Compassionate Criminal Justice and the Victims of Under-Incarceration

The story of an awful murder in downtown Chattanooga a few days ago has become an international story (the British press is covering it too), not only because the murder victim was a prominent young businessman with three children, but because the murderer had 66 prior arrests, yet he was still prowling the streets and committing crimes.

Sixty-six prior arrests.

While Chattanooga has been led by left-wing, soft-on-crime mayors for the past decade, the scandal really belongs to soft-on-crime Republicans. Hamilton County, in which Chattanooga sits, has had a Republican District Attorney for many years. Worse still, the state of Tennessee has a soft-on-crime Republican Governor, Bill Lee, whose compassionate conservatism has compelled him to try to empty the state’s penitentiaries.

This is an actual quote from Governor Lee from back in 2019 “We can empty our jails in the same way that some other states have done. I know we can do that.”

We’ll return to Governor Lee’s crime-enabling compassion in a moment, but first here is the story of Chris Wright’s murder at the hands of 66-times arrestee Darryl Roberts.

A prominent Tennessee businessman was shot and killed by a man with 66 prior arrests while on his way to attend his high school class’s 20th-anniversary reunion, authorities said.

Despite being arrested more than five dozen times, records show that Roberts never served more than six months behind bars.

Christopher Wright, 38, was in downtown Chattanooga on Thursday night to meet up with fellow Baylor School alumni when he got into an argument with Darryl Roberts, a career criminal known as “Too Tall,” Chattanoogan.com reports.
Surveillance of the incident shows Wright, a father of three, including an 8-week-old baby, talking to Roberts, 57, and another man before walking away. Wright then turns around to say something to the two men, with Roberts reacting by walking up to him and firing his gun at Wright’s head, police said.

As noted in the NY Post piece, Darryl Roberts never served more than six months in prison. Other local reporting in Tennessee revealed that among the previous crimes committed by Roberts was an attempted murder, wherein Roberts fired a gun multiple times through a door at a man he was trying to kill.

“Man Charged In Chris Wright Murder Has 66 Arrests, Including 2010 Home Invasion With Shots Fired Through A Door”[Chattanoogan.com – 10/01/2023]

In May, 2010, police said Roberts fired six shots through a bedroom door at an apartment on Hixson Pike. A man was behind the door and four children were in an adjacent bedroom, but no one was hurt. In that case he was charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder, aggravated burglary, reckless endangerment, possession of a firearm while committing a felony, possession of marijuana for resale and possession of drug paraphernalia.

So why was a man like Darryl Roberts out on the streets? Maybe it’s because the Governor of Tennessee wants people like him out on the streets.

[Tennessee Gov Bill] Lee Pushes Criminal Justice Reform [The Tennessean – 10/21/2019]

The governor described the phrase [“criminal justice reform”] as one that means having fewer people in prison, more productive citizens after they leave, less taxpayer money spent on incarceration and a lower crime rate in the state.

“It isn’t going to be easy to get that done,” he said. “We have to be creative and innovative and disruptive and challenge the way we’ve been doing things forever.”

He added, “We can empty our jails in the same way that some other states have done. I know we can do that.”

Governor Lee eventually got the anti-incarceration reforms he wanted.

“Gov. Bill Lee called his Tennessee criminal justice reforms 'monumental’” [Tennessean – 5/04/2021]

One of the new laws is focused on diverting offenders away from state prisons. That measure will expand the group of people eligible for recovery courts, shorten the maximum amount of time someone can be placed on probation, and prevent some people from going back to jail for technical probation violations.

The second new law will ease the requirements for people to be released on parole and will establish more support for inmates who are released from prison.

I can’t believe I’m quoting Paul Mirengoff, but before he was pushed out at Powerlineblog, Mirengoff occasionally wrote about under-incarceration, including this 2019 piece about Gov. Lee’s dangerous anti-incarceration idealism.

Any old governor can incarcerate dangerous criminals. It takes innovators like Lee to let them roam our streets. How many more Tennesseans will be victims of violent crime because of jailbreak polices? How many more will die in the name of “creative and innovative and disruptive challenge[s] to the way we’ve been doing things forever”? One more victim would be too many, and there’s a good chance there will be more than one.

One of those victims of Gov. Lee’s “innovative and disruptive” de-incarceration efforts was Mr. Wright.

For the record, my church is actively involved in prison ministry, something I strongly support. I am also passionate about the need to re-integrate back into society those who have served their sentences. Employment and faith are often critical for that to be a success, and we should compassionately strive to provide the resources to make their rehabilitation successful.

But there are a great many criminals who cannot be rehabilitated. We owe it to society to put them behind bars and keep them behind bars. A person who has been arrested 66 times, including for an attempted murder, cannot be roaming the streets. Any politician whose “compassion” would allow such a criminal to prey on the citizenry is unfit for office.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 12:00 PM

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