Nashville Attorney Thinks Some Criminals Shouldn’t Procreate

After he was fired from the Davidson County District Attorney’s office Tuesday afternoon, longtime prosecutor Brian Holmgren called up the Scene and disputed just about everything that led to his ouster. Including what exactly led to it.

Holmgren confirmed that he had been fired but said it was not connected to the case of Jasmine Randers, recounted in a recent piece by The Tennessean, in which Holmgren reportedly made sterilization a part of plea negotiations. He would not elaborate further.

“Suffice it to say that what you need to know is there is a fundamental difference of opinions in how to handle cases in our unit between myself and [District Attorney Glenn] Funk,” Holmgren said.

Funk’s office confirmed to the Scene Wednesday through spokeswoman Dorinda Carter that a review of Holmgren’s division found more than 130 child abuse cases that had not been prosecuted. The office would not say whether that was the reason for Holmgren’s firing.

During his conversation with the Scene, Holmgren sharply criticized the Tennessean story, disputed the nature of how sterilization was brought up in plea negotiations with Randers and other defendants, and ultimately defended probation conditions like mandatory birth control and discussions of sterilization in certain contexts.

In decades as an assistant district attorney — including some 15 years in Nashville, during which he led the child abuse unit in the DA’s office — Holmgren has earned a reputation as a uniquely aggressive prosecutor. That has made him a polarizing figure in legal circles. While colleagues have defended his approach as the righteously vigorous style of a man often faced with individuals who have committed heinous crimes against children, critics on the other side of the bar have described him as a “zealot” whose prosecutions can bring about human collateral damage.

Those criticisms were aired in a Scene cover story last year about a tangled child neglect case Holmgren prosecuted (see “Legal Limbo,” Aug. 28, 2014). His work has been under renewed scrutiny this month after the aforementioned Tennessean story and another by the Associated Press last weekend, which reported Holmgren had used sterilization as a part of plea negotiations in at least three more instances in the past five years.

In the wake of those recent stories, Funk has banned the practice.

Holmgren takes a different view. He argues that (continue reading)

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