Court Cases

Christopher Bassett, Jr. was convicted for the murder in 2015 and in 2020, an amicus brief was filed on his behalf. The state introduced a drill rap music video featuring Bassett and six other men, following in a pattern of treating rap music as inherently incriminating.

Cyntoia Brown is a young woman serving a life sentence in the Tennessee Prison for Women. Ms. Brown was a sixteen-year-old who had been forced into prostitution when she killed a man more than twice her age, a stranger who had picked her up for sex. She was tried and convicted as an adult.

ACLU-TN has had an ongoing concern over police surveillance of Memphis residents engaging in protected free speech activities for many decades.

On July 26, 2016, ACLU-TN, along with Disability Rights Tennessee, filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ systematic denial of treatment to inmates infected with Hepatitis C (HCV).