Shelby County Corrections Deputy Director Bails On Top Prosecutor Amy Weirich
Harold Collins, current Deputy Director of Shelby County’s Division of Corrections and former Memphis City Council Member has confirmed to Memphis Watch that he is declining to endorse Amy Weirich in her reelection campaign for Shelby County District Attorney General, a reversal from 2012 when Collins had endorsed Weirich.
Collins’ move away from Weirich arrives as multiple scandals have consumed Weirich in recent weeks. Weirich has faced allegations of racial bias in her office’s prosecutorial decision-making following Weirich’s office sentencing of a Black woman to a six-year prison sentence for trying to vote, while Weirich’s office struck a deal with a white former sheriff’s deputy accused of raping a 14-year-old girl, allowing the officer to avoid prison entirely.
The allegations of racial bias led to a group of community members releasing a public letter demanding that the Shelby County Commission conduct a Racial Equity Audit of Amy Weirich and the county’s District Attorney General’s Office.
The letter alleges that these cases are not isolated, but rather part of a years-long pattern, describing them as “only the most recent and high profile example[s] of how Weirich inflicts devastating harm upon Black Memphians and their communities.” The group called on the County Commission to “ensure that, as the County’s top law enforcement official, Amy Weirich’s policies and practices are properly directed at reducing the most serious crimes, and not further victimizing Black people and perpetuating systemic racial discrimination.”
According to the letter, a racial equity audit is a matter of both equal rights and public safety, with “public confidence in law enforcement and the possibility of fair and impartial justice . . . eroding just as violence in Memphis has reached record levels.”
In Memphis and throughout Shelby County, Black people are disproportionately harmed by both the criminal legal system—bearing the brunt of arrests and incarceration—and violent crime. Black people are about 64% of Memphis’s total population, but 90% of the city’s homicide victims, according to 2020 data. Under Weirich, though, most people who pull the trigger in gun homicide cases are not successfully prosecuted.
The letter also cites “Weirich’s needlessly harsh and punitive tactics” against Black children. “Weirich prosecutes children in adult court more than every other Tennessee District Attorney General combined, and she does so nearly exclusively with Black kids,” the letter says. “From 2018 to 2020, for example, 98% of the 217 Shelby County children transferred to adult court were Black, a rate far surpassing their presence in the general population.”
In 2018, a federal monitor report described Weirich’s tactics as an unconstitutional and “toxic combination for African-American youth.” Yet “racial disparities in youth prosecutions have persisted, and in fact worsened, since then,” the letter says.
The County Commission has already asked for renewed federal oversight to address racial discrimination and other constitutional violations in the local youth justice system. A Racial Equity Audit could add more scrutiny.
Weirich has also faced scrutiny for a steady and tragic rise in murders, culminating in a historic spike, in Memphis during her tenure as District Attorney General, one that critics have dubbed the “Weirich Wave”, and leaving Memphis as one of the most “dangerous” cities in America.
Weirich is also embroiled in a prosecutorial misconduct scandal following a Harvard Law School study that examined the first five years of Weirich’s tenure from 2011 to 2015 that uncovered more than a dozen examples of misconduct in her office. Weirich’s office led the state in both findings of misconduct and the number of cases reversed due to misconduct. The Tennessee Supreme Court has reversed multiple convictions based on Weirich’s inappropriate behavior, and the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility has reprimanded her.