Deputy chases, fatally shoots man, 29
A 29-year-old man is dead after a brief pursuit following a traffic stop led to a fatal shooting by a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office deputy early Monday morning.
The deputy, who has not been identified, tried to stop
Tyler Hays around 2 a.m. in the 16000 block of Crestview Drive in Sale Creek. A brief pursuit ensued, and Hays reportedly fled on foot and then “became involved in an altercation” with the deputy, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
“For reasons still under investigation, the situation escalated and resulted in the deputy firing his service weapon, striking Hays, who died at the scene,” the TBI said in a news release.
A passenger who was in the vehicle driven by Hays fled the scene in the vehicle, resulting in another pursuit and subsequent capture in neighboring Sequatchie County.
District Attorney General
Neal Pinkston asked the TBI to investigate the shooting, which is typical after an officer shoots a member of the public. The TBI will then hand over its findings to Pinkston, and he will decide whether to close the case as a justified shooting or present the case to a grand jury for criminal indictment.
No law enforcement officers were injured in the incident.
The deputy involved in the shooting has been placed on administrative leave with pay, according to the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office.
said. “A lot of those cases are very serious cases — they’re first-degree murder cases, they’re second-degree murder cases, they are especially aggravated robbery cases — very serious cases that the court needs to address.”
As courts prepare for the impending return to regular business, whether it’s on July 3 or later, criminal court judges are grappling with how to prioritize jury trials. That’ll depend on whether the defendants are in custody, the seriousness of the charges, how old the case is and whether the parties can be ready.
“One aspect of rescheduling these trials is that the more complicated the case is, and the more witnesses you may have, the harder it actually may be to try right now,” Greenholtz said. “You can have a DUI case where there may be two witnesses involved in the whole case. You probably can try that one. In a murder case where you may have 10, 20, 30 witnesses, you probably realistically can’t try that one right now, even though it is a more serious case than the DUI.”
And on the front end of the judicial process, there’s a growing backlog across the state of cases needing to be presented to the grand jury, a group of citizens who review criminal cases and determine whether there’s enough evidence to formally charge a defendant.
In Hamilton County, there is no set date for when a grand jury will convene. First, a large group of people will have to come together for a group of 13 to then be selected, and those 13 will be expected to meet regularly for a term of four months, reviewing an average of 50 to 100 cases per week.
That’s a dilemma criminal court judges are trying to resolve, Greenholtz said.
“What we’re trying to figure out is kind of two issues: Do you need to call as many people in as you usually do? If so, where do you bring them in and under what circumstances — how do you assure the public right now, particularly, that wherever you call them it’s going to be safe?”
In the meantime, prosecutors have been working with the court to reduce the bail amounts in certain cases that are pending before the grand jury “to make sure that someone’s not just languishing in jail while the grand jury is not meeting,” Greenholtz said.
Prosecutors also have been working to identify which cases can be resolved outside of the grand jury and negotiating plea agreements with defendants who are willing to do so.
“It’s taken a little time, but I think we’re making progress and hopefully we’ll be able to resolve those,” District Attorney General Neal Pinkston said. “We’re reviewing several hundred cases.”
More severe cases, such as homicides, aren’t as easily resolved.
For cases that are already in the judicial pipeline, dockets cannot come to a complete standstill, leaving most courts to turn to video or telephone conferencing for matters that could be handled without meeting in-person.
In Hamilton County, the criminal court has been holding hearings via WebEx, an online video conferencing platform.
During a recent video conference plea hearing in criminal court, a defendant dialed in from a vehicle in which he sat with his public defender as Greenholtz asked a series of questions to make sure the defendant understood the agreement and a court reporter transcribed the hearing from her home.
“We hold hearings all the time where the accused is in custody, either at the jail or the workhouse, but for the people who are out on bond, it’s really kind of fascinating,” Greenholtz said with a chuckle. “I’ve had people who were sitting on their living room couch — it’s perfectly fine. I had one person last week who, during the course of the proceeding, was kind of walking around her house. And so we all got views of the house.
“We had a fellow earlier this week — he was on a construction site. He was actually working on the construction site, and he took 20 minutes out. And at one point he said, ‘Judge, I can’t hear you. I need to come on over here.’ So he got into one of the construction trucks, and you know, we finished up what we needed to do.”
Video conferencing has worked pretty well over all, and has forced some positive changes, both Greenholtz and Pinkston said.
“This has given us all a chance to take a breath from the day-to-day grind when you can look broadly at things,” Pinkston said. “There are changes we’re making internally and I sure hope they’ll be long term. It’s shown everyone that we can do things more efficiently.”
One of those changes is scheduling matters for specific times rather than gathering in the courtroom and waiting for parties to arrive before the issue can be addressed.
“Think about this,” Greenholtz said. “That means that if I’m a witness in the case, for example, I don’t have to take off all day at work to come down and have my time wasted. If I’m a victim in the case, I don’t have to take off all day, maybe three, four, five, 10 times to have my case be addressed. If I’m the accused, I don’t have to wait around all day. Maybe I’m in custody and I’m being held in one of the cells. We’re able to schedule things at a particular time and take care of our business. It also reduces the cost in the system enormously. We don’t have transportation costs from the workhouse, for example.
“I think we’re able to carry a lot of those types of positive changes forward,” Greenholtz said. “Not only for the accused in the system and also for the victim, but really for the public as a whole, and that’s what I’m really excited about.”
“I don’t think it will be the normal we ever knew before,” Pinkston said.