Judge rules on case involving District Attorney General, local courts

TRENTON, Tenn. — A judge recently made a ruling regarding a case involving two local cities and a District Attorney General.

The case involves the District Attorney General for the 28th Judicial District, Frederick Agee, and the Cities of Milan and Trenton.

There has been some discourse regarding certain courts and who has to provide funds for prosecutors. It is either the city, or the District Attorney General’s Office. Agee told us more about the ruling.

“The Court of Appeals has ruled that under 8-7-103, that the Milan Municipal Court with general sessions jurisdiction and the Trenton Municipal Court with general sessions jurisdiction do not have to fund a prosecutor for our office,” Agee explained.

So this ruling did not go in Agee’s favor, however, the judges made a reversal to a different decision and that reversal did go in his favor.

“So the court has basically upheld the ruling on funding, but they have reversed on requiring us to go,” said Agee.

So this situation is clearly not completely over. In fact, the original decision can still be appealed within 60 days by the Attorney General’s Office for the State of Tennessee.

“If they don’t appeal, the case becomes the law,” Agee said. “If they do appeal and the Supreme Court picks it up, it will probably take about a year to run through the Supreme Court process.”

Agee says that these particular courts are optional and are not needed. He also claims that both Dyersburg and Jackson have the same court setup. In both of those cases, they provide prosecutors for the District Attorneys.

“So sometimes in life you have to take the long way to get to where you want to be,” Agee added. “We want clarification on whether or not these optional courts, municipal courts with general sessions jurisdiction they’re optional, whether they will have to fund a prosecutor or not.”

Agee also says there is a statewide study that has been done on municipal courts’ staffing and funding. He says those results should be available any day now.

Agee says these optional courts were setup many years ago to take money from the counties.

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