Amy Weirich Prosecutes More Kids As Adults Than The Rest of Tennessee Combined. Nearly All Of Them Are Black.
As Weirich continues to violate the rights of Black kids, Shelby County has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene—again.
Top Lines:
The Shelby County Board of Commissioners recently asked the federal government to investigate whether the county’s juvenile justice system violates the U.S. Constitution, in part because of the exceptionally high rate at which head prosecutor Amy Weirich sends Black kids to adult court.
Weirich sends more kids to adult court than any other prosecutor in the state, and since she took office in 2011, about 94% of kids transferred to adult court have been Black. From 2018 to 2020, 217 children in Shelby County were transferred to adult court, and nearly all of them—98%—were Black.
The U.S. Department of Justice previously investigated and monitored Shelby County’s juvenile court, but abandoned oversight in 2018 under President Trump and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The final monitor report from that year, which objected to DOJ’s departure, said Weirich’s prosecutorial tactics amounted to “a toxic combination for African-American youth.”
Full Report:
“He’s a child, and he cried like a child,” defense lawyer Robert Gowen said. “He knows he’s facing 51 years.”
A judge had just ruled that Jonathan Ray, a 14-year-old Black boy with a history of mental illness, including depression and suicidal thoughts, would be prosecuted as an adult. In 2013, Ray had set fire to the front steps of his home, killing his mother who was trapped inside. Even while mourning his mother, Ray’s family—his stepfather, grandparents, aunts, and cousins—pledged to support him and pleaded for Ray’s case to stay in the juvenile court, where rehabilitation would be a priority, according to the Memphis Flyer.
But Shelby County’s top prosecutor, District Attorney Amy Weirich, didn’t care. Her prosecutors secured Ray’s transfer to adult court to face a first-degree murder charge and potentially life in prison. After the judge approved the transfer, Ray fell to the floor and sobbed while prosecutor Dan Byer and a police officer exchanged fistbumps.
Ray’s tragic case fits a long pattern of Shelby County prosecutors targeting vulnerable Black youth for harsh treatment. A bombshell 2018 report, which followed nearly a decade of federal monitoring, concluded that the county’s juvenile justice system remained “deeply flawed” and evinced “a culture of intimidation that undermines due process.”
The report took aim at Weirch, both for inappropriate “prosecutorial gamesmanship” and for aggressively pursuing adult charges against kids, finding her tactics to be “a toxic combination for African-American youth.” Weirich’s approach to youth justice is “is designed to cast a very wide net and maximize leverage over youth of color,” the report’s author, Sandra Simkins, told Memphis Watch.
That report was the last after the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) abruptly terminated federal monitoring in the county under the Trump Administration. Yet, the deep racial disparities that led to the federal investigation did not disappear, and in fact worsened, after federal monitors left.
Noting especially Weirich’s continued disproportionate targeting of Black children, the Shelby County Commission once again asked the DOJ to intervene to protect the county’s youth. “This is about our kids who remain on the [transfer] list . . . youth of color, Black youth and brown youth, who are tried as adults, who are arrested and not given a second chance,” Commissioner Tami Sawyer said after the vote.
The Commission’s resolution echoes pleas from families and a range of community groups—from religious leaders to civil rights organizations to child advocates, and others—who have long protested prosecutors’ punitive and unequal enforcement against Black kids.
“A district attorney is supposed to fight for justice; instead, Amy Weirich tramples the rights of children, especially Black children,” Charles McKinney, Board Co-Chair of the advocacy group Memphis for All, told Memphis Watch. “She tears families apart and has no actual interest in listening to or learning from people in Black communities. Federal oversight is only a first step but a necessary one.”
Tennessee’s legislators created a separate justice system for kids designed to “provide for the care, protection, and wholesome moral, mental and physical development of children.” But instead of honoring these protections, which are born out of the recognition that children’s brains are not fully developed, Weirich not only treats children as adults, but routinely seeks the maximum possible punishment regardless of the circumstances. More than any other prosecutor in the state, she prosecutes kids in adult court, where the prison terms are much longer and the opportunities for rehabilitation are few and far between. In 2018, the last year for which there is statewide data, the rest of Tennessee transferred 58 children to adult court. Shelby County transferred 73.
By far, Black kids are most affected by this practice, and the data paints a stark picture: Since Weirich took office in 2011, about 94% of kids transferred to adult court have been Black, far outpacing their portion of the general population. From 2018 to 2020, the years after the Department of Justice abandoned its oversight, 217 children in Shelby County were transferred to adult court, and nearly all of them—98%—were Black.
“To me, this indicates that perhaps the process in which decisions about transfers are made, do not operate in the same way for Black youth compared to white youth,” said Jennifer Turchi, vice-chair of the Countywide Juvenile Justice Consortium (CJJC), a citizen-led board created to hold the juvenile justice system accountable. Turchi added that these disparities cannot be explained by how often certain kids allegedly commit eligible offenses; those numbers are no lower for white kids.
Miriam Krinsky, a former prosecutor and the Executive Director of Fair And Just Prosecution, told Memphis Watch that while “the criminalization of Black youth is pervasive across the United States,” the racial disparities in Shelby County’s youth transfer rates are “particularly egregious.” She added that transferring any child to the adult system is harmful and counterproductive.
“Research has firmly established that transferring youth to adult court...is a recipe for trauma, violent victimization, and increased recidivism,” Krinsky said. “This is costly, ill advised, and does not promote safer or healthier communities.”
DOJ began investigating Shelby County’s juvenile court in 2009. By then, residents had been sounding the alarm about unequal enforcement and needlessly harsh treatment for years. Gathering at community meetings in churches and local venues, they shared stories, spoke with local officials, and demanded change. One leader in the push for reform, former County Commissioner Henri Brooks, later recounted how she gathered “about seven or eight 10-inch binders” filled with grievances. These formed the basis of a formal Complaint and Request for Investigation to DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which Brooks submitted in 2007.
After about two years of investigation, DOJ issued its report in 2012. It found an array of constitutional violations affecting all children, but also that Shelby County unlawfully discriminated against Black kids in particular.
“Our investigation found that Black children are disproportionately represented in almost every phase of the Shelby County juvenile justice system,” the report said. Black kids were less likely to receive lenient or informal outcomes such as diversion, counseling, or a simple warning. Black children were also more likely to be held in custody before they received a hearing, and they were far more likely to be transferred into adult court to face adult criminal charges.
DOJ found that the juvenile court—at prosecutors’ urging—transferred Black children more than twice as often as white children. The report also explained how this inflicts grave harm both on the kids involved and their communities. It pointed to a CDC-commissioned study showing that “transfer policies have generally resulted in increased arrest for subsequent crimes, including violent crime, among juveniles who were transferred compared with those retained in the juvenile justice system.” Moreover, “to the extent that transfer policies are implemented to reduce violent or other criminal behavior, available evidence indicates that they do more harm than good.”
As a result, Shelby County, its juvenile court, and DOJ forged an historic consent agreement that provided for federal oversight. This was the first time that DOJ intervened to enforce constitutional rights in a local juvenile justice system, and the Obama administration called the agreement—which set specific benchmarks and required independent monitors to make routine reports to DOJ—a “first of its kind” deal.
But during the Trump administration, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, DOJ abruptly abandoned its oversight and returned Shelby County’s youth to solely local control.
That move was unrelated to the county’s record and instead came at the urging of local officials who had resisted federal intervention in the first place. That is made clear in the final 2018 report, a damning indictment of the system with key portions focused on Weirich. The report detailed how, with her “toxic combination” of aggressive prosecution tactics, Weirich reflexively seeks adult court transfers and then denies critical discovery to kids and their lawyers.
“Given the enormous life-altering stakes of transfer to criminal court,” the monitor Simkins wrote in her report, “one would hope that prosecutors would thoughtfully evaluate cases before filing notice of transfer.” But “it appears [Weirich] routinely files notice of transfer on ALL possible cases without conducting meaningful review.” Among other things, this tactic exposes kids to more severe punishment and creates immense pressure to plead guilty. “The risk of going to adult court is so frightening for families and youth that any plea deal to remain in juvenile court looks appealing,” Simkins wrote.
More recently, in June of this year, the CJJC issued its own report documenting Weirich’s and the county’s continued failure to uphold constitutional rights. Among other things, the report found that “Black youth still disproportionately represent the number of cases and transfers,” and “the rate of disproportionate contact is almost the same as it was in 2012 when the [original DOJ agreement] was implemented.”
As Weirich continues to violate the rights of Black kids, the County has asked DOJ to come back, conduct a new evaluation, and re-open the original agreement.
“The rate at which we transfer youth in Memphis-Shelby County is alarming. Shelby County continues to transfer our youth to criminal court at a higher rate than any other county in Tennessee,” Turchi, the CJJC member, said. “This is not an issue of having different laws or policies in place that dictate how and when transfers should be used, but rather having different people in place who make the decisions to request a transfer.”