Funk & Mulroy Declination Policies — Davidson and Shelby Counties

Last verified: May 2026

The Constitutional Mechanic

Tennessee's 2017 Public Chapter 39 forecloses any local-ordinance path to decriminalization. What it does not foreclose is prosecutorial discretion — the elected district attorney's authority under Tennessee constitutional and statutory law to decide which cases to prosecute. Davidson County DA Glenn Funk and Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy have used that authority to implement de facto decriminalization in Tennessee's two largest cities.

Prosecutorial declination is the only remaining lever for local cannabis-policy variation in Tennessee. It does not legalize possession; it does not prevent arrest; it does not bind police charging. It only directs the office's prosecution decision after charges are filed.

The Funk Declination — Davidson County (July 1, 2020)

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk (D, in office since 2014) announced on July 1, 2020 that his office would no longer prosecute possession of half an ounce or less of marijuana. His full statement, widely cited:

"Marijuana charges do little to promote public health, and even less to promote public safety. Demographic statistics indicate that these charges impact minorities in a disproportionate manner. This policy will eliminate this area of disproportionality in the justice system."

Funk's announcement came amid the post-George Floyd national reform wave and was supported by then-Mayor John Cooper. The policy continues under Mayor Freddie O'Connell (D, sworn in September 25, 2023). The Tennessee Republican response was sharp: State Rep. John Stevens (R-Huntingdon) called Funk's policy "akin to treason" and demanded his resignation. The political backlash did not produce a successful AG-opinion-driven challenge or General Assembly intervention; Funk was reelected and the policy remains in effect.

Critically, the Funk policy does not prevent the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) from arresting on simple-possession cases. MNPD officers retain arrest authority under T.C.A. § 39-17-418, and police-discretion guidance from then-Chief Steve Anderson ("officers continue to be encouraged to use their discretion ... as guided by MNPD policy") did not formally change. The Funk policy operates at the post-arrest charging stage: possession charges of half an ounce or less are dismissed at the DA's office.

The Mulroy Declination — Shelby County (September 1, 2022)

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy (D, sworn September 1, 2022) was the first Democrat to hold the Shelby County DA's office in decades, defeating Republican incumbent Amy Weirich in the August 2022 election. Shortly after taking office, Mulroy announced he would "deprioritize lesser offenses like marijuana prosecution and possession" to "focus like a laser beam on violent crime."

Mulroy's first-year report (September 2022 – September 2023) confirmed that marijuana possession is being "de-emphasized." However, the implementation has been more permeable than Funk's framework, in part because the Memphis Police Department's traffic-stop charging practices have remained aggressive in some patrol districts.

The April 2025 Tennessee Lookout / Marshall Project Investigation

The most consequential public assessment of the Mulroy framework's real-world implementation came in April 2025, when Tennessee Lookout and the Marshall Project–Memphis (Brett Kelman, Anna Belle Peevey) published a joint investigation. The investigation documented at least 13 cases in an 8-month sample where Memphis Police Department traffic stops yielded felony "intent to distribute" charges based on amounts barely over half an ounce — the typical pattern being a motorist returning from Missouri, Arkansas, or Mississippi.

Mulroy conceded in interviews: "It is not at all uncommon for the police to bring us a charge for felony intent to sell marijuana and we reduce it to a misdemeanor." The pattern: MPD makes the felony charge at arrest based on cross-border-quantity quantities (Missouri Bootheel adult-use 1-oz purchases, for example, where a single retail container exceeds the ½-oz misdemeanor threshold); the case proceeds through booking, bail, and arraignment as a felony; only at the post-arrest DA review does the felony charge get reduced to a misdemeanor or dismissed. See the Missouri Bootheel page.

What Declination Is — And Is Not

Prosecutorial declination is post-arrest, not pre-arrest. The bottom line for Davidson and Shelby County residents:

• Police can still arrest for misdemeanor possession.
• Booking, bail, fingerprinting, and arrest record all happen.
• Collateral consequences — employment, housing, immigration, federal-clearance — can attach to the arrest itself, not just the conviction.
• The DA dismisses at the prosecution decision point, not before.
• Felony cross-border-quantity cases — >½ oz, vape carts, edibles — are routinely felony-charged regardless of declination.

The MPD documentation in the April 2025 Tennessee Lookout piece confirms that the "arrest still happens" pattern is empirically real, not theoretical. For a Memphis resident returning from a Missouri Bootheel dispensary with a 1-oz flower jar, the practical exposure is a felony-level arrest, felony-level booking, felony-level bail, and only later a possible reduction to misdemeanor at the DA's review.

The MPD Federal-Scrutiny Layer

The April 2025 Tennessee Lookout investigation came in the context of broader scrutiny of MPD. A December 4, 2024 U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division report documented patterns of unconstitutional policing including racially disparate stops. The report's pending consent-decree negotiations were withdrawn by the Trump administration in May 2025. Memphis Mayor Paul Young (D, sworn January 1, 2024) has publicly opposed entering a consent decree. MPD Director CJ Davis has implemented department guidance allowing arresting officers to exercise discretion on low-level marijuana stops, though, as the December 2024 DOJ report and the 2025 Tennessee Lookout investigation both showed, traffic-stop charging practices have remained aggressive in some patrol districts.

The Other 93 Counties

Outside Davidson and Shelby, Tennessee's other 93 counties largely treat possession as it is written in the code. Hamilton County (Chattanooga) and Knox County (Knoxville) have not adopted formal declination policies, though prosecutorial diversion and judicial diversion under T.C.A. § 40-35-313 remain available for first-time offenders. In rural East and Middle Tennessee counties, simple-possession convictions remain routine. The Williamson, Rutherford, Sumner, and Wilson suburban counties south and east of Nashville — affluent and overwhelmingly Republican — charge cannabis cases aggressively.

The Disparity Backdrop

Both Funk's and Mulroy's framings cite racial-disparity data explicitly. Per the ACLU's 2020 A Tale of Two Countries: Tennessee Black residents are 3.2 times more likely than white residents to be arrested for marijuana possession. Tennessee ranks 7th nationally in marijuana possession arrest rates per 100,000. Carter County (East TN) had a 976.7% increase in racial disparity 2010–2018 — the highest such increase in the U.S. Shelby County 2010 data: 83.2% of those arrested for marijuana possession were Black. See the Memphis civil-rights page.