Nearly a quarter of 200 completed federal cases were dismissed over the last almost 12 months since the Memphis Safe Task Force touched down, many of them being voluntarily dismissed by the U.S. Attorney’s
Office for the Western District of Tennessee with no clear explanation.
In the year since the Memphis Safe Task Force began operations, more than 400 criminal cases have been filed in federal court. That number is almost double the amount filed in the previous year.
The Task Force was billed as a "tough on crime" approach upon its arrival, with federal prosecutions being painted as the Republican response to one of Tennessee's only Democratic district attorneys. At the start of the Task Force, U.S. Attorney Mike Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee pointed to the federal court's stiffer penalties and ability to outright deny a defendant bail as how it would make Memphis safer.
The Commercial Appeal analyzed all 407 criminal cases filed in federal court from Oct. 1, 2025, through Aug. 31 and randomly selected 40 of those cases to take a deeper look at how they were resolved. That analysis showed a higher proportion of those cases were dismissed, and the sentences were, on average, shorter.
Data showed that, from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2025, the average prison sentence was 34.9 months. Before the Task Force arrived, for the time period of Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2024, the average sentence was 86.9 months.
Dunavant told The CA in a recent interview this discrepancy in sentencing was likely due to the Task Force making arrests he considered "low-hanging fruit."
"We know what's creating violent crime in this city. It's the guns. It's the illegal guns. I have often said that the most dangerous person on the streets of Memphis today is a 17-year-old or 18-year-old with a gun. They don't have any prior, significant criminal history and criminal history is what drives sentencing."
Man apprehended, charged after 'jaywalking'
One of the first cases brought by the Task Force, a byproduct of an Oct. 11, 2025, Terry stop (the legal name for stop-and-frisk), is among the many unexplained dismissals. In most instances, neither the court order accepting the prosecution’s voluntary dismissal nor the motion to dismiss itself describes the reasoning behind the decision.
The Oct. 11 case is no different, but a closer look at the public court records hints at what may have happened.
According to the criminal complaint, the defendant — who The CA is not identifying due to the case being dismissed — was walking down Lamar Avenue, near Shelley Street in the Bethel Grove neighborhood, at 1 p.m. and had a “green crossbody bag” when a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer drove by.
“Upon seeing the THP vehicle, [the defendant] clutched the crossbody bag. The vicinity of Lamar Avenue is a high crime area,” the complaint read. “Based on his law enforcement training and experience, Trooper [Ashton] Cotner had reasonable suspicion that [the defendant] was armed.”
The defendant, during a later hearing, would say they were walking to a job interview.
Cotner then said he saw the defendant walking across Lamar, describing it as jaywalking, and stopped the defendant. Cotner then started asking if the defendant had a weapon in the bag, to which they said "yes," and Cotner asked if they were allowed to have one, to which they said they could not have a firearm “on paper.”
The complaint then said Cotner “recovered a firearm from the crossbody bag” and, after allegedly confirming the defendant had a prior theft conviction in Nashville and “several domestic violence arrests,” the defendant was arrested. They were charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In January, the defendant's public defender filed a motion to suppress. In that motion, his attorney alleged the defendant was targeted for walking down the street and was immediately handcuffed before law enforcement questioned them. The motion said Cotner did not read the defendant their rights prior to questioning them, violating the defendant's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
According to the public defender, Memphis city code did not count what the defendant did as jaywalking and all evidence from the stop should be suppressed.
Federal prosecutors opposed the motion to suppress, saying Cotner questioned the defendant prior to handcuffing them. Because the defendant said they had a gun before being handcuffed, according to the prosecutor, the arrest was legal.
The prosecutor on the case did, however, say they would not use any statements made after the handcuffs were placed on the defendant at trial.
Prosecutors later ask to dismiss the case
In April, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Sheryl H. Lipman for the Western District of Tennessee ruled in favor of the defense.
Lipman found the defendant did not jaywalk, nor could the officers have believed they had jaywalked. She also found the officers “chose to apprehend” the defendant even prior to the street crossing.
“The court finds that the officers here simply saw (the defendant) walking outside, in the middle of the day, in a high-crime area, in the opposite direction, and assumed that him clutching his bag meant that he had a gun,” Lipman wrote. “That assumption was not tethered to a specific fact implying criminal conduct. (The defendant) was not slinking around shadowed alleyways."
The defendant was not given bond initially and was detained for months. On April 9, a magistrate judge granted the defendant an unsecured bond, meaning the defendant did not have to pay before being released from jail, and they were released.
Weeks later, as the deadline to appeal Lipman’s ruling was about to expire, prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was granted on May 12.
Dunavant said he did not believe the quantity of Task Force arrests, which has led to more cases being prosecuted federally, has led to cases his office prosecutes being of lesser quality.
"If I charge or indict a case, the government's ready to call our first witness," he said. "We believe we can prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I have an ethical and legal obligation not to charge if I don't believe that, or if I don't have proof."
But he said, sometimes cases end up getting dismissed because evidence is suppressed due to Fourth Amendment violations. Those instances were not pervasive, he said, but his office has offered extra training to Task Force agents on proper search and seizure procedures to ensure those issues do not come up at trial.
Dunavant also said sometimes dismissals of cases are not done for a lack of proof or evidence.
"In some cases victims may be reluctant to come testify because they've been threatened or because, for whatever reason, they don't want to participate in the prosecution and we can't go forward without that proof," he said. "Sometimes people are arrested, and they wish to cooperate with the federal government to give us information and evidence on other people or other enterprises."
"We don't always broadcast that. You can imagine why, strategically, that would be important to us."
Including the Oct. 11 case, 13 of the 40 randomly sampled cases were dismissed. All of them, except for one where a judge found no probable cause to arrest the defendant, were voluntary dismissals by prosecutors.
Some of the dismissals likely stemmed from a U.S. Supreme Court decision, in U.S. v. Hemani, that unanimously ruled that casual marijuana users cannot be prosecuted for owning a firearm. The ruling did not completely invalidate the law but added barriers for prosecutors before it could be invoked.
Dunavant said his office, and the Department of Justice as a whole, reviewed the Supreme Court's decision and updated its policies. He also said his office is now "applying [the ruling] into our charging decisions."
Despite the increased dismissals and shorter sentences in some instances, Dunavant stood firm on his promise of "aggressive prosecutions." The shorter sentencing, he said, is a byproduct of his decision to prosecute gun-related offenses before a shot has been fired.
"They're inherently dangerous, who can nevertheless kill you with that firearm," he said of convicted felons who have a firearm. "The way you reduce violent crime is you remove the guns from the hands of dangerous people, and you remove those dangerous people from the streets. And you do it as quickly as you can and as early as you can and as repeatedly as you have to."
"That is the choice and the priority and the policy that I have in this office, not shared by my predecessors in this office," he added.
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: Are federal prosecutions weaker with more Memphis Task Force arrests?
