In May, Gov. Bill Lee signed two bills into law requiring additional reporting on state prosecutions stemming from arrests made by President Donald Trump's Memphis Safe Task Force.
Taken together, the two laws allow the state to review all prosecutorial decisions made by Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy’s office and require his office to submit reports to the state and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Tennessee any time state prosecutors enter a plea agreement, lower a charged offense, or dismiss a case.
The bills were touted by state Republicans as a transparency measure for what has been described as an extraordinary opportunity to reduce crime through the Task Force. But, according to Mulroy, it also acted as the culmination
of Republicans’ efforts to scrutinize the work of one of the state’s two Democratic DAs.
"I don't think any serious observer can deny that partisan politics has played a huge role in all this, and that's why I'm getting more scrutiny than my Republican U.S. attorney partner," Mulroy said of U.S. Attorney Mike Dunavant, adding crime rose under his Republican predecessor without complaint from elected officials.
Mulroy filed a lawsuit trying to block the laws in late May, and that lawsuit has been pending for months. It alleges Mulroy's office is being unconstitutionally targeted by the law and that it creates unnecessary, additional labor for his staff.
Bail decisions, dismissals and plea agreements have, for years, been the target of Republican ire for Mulroy’s office. Despite his office handling considerably more criminal cases than the U.S. Attorney’s Office, data provided by Mulroy’s office showed relative similarities to federal prosecutions.
The Commercial Appeal hand-collected federal court data from Oct. 1, 2025, when Task Force operations began, through Aug. 31. The data showed 407 criminal cases were filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office, and about half of those cases have been completed.
The vast majority of cases, about 74.5% of them, ended in a plea deal, and 22.5% of them ended in a dismissal of all charges.
While the U.S. Attorney's Office does not have a public-facing dashboard showing case dispositions, the Shelby County DA's Office does. The DA's office publishes monthly case disposition data on its website. Since it handles a higher volume of criminal cases than federal court, the CA used one month of dispositions to compare it with federal outcomes.
In July this year, the DA's office closed 276 cases. Of those, about 27.8% were dismissed, with the majority of them being dismissed by prosecutors. Only five of those dismissals were dismissed by judges.
About 61% of cases ended in a conviction of some sort. Most of those convictions were plea agreements, according to the DA's office's data team, which added there are usually fewer than five convictions each month from a trial.
Just over 11.2% of prosecutions end in what the DA's office calls "successful diversion," which is when a defendant enters into some sort of rehabilitative program or counseling. Those cases show up in the local criminal court system as dismissals, but are similar to programs in federal court that end in guilty pleas.
Dunavant said his office and the Task Force have been as transparent as they can be, saying, "Everything I do is public." He said he was not aware of any plans to produce a public-facing case disposition dashboard for the U.S. Attorney's Office, but residents could "call your congressman about that."
He also said he is "not the only game in town" when it comes to prosecutions, pointing to the fact that Mulroy's office handles the bulk of criminal cases in Memphis. When told the Shelby County DA's Office has a public-facing dashboard, Dunavant invoked the laws requiring Mulroy's office to report case dispositions for Task Force cases and that he is seeking to block that law.
"The legislature in Congress has not mandated for me to do so," Dunavant said when asked if there is a double standard in transparency. "I'm appointed. He's elected by the people. He's answerable to the people every eight years at the ballot box."
Mulroy: prosecution concerns 'political and overblown'
Mulroy described the difference in scrutiny as politically motivated since Dunavant is a Trump appointee.
"I think there's not much reason to think that we are a radical departure from DA offices generally, or the federal prosecutors here in Memphis," he said. "I think it vindicates what I've been saying: The concerns about us being some sort of weak link are political and overblown."
Another point of criticism Mulroy’s office has received is how few cases go to trial. Contrary to Hollywood portrayals of criminal cases, most criminal cases do not go to trial. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers estimates only about 2-3% of all state and federal cases across the country end in a jury trial.
Both Mulroy’s office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office feature similar trends. About 3% of federal cases went to trial in the time the CA examined, and less than 2% of state cases result in a trial conviction each month, according to the DA's office. Mulroy and Dunavant both acknowledged trials are inherently risky for prosecutors. Jurors can be fickle, Mulroy said, and a case prosecutors see as airtight could result in an acquittal.
"Juries are inherently, and unavoidably, unpredictable," Mulroy said. "That has always been the case, and it always will be the case. It's just human nature. Every prosecutor will have examples of cases where they thought for sure they were gonna get a conviction, and instead the jury went a different way."
For Mulroy, that unpredictability is part of what makes plea bargains valuable. Dunavant, though agreeing trials can be risky, said his office is not afraid to take that risk.
"People can plead guilty or not guilty," Dunavant said. "We're ready to call our first witness. We're ready with he proof. We are not afraid of trial."
He did, however, split from Mulroy on the idea of plea deals being a safer route for prosecutors.
"The vast majority of people plead guilty in the federal system because, in fact, they are guilty. They know it," he said. "And they know that we have the evidence of it. The other incentive to plead guilty, of course, is that many times the sentencing guidelines will give you certain credit for acceptance of responsibility or cooperation with the government."
Is Task Force facing less scrutiny than local law enforcement?
But prosecutions are not the only place the Task Force has faced less scrutiny. Task Force operations have been roving across Memphis, oftentimes unorganized, through the use of traffic stops to make an arrest.
Even warrant-based arrests do not often attract swaths of attention.
Activist groups like Vecindarios901 and Free the 901 have spent much of the 11 months monitoring Task Force activities they come across. The groups film federal agents at crime scenes and inform potential targets of law enforcement of their rights.
However, Tennessee’s recently passed “Halo Law” has been used to push those activists further back from various scenes.
The law requires bystanders to be at least 25 feet away from law enforcement activities, which activists have claimed makes it difficult to see and hear what police are doing in public.
They also alleged, in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, that the law does not specify where the zone begins and officers will invoke the Halo Law and walk toward activists to push them further back.
A hearing to block the Halo Law temporarily while it is litigated is set for Sept. 23.
Since the lawsuit was filed in May, the ACLU has added numerous allegations of retaliation by members of the Task Force. Some of those include allegations of the Task Force staking out activists’ homes, following their cars and filming them.
Most recently, the ACLU alleged an activist was detained while he backed away from law enforcement that invoked the Halo Law. Court filings from the ACLU said Hunter Demster, an activist, was filming on a sidewalk when Task Force members pushed him away from the scene.
The U.S. Marshals Service oversees the daily operations of the Task Force, and U.S. Marshal Tyreece Miller for the Western District of Tennessee said he believes the Task Force has been "as transparent as we can be without compromising an investigation."
"The law is the law, and the law is the law for a reason," Miller said during an interview. "We want people to stay within a certain area, to protect the integrity of the crime scene, and for their protection. I'd just ask people to comply with the law."
Miller said he could not speak much on the lawsuit, citing policy about not commenting on pending litigation, but said law enforcement sometimes provides scant details to preserve sensitive evidence for a court case.
"Everything we do is for [the evidence] to be presented in a court of law. It's for a judge and jury to look at and make decisions," he said. "If a crime scene is compromised, then that's antithetical to the fair process of a case."
Staff attorney with the ACLU Zee Scout, however, said the Halo Law is not being used to preserve a crime scene, but rather to prevent people from gathering information.
"They're prohibiting people from recording information about the government," Scout said. "...What our clients have experienced, what we've put before the court, does not show anywhere that Task Force agents are being impeded or are being prevented from somehow gathering evidence on their scenes or infringing on the integrity of their work."
The Task Force has been willing to share information as to how many arrests it has made, but has given limited details on charges or what the arrests were for.
Frequently, it sends out data showing the number of firearms seized, known gang members arrested, juveniles arrested, traffic citations issued, search warrants executed, misdemeanor citations issued, missing children located, homicide arrests made and drug arrests made.
But aside from those categories, it has been scant on the details. Dunavant, in talking with the CA, said that was partially due to the Task Force being made up of multiple agencies and would take a lot of effort.
"Coordinating and distilling all of that data down into something that you would like to have is just not possible outside of a perfect world," Dunavant said.
But advocates, like Scout, say transparency is needed to build trust with the community.
"The Task Force agents won't tell us who they're arresting or all the charges they're arresting people for," Scout said. "We only know what they share with us, and a government that selectively shares information is a government that is hiding something."
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Trump's Task Force demands transparency from others, shirks it internally
