New Tennessee law stalls sentencing in fatal hit-and-run case [photos]

Valerie Bray talks in attorney Bill Speak's office Friday, January 27, 2017.
Valerie Bray talks in attorney Bill Speak's office Friday, January 27, 2017.


A 60-year-old woman who pleaded guilty in the 2015 fatal hit-and-run of Cameron Bean will not be sentenced for another month as local judges adjust to a new state law that aims to reduce overcrowding in prisons.

Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Tom Greenholtz could announce on April 27 whether Valerie Bray will receive probation or spend about three months in jail, defense attorney Jonathan Turner said Monday. His partner, Bill Speek, has represented Bray since police say she swerved across the center line on Moccasin Bend Road, struck Bean from behind, and left the scene on Sept. 19, 2015. The 28-year-old died two days later. She pleaded guilty in December to criminally negligent homicide and leaving the scene of an accident.

After presiding over a six-hour hearing in February, in which nine witnesses came to Bray's defense, Greenholtz said he would weigh the testimony and make a decision on March 3. But days before that hearing, Greenholtz remembered the Public Safety Act, which asks probation officers starting Jan. 1, 2017, to assess under a set of new standards whether a person charged in certain felony cases has a high, moderate or low chance of re-offending.

Greenholtz noticed Bray didn't have that new assessment done. Since her sentencing hearing happened in 2017, he wanted Bray's case and at least two others to have that risk-and-needs determination completed, records show. Criminal Court Judge Don Poole also sent a 26-year-old woman's robbery and aggravated assault case back to state probation for another look. All of those cases are scheduled for sentencing either this week or in early April.

The new assessment is designed to create "the perfect case management plan for each person's needs," said Robert Reburn, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections. That way, citizens avoid paying $74 for each day a person spends in state prison on a minor charge or a probation or parole violation. Conversely, a dangerous offender justifies the cost.

"For example, with a drug user, instead of sending them to prison for the cost of $74," Reburn said, "the judge can say, 'It's best that you just go through a substance abuse treatment, which you can do on probation for roughly $3 or $4 a day."

As of June 2016, TDOC was supervising 58,256 probationers, according to its annual report. At the same time, 40 percent of people admitted to state prisons were there for violating their probation or parole instead of committing new crimes, according to a 2015 report commissioned by Gov. Bill Haslam on sentencing and repeat offenders.

Chattanooga seems to fall in line with those statewide numbers: Of the 923 people housed in Silverdale Detention Center, 212 are there for probation violations, according to statistics.

Some alternative sentencing advocates pointed out probation officers already assess each person in pre-sentence investigation reports that judges typically request before making a decision in a hearing. But they also welcomed another effort by state representatives to alleviate prison populations for people trapped in a cycle of poverty, crime and addiction.

"I got this one guy whose dad was killed when he was a young boy, and then his mother wound up serving a 10-year sentence in prison with the feds for running drugs from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and he gets caught up in drugs being raised by the wolves, and we just want to lock them all up because all we see is the crime they're committing but not the crimes we're committing against them," said Dewayne Stephens of the House of Refuge, a non-profit in Chattanooga that serves men grappling with addiction or life after a conviction.

House of Refuge, which has 24 beds and a pay-your-own-way approach, can pick up where the new public safety assessment drops off, Stephens said. "We constantly hear that jails are full, prisons are full. Then they send these guys home and the cycle repeats. They won't pay fines. They don't have transportation to a probation office or to a job. So one of the biggest assets to our ministry is the transportation for guys."

Others are not thrilled that probation officers will have a heavier hand in decision-making when someone violates their probation.

"The setting of the permissible range of punishment for a violation of the criminal law is a legislative function," Circuit Court Judge Donald E. Parish wrote in an opinion in the 24th Judicial District, which covers Benton, Carroll, Decatur, Henry and Hardian counties. "However, the imposition of a sentence and the conditions of the service of that sentence, including probation, if available, is exclusively a function of the judiciary."

Contact staff writer Zack Peterson at zpeterson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6347. Follow him on Twitter @zackpeterson918.


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