Bradley County District Attorney General Steve BebbOur hats are off to a Tennessee House investigative panel that on Wednesday said there is enough evidence against 10th Judicial District Attorney Steve Bebb to continue a process to remove him from office.
The group has been looking at allegations that Bebb, who oversees prosecutors and investigations in Bradley, McMinn, Monroe and Polk counties, violated the public trust in the way he and people he supervised behaved in recent years. That behavior includes allegations of Bebb accepting taxpayer reimbursement for driving a state-owned car and former 10th District Drug Task Force Chief Mike Hall spending thousands of dollars of public money on dining, travel and motels for himself and a female agent that could not be documented as legitimate task force expenses. Bebb is board chairman of the task force.
Other allegations of misconduct outlined in 2012 Chattanooga Times Free Press stories by reporter Judy Walton include civil rights violations in arrests and court cases — from racial profiling in drug seizure cases to prosecutorial misconduct. In one case, the prosecutor allowed a detective to pretend to be an attorney in hopes of getting a jail inmate to implicate himself in a killing. The eventual murder charge was thrown out when a key witness said a detective had told him to lie in court about buying the victim’s gun from the suspect. Other stories looked at allegations of grand jury tampering, retaliation and protection of officers for illegal acts that would have landed a civilian in jail.
This week, the bipartisan House panel became the first official body that has reviewed the allegations and evidence without simply sweeping them under a rug. The panel recommended that House Speaker Beth Harwell appoint another panel to come up with specific charges warranting Bebb’s removal when the Tennessee General Assembly convenes in January, said Rep. Tony Shipley, R-Kingsport.
A separate Senate committee also is considering evidence developed from Walton’s series, as well as from a subsequent investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the state Comptroller’s Office ordered by Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr.