A string of high-profile killings rattling Memphis this week has touched off new calls for tougher sentencing laws
— would have been avoided had the latest version of Tennessee's so-called"truth in sentencing" statute been in effect.
“The vast majority of people who come home from prison never engage in gun violence,” David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, said in an interview. Tennessee was among the small handful of states that have required individuals to serve a minimum amount of their sentences since the 1980s — when the idea initially began taking off. However, under the 1994 federal crime bill signed by President Bill Clinton, states were given incentives to adopt such laws by promising them more money to build prisons if they did so.
Abston previously kidnapped a prominent Memphis attorney in 2000 when he was 16 years old. He spent 20 years in prison for that crime, but he had been sentenced to 24.