Shelby County Voters Oust Prosecutor Who Sought to Execute Pervis Payne

Tennessee vot­ers have issued a stun­ning rebuke to con­tro­ver­sial Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich (pic­tured), oust­ing her from office after an eleven-year tenure marred by charges of racism and misconduct. 

In an August 4, 2022 elec­tion viewed as a major vic­to­ry for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates, vot­ers end­ed Weirich’s bid for a new eight-year term as coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor, replac­ing her with University of Memphis law pro­fes­sor and for­mer coun­ty com­mis­sion­er, Steve Mulroy. Unofficial returns showed Mulroy, a Democrat, receiv­ing 56.1% of the 133,522 bal­lots cast in the elec­tion, to Republican Weirich’s 43.9%.

Weirich’s cam­paign had tout­ed what it called her ​“tough on crime” poli­cies, high­light­ing her sup­port of ​“truth in sen­tenc­ing” laws that elim­i­nate parole for cer­tain crimes. She faced strong com­mu­ni­ty oppo­si­tion for pros­e­cut­ing and obtain­ing a six-year prison sen­tence for Pamela Moses for alleged vot­er fraud, after Moses’s pro­ba­tion offi­cer had advised her that she was eli­gi­ble to have her right to vote restored fol­low­ing a pri­or felony con­vic­tion. Mulroy, a vot­ing rights activist who pre­vi­ous­ly served as a civ­il rights lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice, gained wide com­mu­ni­ty sup­port by focus­ing on pol­i­cy changes, police account­abil­i­ty, diver­si­ty, and violence prevention.

Weirich also faced a back­lash from com­mu­ni­ty activists for try­ing to block DNA test­ing for Shelby County death-row pris­on­er Pervis Payne and oppos­ing efforts to over­turn Payne’s death sen­tence because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. After Weirich asked a Shelby County court to deny DNA test­ing in August 2020, Church of God in Christ Bishop Brandon Porter warned that vot­ers would remem­ber her deci­sion on elec­tion day. “[I]f you don’t hear us now, you’ll hear us lat­er,” he said.

Weirich con­tin­ued to fight giv­ing Payne his day in court on his claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. But when the tri­al court set a hear­ing date on his claim, Weirich con­ced­ed that she had no evi­den­tiary basis to oppose vacat­ing his death sentence.

Weirich was appoint­ed to the top pros­e­cu­tor posi­tion in 2011, win­ning elec­tion in 2012 and reelec­tion to a full eight-year term in 2014. During her tenure as dis­trict attor­ney, she was rep­ri­mand­ed for her pre­vi­ous con­duct in a mur­der pros­e­cu­tion, includ­ing with­hold­ing infor­ma­tion and mak­ing com­ments that the Tennessee Supreme Court found were ​“off lim­its to any con­sci­en­tious pros­e­cu­tor.” A 2017 report by the Harvard-based Fair Punishment Project high­light­ed Shelby County for its pat­tern of repeat­ed mis­con­duct in death penal­ty cas­es. Weirich also has been sharply crit­i­cized for her han­dling of Payne’s case, includ­ing alle­ga­tions of race-bait­ing and sup­press­ing exculpatory evidence.

Payne has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the mur­der of a young white moth­er, Charisse Christopher, and her two-year-old daugh­ter. He was con­vict­ed in a racial­ly charged tri­al in which Shelby County pros­e­cu­tors assert­ed, with­out evi­dence, that he was a young Black man on drugs who stabbed Christopher to death after she spurned his sex­u­al advances. DNA test­ing of evi­dence that had been with­held from the defense found the pres­ence of an uniden­ti­fied male’s DNA on the han­dle of the mur­der weapon. Despite a bloody crime in which the vic­tims col­lec­tive­ly were stabbed more than 80 times, Payne’s DNA was not present on the han­dle of the weapon.

Weirich spent years seek­ing Payne’s exe­cu­tion, until in November 2021, her office with­drew its motion con­test­ing Payne’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim. The United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 that the death penal­ty was an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate pun­ish­ment for indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Payne had repeat­ed­ly attempt­ed to obtain judi­cial review of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, but Tennessee courts held that state law pro­vid­ed no mech­a­nism to raise the issue for pris­on­ers whose death sen­tences had already been upheld on appeal before Atkins was decid­ed. In April 2021, Payne’s sup­port­ers suc­ceed­ed in pass­ing a new law allow­ing such claims. 

After Weirich’s office con­ced­ed his enti­tle­ment to relief, Payne was resen­tenced to two con­cur­rent life sen­tences, mak­ing him eli­gi­ble for parole after 34 years on death row. However, his attor­ney, assis­tant fed­er­al defend­er Kelley Henry vowed that the defense team ​“will not stop until we have uncov­ered the proof which will exon­er­ate Pervis and release him from prison.” 

Mulroy is the first Democrat to be elect­ed District Attorney of Shelby County, the largest coun­ty in Tennessee. While cam­paign­ing, Mulroy said his first pri­or­i­ties as District Attorney would be to diver­si­fy the office, cre­ate a con­vic­tion review unit, and eval­u­ate bail pro­ce­dures. With his elec­tion, Democrats or the first time in Shelby County his­to­ry will hold all county-wide offices.