Amy Weirich had hopes of being re-elected as district attorney general. Though, after attempting to put away activist Pamela Moses for trying to restore her voter registration, Weirich lost her popularity, per The Guardian. That was only one situation that led to her being unseated.
Weirich had been district attorney general of Shelby County since 2011. During that time, her office was investigated for misconduct within her office including failure to disclose relevant evidence to the defense (a Brady violation), according to the The Commercial Appeal. The Fair Punishment Project found her office had the highest number of misconduct findings and the most reversals in the state.
One of those instances of misconduct included trying to put away Pamela Moses.
Read about Moses’ case from The Guardian:
Tennessee’s rules for restoring voting rights are extremely confusing, and Weirich’s office brought charges against Moses even though a probation officer had signed off on a form saying she was eligible. Prosecutors argued she had deceived the officer into signing off on the form.
But after the trial, the Guardian published a document showing that the Tennessee department of corrections had investigated the error and made no mention of deception. Instead, the department blamed the officer. Weirich’s office failed to turn over the document to Moses’ defense team before trial, leading a judge to take the extremely rare step of overturning her conviction and ordering a new trial. Weirich said her office was not to blame for the mistake because the department of corrections failed to give her office the document.
Moses’ charges were dropped in April 2022, as The Root previously reported. Although she permanently lost her right to vote in Tennessee, she escaped another conviction under a crooked prosecutor.
“What we found is very troubling because this is not a matter of prosecutors simply using their discretion in ways we may not like, we found that these prosecutors regularly cross legal and ethical lines to win convictions at any cost,” said Robert Smith, executive director of Fair Punishment Project.
Now Steve Mulroy, a law professor at University of Memphis and voting right activist, will lead Shelby County Commissioner.