Tennessee lawmakers will drop their effort to oust a Rutherford County juvenile judge accused of illegally jailing children for years.
Donna Scott Davenport announced her retirement this week — one day after two Democrats introduced a resolution that could have resulted in her removal. Davenport has been the subject of an investigation by WPLN News and ProPublica that has found Rutherford County disproportionately locks up Black children, and the racial disparity is getting worse.
Davenport says she will not seek re-election, which means she will be on the bench until the fall and receive her pension afterward. The amount of that pension depends on “several factors,” according to a human resources official from Rutherford County.
Nashville state Sen. Heidi Campbell was one of the sponsors of the ouster resolution. She says she and her co-sponsor, Knoxville Rep. Gloria Johnson, will no longer pursue it.
“It would have been great if she would have just resigned, because she’s caused a lot of pain in our community,” Campbell tells WPLN News. “Because she [will retire], it makes it difficult from a legislative standpoint to defend an extreme measure to remove her.”
Republicans had not yet signaled their views on the proposal to remove a sitting judge, which has only occurred a handful of times in recent history. But state Sen. Shane Reeves, R-Murfreesboro, says her departure is “what’s best for the children” of his county.
“When you’re putting an 8-year-old in handcuffs, I don’t think anyone would agree that’s the right thing to do, regardless of what role Judge Davenport played in it. That’s just wrong,” Reeves says. “It’s just in the best interest of everyone to move forward.”
Rutherford County settled a class action lawsuit last month over its high rate of jailing kids who would have been released in most other counties. Rutherford will pay $6 million to hundreds of families.
Davenport has been Rutherford County’s only juvenile judge since the court was established in 2000.
She has repeatedly declined interview requests with WPLN News, but she issued a statement Tuesday saying, “I will always look back at my time as judge as one of the greatest honors of my life, and I am so proud of what this Court has accomplished in the last two decades and how it has positively affected the lives of young people and families in Rutherford County.”
WPLN political reporter Blaise Gainey contributed to this report.
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