'If an Outbreak Happens in the Jail, It’s Gonna Be Devastating'

Update (3:25 p.m.): As of Saturday afternoon, the district attorney's office and the public defender's office have agreements on around 80 cases, with more to review. Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk tells the Scene that General Sessions Judge Lynda Jones will take up the agreed orders on Monday morning.  

Original post: A small number of people jailed in Nashville could be released as early as this weekend, as local criminal justice officials work to get vulnerable inmates out of local jails to prevent — or mitigate — an outbreak of COVID-19 on the inside. As of Friday night, prosecutors and public defenders were finalizing agreements for around 24 cases. 

Confirmed cases of the illness, caused by a novel coronavirus, continue to rise as testing increases. On Friday, the first known death from the illness in Tennessee was announced in Nashville. 

Metro Public Defender Martesha Johnson started publicly advocating more than a week ago for city officials to take steps to get people of out jail due to the pandemic. She tells the Scene that Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall has been supporting that effort all week behind the scenes, sending Johnson's office lists of inmates who are particularly vulnerable — including older inmates, people with underlying medical conditions and pregnant women. 

By its nature, Nashville's jail population fluctuates. As opposed to prisons, jails often see people serving relatively short sentences before being released back into the community. There are typically about 2,000 people in the sheriff's custody. 

On Thursday, Hall announced that he had initiated "plans to reduce the number of inmates in sheriff’s office custody," including expanding pre-trial release criteria and immediately furloughing inmates eligible for work release (that is, people who leave the jail during the day to work certain jobs before returning at night). 

“We fully expect to have COVID-19 positive cases in our facilities," Hall said in a written statement. "It’s critical we reduce the inmate population now. As criminal justice leaders we need to take action because of the serious impact this virus will have on sheriff’s office staff and inmates.” 

In the same statement, the sheriff's office appeared to call out the Metro Nashville Police Department, noting that, "While many in the system work toward necessary releases, misdemeanor arrests have increased over the past two weeks."

Soon after the sheriff's statement was released, the MNPD released its own release, saying that "officers are being strongly encouraged to maximize their discretion in the use of state citations in lieu of physical arrests for misdemeanor offenses to reduce the opportunity for COVID-19 exposure within Nashville’s detention facilities and to Sheriff’s Office detention staff."

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk tells the Scene the data he's seen doesn't indicate that misdemeanor arrests have increased in recent weeks. But, he says, they haven't gone down either. 

Funk, along with other criminal justice officials, was in meetings most of Friday related to the crisis. He says that Johnson sent him a list of 264 people currently being held in the jail who had been identified by the sheriff's office as particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 or otherwise good candidates for immediate release. Funk says about half of the people on the list had been jailed as a result of probation violations. 

“I would hope that a significant percentage of these individuals can have their sentences amended to time-served," Funk says. "But until we actually look at what the offense was, I don’t know what that percentage is gonna be. It’s not gonna be 0, and it probably won’t be 100.”

“We already take it very seriously that it is a sanction to be held in custody pre-trial, especially on a misdemeanor," he says. "That’s something that should be reserved for rare circumstances. And even on those rare circumstances now we’re going to be taking a second really hard look [at] is there not some other way to make sure this person is not detained while the case is pending. We still have to worry about community safety, but at the same time part of community safety is making sure that the individual is safe, that the jail is safe, that the sheriff’s deputies are safe, that the courts are safe.”

Asked whether she feels Nashville's criminal justice leadership is on the same page when it comes to reducing the city's jail population in light of the pandemic, Johnson says officials are "appropriately concerned" about the issue, but she notes there has been some misinformed opposition.

"I do think based on experience there have been some things said in courtrooms that are kind of frustrating," she says. "We have had judges and other criminal justice parties say things like, ‘It is better for an individual to be in the jail if they COVID-19,' and that’s just misinformation. It’s not true, it’s not founded in anything, and it’s actually the opposite of what Sheriff Hall would be saying.”

Johnson acknowledges that there are logistical challenges involved and adds that, on top of concern for people incarcerated and working in the jail, she feels the burden of ensuring the safety of the attorneys who work in her office. 

“I think everyone is appropriately concerned," Johnson says. "I do want to make sure that the concern extends to those people who are in jail. Just because you’re in jail it doesn’t lessen your humanity — it shouldn’t lessen the concern we should have for your ability to thrive. If an outbreak happens in the jail, it’s gonna be devastating to some people in there. They can’t do social distancing."