DA's office finds backlog of more than 130 abuse cases
More than 130 cases involving alleged crimes against children were found untouched, languishing in file cabinets for years, in some instances for more than a decade, District Attorney Glenn Funk said Wednesday.
He said the cases were discovered during audits conducted after he took office as district attorney in September.
The files prompted Funk to institute new policies, including his own personal review of child sexual and physical abuse cases.
The files were maintained by a division of the office that was led by Brian Holmgren.
Holmgren has been both lauded and criticized for his tough, dedicated prosecution style. In recent weeks he was the subject of news reports — first reported in The Tennessean — in which he asked a woman facing charges in the death of her newborn child to be sterilized before discussing a plea agreement.
Holmgren's last day was Tuesday. He would not comment on the reason for his departure. Funk said he could not comment on personnel decisions.
"I was given the option of stepping down or walking out the door," Holmgren told The Tennessean. "My intention was to make sure that the new people that were going to overtake this office were fully competent."
He said he did not get a chance to complete that task. "No, not even close," he said.
Case backlog
Funk has appointed a team of prosecutors to review the backlogged cases.
He said the cases each stemmed from the multiagency Child Protection Investigative Team, which includes police and Department of Children's Services officers and representatives of the Nashville Children's Alliance. Prosecutors participate and then make decisions whether to pursue cases in criminal court.
The team reviews an average of 1,200 cases each year.
Funk said 74 child sexual abuse cases, some as old as 2010, that had not been followed up on were found in mid-January. He said 60 to 80 child physical abuse cases, some as old as 2001, were found about two weeks ago.
Assistant District Attorney Katy Miller, who oversees the family protection team, said attorneys had secured indictments in about 15 of the cases since they were found. Funk estimated between 20 and 50 percent would be prosecuted after the review.
"The concern here is that a child might have been left in a dangerous situation or that an abuser has abused again," Funk said.
Holmgren said he was not in a position to comment on the backlog.
As a result of the discovery, Funk has instituted new protocols, including monthly reviews of those types of cases, and he sent a letter to Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Children's Alliance about the discovery.
"I have to know that these cases are being handled properly, and that nothing falls through the cracks," Funk said.
Funk said he hired Robert Jones, an assistant public defender in Williamson County and who previously defended cases in Memphis, to handle child sexual abuse cases. Pam Anderson, who has worked in the office for more than 25 years, will handle child physical abuse cases.
The three other attorneys in the unit have fewer than three years of experience in the office.
Changes in DA's office
Holmgren, 55, came to Nashville in 1999. He previously worked as a child abuse prosecutor in Wisconsin and for the National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.
He said he stopped counting how many trials he prosecuted after his 300th. He is known nationally for his work, especially on shaken baby syndrome, and contributed to a textbook on prosecuting child abuse.
"It has been a privilege to be a prosecutor and handle these cases for 29 years," Holmgren said. "People who do this work are extremely dedicated and committed and want to do the best job possible."
While in the district attorney's office, Holmgren worked with Sharon Reddick and Kristen Menke, both of whom left during Funk's transition in the fall.
Reddick and Menke, now at the firm MMRS Law in West End, said cases that come from CPIT proceed differently and often slower than other felony cases because they require waiting on paperwork from multiple agencies, and cases involving children can be more complicated to prosecute.
"If we had a case that was missing information from another discipline, we would keep our file and maintain our file until we got that information," Menke said. "If we never got that information, we kept the file because it documented our efforts to do the right thing."
They said none of the files Funk is concerned about involved situations where a child was in danger. Reddick said the files in question were not cases that had been ignored, but ones that were waiting further information or there had been a decision not to prosecute.
"Sometimes there's one, two, three potential suspects," Reddick said. "The victims can never speak for themselves, sometimes because they're dead, often they're too young."
For the past seven months, Holmgren has led less-experienced prosecutors through those types of complicated cases.
Holmgren said he was concerned about how the young attorneys would fare going forward.
"Do you think that somebody who has no trial experience or a couple of trials under their belt is going to handle cases in the same way?" Holmgren asked. "It doesn't need to be answered. It's a rhetorical question."
Sterilization controversy
Holmgren spoke to The Tennessean for the first time Wednesday, though the newspaper contacted him before publishing a story about a controversial case involving sterilization last month.
He said he had previously declined to comment because he knew Funk, his boss at the time, had commented and Holmgren did not want to create a conflict.
The story involved a 36-year-old woman, Jasmine Randers, with a 20-year history of mental illness. Her newborn daughter died in 2012 (the autopsy did not determine the cause of her death), and Randers was charged with child neglect.
Holmgren raised concern that The Tennessean's story didn't include information about a past police incident involving Randers. In that incident, more than 10 years ago while Randers was pregnant with her first child and living in Minnesota, Holmgren said she stabbed herself in the abdomen.
Randers told police it was an accident that happened while peeling fruit, court records show. Randers was committed to a mental health facility. Police in Minnesota were unable to determine if the injury was intentional.
Holmgren said Randers also made statements that she did not want her baby — the one who later died — during an incident at Nashville International Airport in 2012.
"I felt that she was in a position that if she became pregnant again, the potential for harm to the fetus or the child was exceedingly high based on this set of facts," Holmgren said.
Assistant Public Defender Mary-Kathryn Harcombe, who represented Randers, previously said Holmgren would not discuss a plea deal unless Randers agreed to have her tubes tied.
Holmgren said defendants do not have a right to a plea agreement, and he was weighing public safety in discussing sterilization in the complicated case.
He said Randers was unstable, did not reliably take medication and repeatedly fled supervision. Because of those factors, he said, she could not be considered for less permanent forms of birth control or other resolutions to the case.
"Those are the kinds of things we have to do to make sure these types of situations do not happen again," he said. "I don't create those scenarios or those risks, but I try and mitigate them in the best way I can."
He also said he was removed from the case by Funk because they disagreed on how it should proceed. Harcombe, the public defender, asked Funk, a longtime criminal defense attorney before he became district attorney, to intervene in the case.
Holmgren did not think it should go to trial before a judge and would not agree to any resolution unless Randers would be under supervision. Funk took over, and the case was resolved before a judge.
"I refused to do that, so he took that case out of my hands," Holmgren said.
Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 or on Twitter @sbarchenger.
Case review
The following staff of the Nashville District Attorney's Office will review case files that were apparently untouched for years:
• Katy Miller: family protection unit team leader, hired in 1981
• Stacy Miller: juvenile court team leader, hired in 2012
• Pam Anderson: felony prosecutor, hired in 1988
• Robert Jones: trial attorney with more than 35 years experience, most recently as an assistant public defender in Williamson County, begins work as a prosecutor in about two weeks
• Zoe Sams: child abuse prosecutor, hired in 2014
• Chad Butler: child abuse prosecutor, hired in 2013
• Alyssa Henning: child abuse prosecutor, hired in 2014
For more information
District Attorney Glenn Funk said any victims or families who have questions about their cases, or anyone who believes their case has not been acted upon, should call his office at 615-862-5500, ext. 136.