By Daniel A. Horwitz: Defending Criminal Contempt Cases in Tennessee[1] Under Tennessee law, courts may punish a person’s contempt of a court order as a criminal offense. Courts’ criminal contempt authority “is designed to preserve the power and vindicate the dignity and authority of the
“[A]ll enforcement of the recruitment provision” of Tennessee’s so-called “Abortion Trafficking” statute is now preliminarily enjoined, U.S. District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger has ordered. The decision comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by Horwitz Law, PLLC clients Rachel Welty and Tennessee State
Horwitz Law, PLLC client Scott Wilson’s wrongful convictions for criminal contempt must be reversed, a Tennessee Court of Appeals panel has held. “[T]hat the order which was allegedly violated lacked specificity and was ambiguous requires a reversal of the convictions of contempt[,]” the Court’s
Earlier this year, Tennessee enacted the Reentry Success Act of 2021 into law. The Reentry Success Act overhauls Tennessee’s parole laws, and it was designed to reform several components of the parole hearing process, parole determinations, and parole eligibility. As soon as the Reentry
Following a four-year effort to exonerate Joseph Webster for his wrongful conviction of a 1998 murder, the Davidson County District Attorney's Office has announced that it "no longer has confidence in the conviction of Mr. Webster" and recommends that "Mr. Webster's conviction be vacated
In a resounding win for free speech, Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle has issued an order striking down Tennessee's criminal defamation law prohibiting false "campaign literature in opposition to any candidate in any election." Finding that the law represented an unlawful content-based, viewpoint-based,
After a years-long effort to secure a review of Joseph Webster's conviction for a 1998 murder, the Davidson County District Attorney's Office has officially authorized a reinvestigation into the case. It is the first investigation into a potential wrongful murder conviction in Nashville's history.
Calvin Bryant—a beloved college student and high school football star whose sentence garnered national attention for its purposeless cruelty after he received a 17-year mandatory minimum prison sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense—was released from prison on October 31, 2018. Mr. Bryant's release