Memphis win!

Last month, Memphis voters threw out Amy Weirich, the worst DA in America, and elected civil rights attorney Steve Mulroy, who campaigned on reform and will serve an 8-year term. It’s a momentous victory that’s been years in the making. How horrible was Weirich? Check out this fact sheet on her. To name just one of her vicious traits, her record prosecuting children is so bad that a federal probe called Weirich “toxic for African American youth.” She prosecuted more children in adult court than any other prosecutor in Tennessee–virtually all of them were Black. She is perhaps most notorious for her prosecution of Pamela Moses, whose six-year sentence after prosecution by Weirich for improperly registering to vote shocked the country. (Notably, the judge in the Moses case also lost their election, along with the notoriously bad judge who oversaw the juvenile system).

Shelby County, which encompasses Memphis, is home to nearly a million people, making it by far the most populous jurisdiction in Tennessee (with more people, and far more incarcerated people than San Francisco, which has absorbed so much attention of late). So this is a big deal!

Weirich was not an easy target. She had many supporters and friends in high places, and this was considered quite a long shot race for a long time. The foundation of this victory included: many thousands of hours spent by local advocates (particularly Just City) and national allies to document the harm she was doing and force local and national press to recognize it; plus organizers forming a powerful coalition this year called the Justice and Safety Alliance, which partnered with labor and the Working Families Party to develop and execute on a campaign plan; plus important new partnerships with labor. The Alliance, which will now work together to push for accountability and implementation, includes Just City, Stand for Children, MICAH, Memphis for All, and Black Lives Matter Memphis. 

Weirich’s defeat shows that it’s really worth it to pay attention to prosecutor races, and for candidates focused on civil rights and fairness to mount campaigns. Mulroy won on an unapologetically progressive platform in a deep red state and did so while murders were rising and crime narratives dominated media coverage in Memphis. Black voters in this Southern city overwhelmingly rejected Weirich’s punitive and cruel policies, challenging the narrative that there has been a regressive turn. As Mulroy said on election night, “It’s not just a win for me. It’s a win for all the grassroots criminal justice reform groups that have been pushing for this kind of change for years, out on their own without any support, until we came in.”

Beyond the importance of this particular race, Weirich’s defeat marks a milestone in the effort to defeat the cruelest prosecutors across the country and replace them with people who are committed to ending the incarceration crisis. If you were to read through the earliest media coverage on prosecutors around 2015 from national outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post, you’d see the following names listed over and over again as being excessively punitive and cruel —people like Leon Cannizzaro (New Orleans), Angela Corey (Jacksonville), Dale Cox (Caddo, LA), Jennifer Joyce (St. Louis), Tony Rackacaus (Orange county, CA), and Amy Weirich. None of these prosecutors are in office today. This is progress!