- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind The Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Interim Chief Public Defender Jerri Green, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Interim Chief Public Defender, Jerri Green, thanks for being here again.

- Thank you for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with the Daily Memphian.

I should also note you were up until very recently, the Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Lee Harris, who have been on the show in that capacity and in others, you stepped down as part of taking this interim appointment.

You are also Memphis City Council, two plus years into a 4-year term, right, District 2.

And we won't dwell on this today, but you're a declared candidate for the Democratic nomination for Tennessee Governor.

So we're gonna talk about your caffeine habits later.

[Jerri chuckles] And a mom and a, you know, of family- - All the things.

- And all the things as well.

So, we just recently had Phyllis Aluko, who was 25 years as a public defender, seven as chief.

She retired at the end of January.

We had her on.

People can get that full episode at wkno.org, or you know, Daily Memphian or get as a podcast.

And we talked a lot about the logistics and kind of inner workings of the office and her time there.

For you, why this job?

Why were you interested and do you seek, I mean, you got a lot going on, but I still wanna ask, do you seek this job for the long term?

- Well, I was asked to serve by Mayor Harris, and I appreciate him reaching out to me and offering this opportunity.

I began my career as a public defender.

I've practiced in PDS in Washington, D.C.

as an intern in Nashville, in the Juvenile Public Defender's Office, and then here in Memphis in adult court.

So for me, this felt like a full-circle moment to be able to come home and help the people that helped make me.

- Okay, right now, I mean, there's so much focus on criminal justice system, on crime.

We went through a big spike in crime.

You as obviously a City Councilperson.

Also the City Council's been dealing with that.

You came into City Council at really the peak moment of post-COVID crime nationally and in Memphis.

What do you see in the Office of Public Defender is your role relative to what is now a declining rate of crime.

But there's a giant problem with the jail, at any measure, it's a problematic situation.

Backlogs in terms of getting people processed.

I mean, then that's even before we get to the Memphis Safe Task Force, which has also brought many more people into the criminal justice system.

How will the role change?

How will the office change or will it?

- Well, you know, the thing about the public defenders is we are often overworked and understaffed and under-resourced.

So, this is not new to us, but we want to make sure that we are providing zealous and ethical representation.

So, my job is to make their job easier, and my role in all of this is to continue to be the fighter for our constitutional rights.

Because when we stand up for those, and we protect those for our clients, we protect them for all citizens.

- All right, let me bring in Bill.

- How has the situation changed from when you started, as you said you started a public defender.

Is the system more complex, less complex?

Is there more need, less need?

- Some things are different, and some things are exactly the same.

So, what we see in the lives of our clients continues, and that is they are systematically, often beat down and are facing incredible hurdles in their daily lives.

Some things are different, you know, we have a little bit less paper and a little bit more electronic kind of filing systems, but sometimes that's hard, too, you know?

And adjusting for that.

What's continued to be at the core of the Public Defender's Office, from what I can see, is that our team and the people that are there that are fighting every day represent the best of the best in our criminal defense attorneys in this city, in this state.

We get interns and law clerks and then eventually lawyers from all over the country from the best schools because this, I believe, is a calling.

And I still see that in the people who are in the court rooms every day.

- What do you hear because, obviously, you've, even though you just recently became the interim public defender, what have you heard from other attorneys about the experience of our criminal justice system versus where they might have been before?

- Well, several people have practiced in other areas, not all of them, but a lot of, again, a lot of the problems that clients face continue to be similar across the country.

And we do have trainings with other attorneys across the country, so we can get the best practices from everywhere.

But what we're seeing here that's unique in Memphis, of course, is what's happening with the task force and the overcrowding of the jails and things like that that Eric mentioned.

That is unique here right now.

- Talk a little bit about the paradox of crime being down from where it was.

You know, I think, at this point, the lowest in 25 years, but yet, more people in the criminal justice system.

Is it supposed to work like that?

- Well, hopefully not, but what we have been seeing with the task force is a lot of people being picked up on warrants that had been outstanding.

So, some of these may have been our clients in the past.

Some of them may not have been, but they were people that were in the system that were missing court dates or had other kinds of outstanding warrants.

And so, they're being picked up and brought in.

And that has led to some serious issues in the jail and in our court system.

Of course, having a couple of snow weeks also didn't help us.

[chuckles] I know several dockets this past week were in the hundreds.

That also causes a backlog.

But my attorneys, our staff are up to the challenge, and they vigorously defend everyone who comes before them.

- There's been some discussion, probably more discussion than actually movement, toward maybe night court, weekend courts, or Saturday court.

How would that work with the public defenders?

- Well, we would have to staff it just like we do arraignments on snow days or bail rooms, hearings, all of that we have to staff.

And again, we are constantly trying to work what's in the best interest and what our clients want.

And generally, that means getting out of jail quicker.

And so, if there is a way, considering how inhumane the conditions are right now in 201 Poplar, that we can work towards that, we would be happy to step up and do it.

Right now, the resistance has been from the judicial branch and getting that staffed on weekends or nights.

- Is that from the sheriff, the people who staff, and the guards, and so on?

- No.

- Or would you say the judicial system?

- The judges.

- The judges.

- The judges' side.

Okay.

I imagine there's some, I don't know that's, it's not an ethical conflict, but just different messaging.

So, when you ran for City Council at a time when crime was peak and was heavy on people's mind and you know, some very high-profile incidents, people also felt like the number of car break-ins and window break-ins, the things that were not necessarily dangerous, but were incredibly expensive and inconvenient to, again, a high murder rate and all the horrible things.

You must have had then and even now as a City Council person, constituents saying, I want these people, you know, locked up.

I want more police on my streets.

I want to feel safe.

I feel all this, you know, this fear, and you must hear a lot of that.

And yet, here's chief public defender you're talking about getting people out and getting people out of the criminal justice system.

How does that reconcile?

- Well, I think, all Memphians want to feel safe, and the public defenders are also Memphians too.

And I'll say on my first week on the job, I had a public defender, who works across the hall from me, had his car broken into, so we're not immune to it either.

And we want to see crime go down, but part of that means having the best representation on both sides and making sure that we're putting the right people behind bars and that we are working towards a system that is equitable and just.

So, what I say to those people is we want all parts of the system working at its highest and best and most professional levels.

And I think that's better for our community as a whole.

And that's how we at the Public Defender's work on it.

And that's also how I think about it on the City Council.

I mean, one of the things is we're never gonna police our way out of these problems.

We're never gonna lock people up away outta these problems because over 93% of them return to our communities.

They are our neighbors.

So, what are we doing with them while they are behind bars?

What are we doing with them before they get there to be able to give them the supports they need to get to the root causes of crime?

That's where we should be working as well, not just on locking them away.

- Phyllis Aluko, again, who just stepped down as chief public defender, she said on the show, what was it three, four weeks ago?

"The problems at the jail are coupled "with a community shift to say, lock everybody up pretrial, unless they are wealthy enough to be able to pay a bond."

And that trend at the legislature, and people kind of sometimes forget that most of these laws come from the state legislature.

They're not set by County Commission or City Council, overwhelmingly, the criminal justice laws.

And there's been this real movement to restrict bond, lots of criticism from say, Senator Taylor and others of DA Mulroy, who will be on the show and I think, next week, about, you know, releasing people on their own recognizance who have prior histories and all of that.

There's even a constitutional amendment and Bill can check me on this, on the ballot in November, that would restrict bail even further at the state constitution level for what the supporters would say are really particularly horrendous offenses.

So, again, there's this tension, right?

People don't want their cars broken into.

They don't wanna feel safe.

They don't want violent crime.

But also they look at people, even if it's just anecdotal, who have these repeat offenses, and they don't want them released on bond.

They don't want them released at all.

They don't care, some people say, about the conditions at the jail because they don't want these repeat violent offenders or repeat offenders of any kind out on the street.

Reconcile that or how you deal with that?

- Well, I think the data proves that they're not being released.

And so, we just have to deal in facts.

Repeat offenders do get higher bails and bonds, and they are not being released pretrial, but we are all guaranteed this wonderful right because of our constitution of being innocent until proven guilty.

And so, we have to keep that core belief in mind as we proceed.

And that's what we do with the Public Defender's Office.

But overarching in our system, we need to make sure that we are treating people humanely, that we're giving them their rights.

At the same time, we're keeping the community safe.

It's not really an either/or.

It is both.

- One more you mentioned, and I'll go back to Bill, what the records show, and last week we had Senator Brent Taylor and Representative Mark White on the show and had a spirited discussion about schools and criminal justice, and immigration, and so on.

And one thing that we talked about was, I think everybody agrees that there's not enough trans, well, everybody, a lot of people across and you're saying it here, we need more transparency in the data because then you know how many people are released.

You know how many people are immigrants without proper documentation.

You know who's arresting to, more transparency would answer a lot of questions and then bring everybody down to like how do we solve problems potentially and how would we report on, how would we inform the public and you know, try to address some of the misinformation that gets outta there or real information that gets out there?

Now, that you're in the office for all of two weeks, I mean, and you talked earlier about maybe less paper, more elect-, is the record system of the criminal justice system where it needs to be or how far is it from where it needs to be?

- Absolutely not.

It's not where it needs to be.

There are lots of people keeping lots of numbers across different organizations, you know, whether it's the DA's Office, the Sheriff's Office, the Clerk's Office, the Crime Commission, right?

All of these people are collecting data in different ways, in different spaces and places.

They are showing trends.

And I think, we can look at those trends.

Those trends do show crime is down.

They do show that people who have violent offenses are being held on higher bonds.

They are showing that people who are repeat offenders are being held.

So, those trends across all of these different data points are showing that.

We just have to make sure the truth is out there, and that we're not continuing to fear monger that people are unsafe because people are not in jail.

Our jail is packed.

It is packed full, and people stay there for a long time.

That is something we've got to fix within our system.

- Bill.

- How much pressure is there on the defenders to, I'll put it this way, move it along in court to get cases, you know, get this flowing, get this going, and is this something that's taught in law school, how to kind of, you know, push back on that and say, well, wait, it's supposed to be one client at a time?

- It's absolutely one client at a time, and I don't think we provide any pressure to move things along.

In fact, we do internal training for all of our new attorneys.

And I just sat in one yesterday regarding preliminary hearings.

If your client is in custody, they're guaranteed the right to a preliminary hearing within 40 days, out of custody, 30 days.

And it was one of the questions, the newbie said, "Well, yeah, what if the DA is kind of pushing back?"

And they say, "It's your job to stand up for your client's rights."

So, we reinforce that over and over again and everyone there is professionals, whether it is the PDs, the DAs, the judges.

Sometimes you're able to settle things, you're able to move on, but sometimes, you stand up and fight for your client's rights.

So, we just make sure that they have the tools they can, and the support they need to feel like they can do that.

But we are absolutely about excellence over efficiency, and that's where every standard should be on each case you're representing.

You can't think about the 10 cases you'll get.

You have to think about the case that's in front of you right now and fight 100% for that client.

- There's a formula at the state level that if the district attorney gets funding from the state, then the public defender's office, I believe, gets 75- - Yes.

- Percent of that.

How is that working?

- Well, I think that right now what we see from our attorneys is, again, this is a calling and they are, we are not fully staffed right now, but we're working on getting full staff.

But the complaint is not about the pay.

It's more about the workload, the caseload.

And that's just part of the work.

You know, that you go into this knowing you're gonna have a lot of cases.

You're gonna have hard cases, probably the hardest cases that come through those doors.

And so, most PDs aren't there for the money, but we are making sure that they are compensated properly.

- So, taking over the office, has there been a review of it?

Kind of, are things working the way they should?

- Absolutely.

And I'm still in what I call my listening tour.

So I've sent out a survey to everybody 'cause not everybody wants to come to the principal's office and tell them what's going on.

But I also have office hours, and I am meeting with all the different teams, like I just mentioned, we do training.

I'll be meeting with the training team today.

I'll be meeting with the appellate team today.

I've met with General Sessions judges, you know, internal and external.

I'm holding lots of meetings and gathering lots of data about what's working and what's not.

And you know, the small tweaks that we can make moving forward in this time that I have in this appointment to improve the office and improve the experience for both our staff and our clients.

- It strikes me, again, about 10 minutes here in the show, and we mentioned that DA Mulroy is on the show, scheduled to be on the show next week.

You've been, you're declared democrat for office work, for Mayor Lee Harris, a democrat who's a real ally and political ally of Steve Mulroy.

You must know Steve Mulroy pretty well.

- I do know Steve.

I've known him for many years.

Before I was in this office, I was at the Community Legal Center, and he was on the board there.

- Have you met with him since you've taken this, and what is that relationship formally like between the chief public defender and the DA of Shelby County?

- I haven't had a formal meeting with him.

We've had multiple text messages since I've taken the appointment.

You mentioned it's only been a couple weeks, but I have talked with him and talked with people in his office about how we can work together.

I think that, you know, while we are adversaries in the courtroom, he and I hold special places in this, and we need to make sure that the courtrooms and the justice is happening.

In fact, that was his text to me.

Like, let's go do justice together.

[chuckles] So, we're on the same team.

We're on team justice together.

- Seems like DA Mulroy.

A big topic and that he ran on when he ran against Amy Weirich, and that was a big topic of conversation, seems like it's less so, I mean, maybe that's just a function of crime coming down is the juvenile justice system and problems or challenges or frustrations, however you wanna frame that, of young people committing horrendous crimes.

The conditions at the jail, when your former boss, Lee Harris was on the show six weeks, two months ago, people can get that at wkno.org or wherever you get your podcasts or video.

He talked about the county having taken over youth, you know, the management of the youth detention facility.

He was very happy about that.

He felt like the young people are in better facilities.

They're being treated better.

They're actually getting, you know, time on the phone with family.

They're eating better food and so on.

What is your take on this whole question though of there are situations where young people, very young people are accused of very horrendous crimes and often or sometimes later convicted on them?

Where is the chief public defender's role in that and how do you manage that situation?

- Well, I have met with our youth trial division.

I'm excited when, back when I started as a public defender, there was no such thing as a juvenile public defender until the DOJ came in.

So, I'm glad that we have that there, and I think it's a very important office and what we do there.

I am also glad that our Department of Corrections has taken over the facility.

I agree that I think the conditions are there, are much better.

And in fact, you know, I've worked with Director Alexander on many of those things and so, when we have issues, I can pick up the phone and call him.

But I think that what we would need to remember, and I think about this as, you know, my first baby job as a baby attorney was being a juvenile public defender.

When I tell you that most people, adults or juveniles, will come back and be your neighbor, those kids definitely will.

And so, we need to be working in ways and spaces to catch them before they get there.

But we also need to be making sure that while we have them, we are putting as much as we can into them and to their families to set them up for success on the other end.

Because just one interaction with Juvenile Court can kind of spiral into leading you into adult court eventually, right?

You're more likely to end up in adult prison if you have had an interaction with juvenile court.

That's just the facts across the nation.

And so, we need to talk about ways that we can support families in their communities, and the ways we can support them once they end up in Juvenile Court as well.

- But before we go to, so the people listening who say that's just soft on crime.

These are young people, yes, but some of 'em done horrendous things, and they need to be taught a lesson.

They need to be removed.

They need to be punished.

To the people who say that that's just not tenable for me sitting here, what do you say?

- I don't think it's soft on crime.

I think it's smart on crime.

Again, do you want someone who will come out and continue to commit crimes and terrorize your neighborhood, or do you want someone who gets rehabilitated?

And that is the purpose of a juvenile court system is to rehabilitate the youth, not to punish them.

- Bill.

- Is juvenile justice a different type of law - Yes.

- Than Practicing criminal law?

- Yes, it is different both in the law and in both the purpose.

So, adult court, the purpose is punishment.

That is why we have the laws we have.

Juvenile Court is supposed to be based on rehabilitation.

There were many laws passed by Supreme Court years ago that actually put that into place across our country.

And so, that should be the focus is what are we doing to get these kids back on the right path?

- So while it might be adversarial at some level, it's also, I would imagine, much more collaborative than adult cases.

- It can be.

It can be.

You know, I actually think that in Memphis, again, having practiced in multiple jurisdictions, it's pretty collegial.

Again, we're all Memphians and we want Memphis to be better.

So, for the most part we are able to "do justice together", as Steve Mulroy would say.

But I think that in Juvenile Court in particular, we're talking about children's lives.

We're talking about families' lives and it takes the Department of Correction, having family visits and bringing in educational resources and therapy resources, those kinds of things, for a plan for when they get out, not if they get out, when they get out.

And there have been some changes in the law to be able to extend that.

You know, we've had some science, your frontal cortex is not fully formed 'til your 25, and so, they have been able to extend sentences past 18.

There's some blended sentencing, and so, we'll work through all of those technical things, but in the end, what we want are humans that come out and become protective citizens of our society.

- Right.

The frontal cortex thing explains so much in my life.

[everyone laughing] We won't get into it.

- All of us, all of us.

- Me as well.

- Aren't we glad that-- - It's a little later for the boys, by the way.

- Happened before- - It's a little later for the boys.

- At least we didn't have social media then, Bill.

It's fine.

[laughing] - Yes.

But we won't go into detail on that.

But the other thing is it's got to be difficult in juvenile justice when everyone realizes you can't just fix the kid.

You have to fix the parents, the house.

- Look, let me tell you, when I was a juvenile public defender, I remember very clearly having a client who was charged with two felonies.

His mom was at work, her lights had been cut off because she'd been staying home with his little brother who had been very sick.

It was December, it was cold, it was dark.

And he took an extension cord and ran it into his neighbor's apartment and plugged it up to a space heater and a TV and set his sick little brother in front of it.

He was charged with felony, theft, and aggravated burglary.

I knew right then when I had that case that we were not getting to the root cause of this problem.

She needed utility assistance, better healthcare, better childcare that we needed to fix that family.

We had already failed that mom.

We had failed that little brother, and we were really failing this 12-year-old kid that now had two felonies and was in an orange jumpsuit.

That's what's hard about being a public defender, but especially in Juvenile Court.

We can look at them as they're charges and just dismiss.

But if you actually go deeper, there are bigger problems that we have to solve.

- With just a couple minutes left here and fully acknowledging, as we said at the top, that you are running for governor for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Also as chief public defender, I assume you lobby the state legislature.

They're in session now.

That is where so much of the funding and the laws and so on happen.

And then again, you're a City Council person, so there's some priorities there.

Just staying with criminal justice and you know, primarily the public defender role, what do you want for the state, for Shelby County?

- Well, I would like to see us be more holistic in our approach.

I understand that people want to feel safe and that they want to see people who commit crimes punished.

But I would like for us equally to put funding and resources because the state has many, federal government has many, into ways and spaces and places where we can get people off of that path and then also work in the space of reentry.

You know, the number one time when people are most likely to go back to prison is right when they get out.

And number one time when they're most motivated to not go back to prison is right when they get out.

And the things that we could do to help them get a job because that is the thing that sets people back onto the path of, you know, not being in the criminal justice system.

- You can answer this question in any perspective if the federal task force is made up of three kind of broad parts, National Guard, ICE, and all the other surge of resources, do you support that middle part, the surge of resources that that Mayor Young supports?

Lee Harris, your former boss, many Democratic politicians and Republican have supported that middle part.

Maybe not happy with ICE, not sure what the National Guard is doing, but the middle surge makes sense.

- I think I agree with you.

I don't know what the National Guard is doing, and I definitely have problems with ICE.

But, yes, I mean there are other functions in our government that were here.

You know, there's not, we didn't just come to a 25-year low.

They were here and working.

We should continue to have space for them to work.

- All right, thank you, Jerri Green.

Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you, Bill, and thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, YouTube, The Daily Memphian, or download the full podcast.

Next week, Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy, and you can get the episode with Brent Taylor and Mark White.

We also will have school board members to talk about the takeover coming up soon.

Thanks very much.

Good night.

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