The mother of a man charged with killing a Chattanooga police sergeant last year rants in jailhouse letters to her son that Tennesseans are a “stupid hillbilly, Jack Daniel selling ... backward, Bible belt, inbred ... bunch of haters” and shows scant remorse for her own crimes in the case.

Leaders of two local programs that work with domestic violence victims and perpetrators say mandatory jail time and increased fines proposed by Tennessee's governor could help domestic violence problems.

Part of Gov. Bill Haslam's major public safety overhaul would put wife beaters in jail and impose higher fines for the abuse. "We have a problem in our state that we need to address," said Bill Gibbons, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security and head of Haslam's subcommittee on public safety.

Jurors who found Jamaul Herman not guilty of murder on Wednesday told a prosecutor there was not enough evidence to convince them he pulled the trigger on Jerome Timmons on July 4, 2010.

A criminal court jury has found Jamaul Herman not guilty of murder.

A jury will reconvene this morning to continue deliberating the fate of a 29-year-old man charged with murder.

Rodney Smith clutched Carlos, his black-and-white Chihuahua, as he stood before a standing room-only crowd of more than 100 people in court.

The second-degree murder trial of a 21-year-old man charged in the shooting death of another man is scheduled March 6.

Convicted murderer Fredrick Brown, who lodged a chancy appeal of his guilty pleas and sentencing for killing two men in separate shootings, won a small victory Friday.

The fiancee of a man on trial for murder testified Friday that in the hours before the shooting the defendant did not have a weapon. Arlinda Moorer said she met with Jamaul Herman, her fiancee, at The Palace near midnight on July 3, 2010, and the pair stayed together until the club closed just after 2 a.m.