State Sen. Brent Taylor looks to make disciplinary board for Tennessee district attorneys

Yahoo

28-03-2025

State Sen. Brent Taylor, a Republican representing parts of Shelby County and Memphis, said plans to ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to create a disciplinary body explicitly for elected district attorneys.
The body, Taylor said, would operate similarly to the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct, which oversees judges in Tennessee. The disciplinary board could also extend to public defenders and court clerks, he added.
"If you have a complaint with a judge, you can file that complaint with the Board of Judicial Conduct. If you have a complaint with the district attorney, you have two options. You can either live with it or you can take the nuclear option and try to remove them. There's nothing in the middle," Taylor said in a phone interview before the Friday announcement.
A disciplinary board for attorneys already exists, the Board of Professional Responsibility, but Taylor said that board deals more with "transgressions as it relates to being a licensed attorney." The new disciplinary board that he hopes to create would focus "on the actions of performing their job as a district attorney or a public defender."
The Commercial Appeal obtained a letter addressed to Tennessee Supreme Court Chief Justice Holly Kirby from both Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and Senate Judiciary Chair Todd Gardenhire, outlining the request to create the panel.
"While our state has a board of judicial conduct to investigate complaints about judges and issue appropriate sanctions, there is no current avenue for complaints about other elected officials in the justice system," the letter states. "As Speakers of the Senate and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we are asking you to create a panel of three to five individuals involved in the judicial process to evaluate recent alleged misconduct regarding three elected district attorneys general to see if any action needs to be taken to hold these officials accountable."
The CA also obtained the draft Senate resolution that "urges" the Supreme Court to create the panel, aimed at making the process of investigating, sanctioning and possibly removing DAs from office a seemingly nonpartisan one.
Taylor said he was asking the Supreme Court to create a judicial committee that would initially look at three specific DAs and the allegations leveled against them. But, in the long term, he hopes for the committee to make recommendations to the General Assembly on various statutes that need to be amended to give authority to create a disciplinary board for public defenders, DAs and others.
Similar to the Board of Judicial Conduct, Taylor said if a DA received two reprimands from the new disciplinary board, that board could recommend them for removal by the Tennessee General Assembly. This, he added, creates an accountability measure for the office.
DAs are elected to eight-year terms in Tennessee, as are judges. Taylor said the length of the term requires accountability outside the ballot box.
Taylor said he has been in contact with the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference, which is made up of all DAs across the state, about the potential disciplinary board. He said "they recognize this disciplinary gap."
That gap, he said, became apparent to him when he requested the Board of Professional Responsibility investigate Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy for potential ethics violations in the review of Courtney Anderson's case. He also requested the Board of Judicial Conduct review the judge's actions in the case.
The Board of Professional Responsibility eventually dismissed the claim against Mulroy, but the Board of Professional Responsibility reprimanded Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan for having discussions with the DAs office without the defense present.
"It's a split decision," Taylor said. "You've got the Board of Judicial Conduct who said the conversation was improper, but the Board of Professional Responsibility dismissed it without merit. That's because it didn't deal specifically with Mulroy's law license, and there's where we really identified this loophole where — DAs — there's no one to hold them accountable."
Taylor, in January, filed a resolution to create a joint committee to investigate whether Mulroy, a Democrat, should be removed from office. Taylor said Senate leadership believed the allegations were "so severe" that the Tennessee Supreme Court needed to create an investigative committee to remove any perception of partisanship.
In addition to Mulroy, Taylor said they are requesting two other DAs be investigated. Those DAs are Glenn Funk, the Democrat DA for Davidson County, and Christopher Stanford, the Republican DA for Van Buren and Warren Counties.
Brooke Muckerman is a politics and education reporter for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at brooke.muckerman@commercialappeal and 901-484-6225.
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: [phone] and [e-mail], and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: TN could make new oversight board for elected district attorneys