Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton on the Eliza Fletcher Murder

BUCK: We are now joined by the speaker of the Tennessee House, Cameron Sexton. Mr. Speaker, thank you for calling in.

SPEAKER SEXTON: Oh, thank you all for having me today.

BUCK: So, we talked at some length yesterday about the vicious murder of Eliza Fletcher allegedly by Cleotha Abston Henderson. Clay brought to my attention that you, first of all, understand the laws at issue here very well but that also there was an effort underway in the Tennessee statehouse to pass a law that would have kept someone like Cleotha Abston Henderson in prison. What do people need to know? I mean, this case has gotten a lot of national attention. It’s a gut punch for everybody who reads about it. What do we need to know about the laws here and how the system failed?

SPEAKER SEXTON: Yeah. So, the law that we passed this year rewrote violent criminal law in the state where if you commit — like this case, essentially — aggravated kidnapping, you have to serve 100% of the entire sentence. There’s no time for — no credits for good behavior; there’s no reduction in sentencing; there’s nothing else. You serve every single day. The breakdown in the criminal justice system is — you can just look at Cleo as the poster child for this from juvenile crime, where he was raping people.

Never served really any time up until he did his especially aggravated kidnapping in 2000 ’til he gets out early from Department of Corrections for some reason after he had all these infractions. Why he’s in prison? For drug possession, weapon possession, indecent exposure. And then whenever he gets out, I’m sure he committed crimes over the last two years while he was out too. And then you had a lady decide to go run and do her passion one morning, comes across him, and he kills her. And it’s a total breakdown. And he should have not gotten out early. He got out five years early because he was a cook in the kitchen when he was in prison.

CLAY: It’s infuriating. And I just want to bring home to everybody the case that we’re talking about because Tucker Carlson started his show off with it last night. Eliza Fletcher, mom of two, she was a marathon runner, she was out for an early morning run in Memphis, Tennessee. This guy — who should have still been behind bars for committing violent felonies — pulls up beside her, kidnaps, and murders her according to the charges that have been filed against hum. He should have never been on the street.

And Speaker Sexton, I’m glad you’re with us, ’cause I think this is emblematic for what’s going on nationwide. We were talking about this recently in Baltimore, for instance. There was a study that found 90%, I think, of all the murders that have been committed in Baltimore were committed by people should we have still been behind bars. You’re saying this guy got out early ’cause he had worked as a cook in a prison, despite the fact that he had committed multiple violent acts throughout his life. If he had still been behind bars, this mom, this mom of two, this schoolteacher, would still be alive.

SPEAKER SEXTON: Absolutely, she would still be alive. And if we had truth in sentencing back in 2000 like we started in July 1st of this year, he would be there for five more years. And a these soft-on-crime groups who say, “Oh, we need to monitor the feelings of these criminals; we have to give them a reason to do rehabilitation programs,” that’s a bunch of malarkey. That’s crazy. Be they need to serve their time. They need to do every single day. We’re gonna announce a committee here at the end of the day that’s going to look at his case and how this guy, with this violent history, with all these things he did while he was protons, how he got out early — and how he even got out without any kind of probation or any kind of supervision. They just let him walk out the door and said, “Hey, man, good luck to you!”

CLAY: Could this be related to covid? ‘Cause he got out in November of 2022, and a couple of years ago. And I know there was an attempt to get people out. I mean, this is crazy that he was ever allowed out.

SPEAKER SEXTON: It is. That’s one of the things we want to look into in this committee. And, you know, the other thing is, he had a cell phone, and he is posting while he’s in prison on his Facebook page, and he’s posting all these videos, and he’s posting when he’s gonna get out. And so this is awful. You had a young lady who decided to go for a run who never came home to her two kids because the criminal justice system over the last 10 to 12 years has been too lenient, and all these soft-on-crime groups are all wanting to pat the criminals on the butt as they go out the door and say, “We believe in you’ we know you’re not gonna commit another crime,” and as you all said, these violent criminals, you can’t rehab evil. Evil is evil and they need to be in jail either the entire sentence or for the rest of their lives.

BUCK: As we’re speaking to speaker of the Tennessee house Cameron Sexton right now. Mr. Speaker, what we see work when it comes to public safety, criminal justice in one state can be replicated in many others; so, it can have national implications. Obviously right now there’s been an enormous increase in violent crime that the whole country is going through. Clay and I talk frequently about how the roots of this are in progressive prosecutors, BLM, defunding police, all of that leftist policy lunacy. What do you think could be done in your state? What are the additional measures that you might want to see so that you don’t have, let’s say, Nashville, turn into what we’ve seen in Baltimore and Portland and some of the cities in recent years that have had a hundred percent increase in shootings or a 50% or a 30% increase in murders?

SPEAKER SEXTON: Well, the first thing we did is passed truth in sentencing. And our counties, Davidson and Shelby where we have these George Soros attorney generals, well, we’re working with our state AG to clarify our law, and our intent, if you don’t prosecute people, the state can come in and remove you from office, period. No questions, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, we’re gonna remove you. This guy Cleo, it wasn’t like when he walked out of jail he was sitting at home drinking Pepsi and eating jelly beans and going to Bible study every night. And so, we’re gonna do what we need to do to protect society.

Government’s job is public safety, first and foremost. And your child should feel state of walking home from school. You should feel safe going out for a run at any time. We just had a case in Knoxville, but there was bystanders out there that jumped in to save the young lady that was about ready to get raped and kidnapped just a couple days ago or yesterday. And so this is a problem, and we’re gonna do everything that we can in Tennessee to push back on these liberal progressive agendas from these people who are soft on crime and we’re going to continue to pass juvenile crime bills. If you commit adult crime, the juvenile needs to do adult time. There’s no “you only go to prison ’til you’re 18.” You go for a long period of time.

CLAY: Speaker Sexton, appreciate the time, and thanks for trying to address this craziness. We’ll talk to you.

SPEAKER SEXTON: Thank you all.

CLAY: So, this is wild, Buck. Because it really is emblematic of what’s going on everywhere. Did you ever think we would be in a place where you wouldn’t feel comfortable with your wife or daughter going for a jog in many different cities all over this country?

BUCK: It was my life growing up in New York City in the late eighties and early nineties.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK I didn’t think we’d ever go back to it, but we decided — or, rather, some people in this country decided — to unlearn the lessons of the eighties and the nineties about what works, what keeps us safe, and what’s reality.

CLAY: Amen. We need more police, and we need criminals behind bars for most of their lives when they commit violent offenses.