attorney