Tennessee State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said the 20-year old suspect charged in a recent violent crime spree in Memphis had charges dismissed by Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy two days before allegedly committing the multiple acts of violence.
On Sunday, officers with the Memphis Police Department arrested Courdarion Craft, 20, who was allegedly involved in at least five crime scenes over the weekend. The violent crime spree has since left one dead and multiple injured, including a child.
MPD initially said Craft committed the crime spree while he was out on a $100,000 bond for previous crimes of Criminal Attempt First-Degree Murder and Criminal Attempt Especially Aggravated Robbery, however, it was later revealed that those charges were dropped.
State Senator Taylor said there could be “a whole host of reasons” why the previous charges against Craft were dropped, including the possibility that there was not a witness willing to testify at trial.
“It could be that there was a witness issue, maybe having trouble finding a witness or the witness coming and testifying. But you know, that is the problem with lawlessness,” Taylor explained on Monday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
“When you allow lawlessness to permeate a community the way it has in Memphis, witnesses are afraid to come forward. Victims are afraid to come forward for fear of retribution, which when they don’t come forward, cases get dismissed and they continue with the lawlessness. So it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy there. And we have to change our bail laws so that people who are committing crimes are sitting in jail rather than being out on the streets,” Taylor added.
In regards to the city of Memphis’ “ability to pay” bail system, Taylor said he’s introduced a bill to ban such a system and instead allow judges to set bail amounts.
“I’ve got several bills that particularly deal with bail,” Taylor said. “One is that in Memphis, a number of years ago, some of the restorative justice schemers, as I call them, entered into a bail agreement with all the parties – the Shelby County Jail, the County Commission, the general session judges – and they came up with this idea that no defendant should have to sit in jail awaiting trial, and so they have adopted this bail calculator, ability to pay bail calculator…and it essentially figures out how much money the defendant has in their pocket so they know how much bail they can make and they let them out on the street. And so I’ve got a bill that will actually eliminate the use of those bail calculators so that the judge will set bail, not based on how much money they have in their pocket, but bail will be set on the severity of the crime they’re charged with.”
Taylor said he also has another bill focused on the bail system, which would “elevate threat to the public as the number one consideration when considering bail.”
“I don’t think threat to the public here is, it’s always been a consideration, but it has not been the top consideration, so this will move it to the top consideration when judges are looking to set bail,” Taylor added
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Crime Scene” by Tony Webster CC4.0.
