Report bashes Shelby County DA Amy Weirich for ‘misconduct;’ She bashes ‘grossly inaccurate’ report

A Harvard Law School project has ranked Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich highest in Tennessee for prosecutorial misconduct, reports the Commercial Appeal.

Researchers with the Fair Punishment Project reviewed court opinions involving allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in California, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee from Jan. 1, 2010 to Dec. 31, 2015.

“In the time period we reviewed, the Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office had the highest number of misconduct findings—with more than a dozen—and the most reversals in Tennessee,”  according to the report. (Note: The document is HERE.)

…Weirich disputed the report’s finding.

“This is a grossly inaccurate and incomplete account of these cases as seen through the eyes of a defense advocacy group,” Weirich said in a statement released by her office Thursday. “I became a prosecutor to hold the guilty accountable and to protect the innocent in every case, and that is what I have tried to do throughout my career. I will never apologize for trying to seek justice for victims of crime.”

… The Fair Punishment Project is a project of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice and Criminal Justice Institute, The Bronx Defenders and the Accountable Justice Collaborative at The Advocacy Fund.