So much for being a bleeding-heart activist prosecutor.

That was the knock on Steve Mulroy both during his run last year for Shelby County district attorney and after he ousted incumbent DA Amy Weirich in the August county general election.

Electing Mulroy, his critics said, would open the floodgates for wanton criminal activity, particularly in Memphis, without much resistance from a placid district attorney’s office.

DA to seek death penalty for Cleotha Henderson

Essentially, Weirich’s supporters insisted that she had a record of being tough on crime — something Memphis and Shelby County sorely need. While Mulroy would turn our community into a marauding, 21st century version of Thunderdome.

The claims were ludicrous, of course. Even though candidate Mulroy did call for substantial reforms that included deemphasizing heavy prosecution of nonviolent offenses and reducing the number of juvenile offenders who are transferred to adult court.

The two candidates were polar opposites in their approach to criminal justice. In the end, however, political party affiliation was more of a determinant of the outcome than differences in prosecutorial philosophy.

Weirich was the last Republican hanging on to an elected countywide office. And a majority of voters, particularly in Memphis, were fed up with the Republican brand of politics that they viewed as intolerant and backward thinking.

But immediately after Mulroy was sworn into office on Aug. 31, 2022, a cascade of violent crime descended on Memphis that kept the city in the national news for weeks.

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It started with the Sept. 2 kidnapping and murder of beloved kindergarten teacher Eliza Fletcher as she went on a predawn jog along Central Avenue adjacent to the University of Memphis. Her body was found three days later dumped behind a vacant property in South Memphis. She had been shot in the head but also had blunt force injuries, including a fractured jaw.

Career criminal Cleotha Henderson, 39, who also has used the last name Abston, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping in Fletcher’s death. He also has now been charged with raping a woman a year earlier, but was never arrested because of a failure to test the victim’s rape kit for DNA.

Then on Sept. 7, two days after Fletcher’s body was found, 19-year-old Ezekiel Kelly allegedly went on a random shooting spree across Memphis killing three people and wounding three others. He has been charged with first-degree murder. And now Mulroy, the so-called soft on crime DA, will pursue the death penalty against both Kelly and Henderson.

In announcing his decision in the Kelly case in March, Mulroy was open about his objections to capital punishment.

“I’ve made no secret of my personal objections to the death penalty as a public policy matter,” he said at a press conference. “But I think that the people that voted for me understand that a DA has to follow the law, whether they agree with it or not.”

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Evoking memories of the citywide lockdown and the sheer terror that everyone in Memphis was experiencing the evening of Kelly’s crime spree, Mulroy stated the obvious. “If this case isn’t death penalty worthy, then no case is.”

Then came last week when Mulroy was back in court announcing that his office would also seek the death penalty against Henderson. In a press release, Mulroy again alluded to his personal opposition to the death penalty.

“But as DA I must enforce the law despite personal opinion. After careful consideration of the facts in this case and similar cases, I believe this is what justice demands.”

The press statement also said Mulroy and other prosecutors met with members of Fletcher’s family and they support seeking the death penalty. They are “determined to see that justice is served.”

In my view, there was no need for Mulroy to remind us twice of his objections to the death penalty. He made the right decisions based on the facts and the law. Capital punishment is on the books in Tennessee. And the brazen crimes allegedly committed by Kelly and Henderson call for the stiffest punishment there is.

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And yet, there is a legitimate public policy debate to be had over the appropriateness of the death penalty. It seems clear that since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in the U.S. in 1976, it has not been a deterrent to murder. And opposition to it transcends political party lines.

The issue will be discussed later today, July 13, in Memphis during Freedomfest 2023, a national gathering of conservative Republicans and libertarians, at the Renasant Convention Center downtown.

An afternoon breakout session is titled, “Don’t Kill for Me: Reflections on Justice and the Death Penalty.” One of the participants on the panel is Jasmine Woodson, Tennessee coordinator of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

“A growing number of conservatives are expressing concerns about the current death penalty system, which does not align with our values of fiscal responsibility, limited government and pro-life policies,” Woodson told me.

“Fifty years of experience has taught us that no matter how hard the government tries to get this system right, it fails at every turn, from convicting innocent people to making false promises to victims’ families who are trapped in the legal process for decades, while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.”

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And let’s not forget Tennessee’s shoddy record of properly testing lethal injection drugs used to put condemned inmates to death. Last year, Gov. Bill Lee paused future executions and appointed former U.S. attorney Ed Stanton III to conduct an independent review of death penalty protocols.

In his findings released in late December, Stanton concluded that the state has not complied with its lethal injection process since it was revised in 2018. That failure resulted in several executions being carried out without proper testing of the drugs used.

Tennessee currently has roughly 45 inmates on death row, according to the most recent figures from the state Department of Corrections. More than half of those inmates are Black, despite the fact that African Americans make up just 12% of the state’s population.

Still, the state legislature has shown no appetite for abolishing the death penalty. Earlier this year, a bill to allow death by firing squad picked up support before it failed to gain passage. And one Republican lawmaker even made the goofball suggestion to allow hanging from a tree. That lawmaker later apologized “to anyone who may have been hurt or offended” by his ridiculous and racist comment.

As for Mulroy, who has not been in office a full year, the irony of seeking the death penalty in two separate cases “is not lost on me. I campaigned as a reform-minded district attorney.”

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He told me there likely are people who now feel like he is backtracking on campaign promises. But the crimes allegedly committed by Henderson and Kelly are so heinous, Mulroy had no choice but to follow the law.

And yet, Mulroy said he agrees with conservative commentator George F. Will, who once called capital punishment a broken system that should be abolished. “I think in the long, long term, it’s going to fade out,” Mulroy said. “Tennessee may be the last holdout. But at some point, it will end.”