Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall announced Wednesday he will step down on October 19, less than three months into a seventh term, following 24 years as Nashville’s longest-serving sheriff. No successor has entered the race as of press time. The Metro Council will appoint an interim sheriff in November, and voters will pick a permanent replacement in 2027.
Hall, 62, announced his departure from his office’s Facebook page. He said he had turned down other offers over the years because the timing was never right, and that he is leaving for a private-sector job that requires him to be out of office by November 1. He reportedly told the Nashville Post the job is in law enforcement and corrections, will not require him to be on call around the clock, and is not with a Nashville company. He plans to keep living in the city.
“While leaving after 35 years of service is not an easy decision, I believe the sheriff’s office is well-positioned for the future with strong, capable, and experienced leadership,” Hall wrote. “I am committed to doing everything I can to ensure a smooth transition, both before and after my departure.”
Hall was elected in 2002 at 38, the youngest sheriff in county history, and won again in August unopposed. The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office runs the jails. It does not investigate street crime, which is Metro Police’s job. The cases that marked his tenure were about who was held, who got out, and what was built to hold them.
In 2019, a man posing as a construction worker got inside the still-unopened downtown jail, took keys from a control room and hid weapons in the building, including pistols, shotguns, rifles and a 37 mm launcher. Hall oversaw the construction and the search. He later called the man an “evil genius.” The infiltration delayed the opening and became a national story.
His office also disclosed that, from 2014 on, more than 30 people had been released early because of data-entry errors. All were rearrested, Hall said in 2019, and none was charged with a new serious crime in Davidson County while wrongly free. One of those cases was Roberto Viera-Aybar, released in August 2019 after a clerical error dropped a murder charge from his file. He surrendered days later and was later sentenced to six years for voluntary manslaughter. “We owe the community custody of everyone that is entrusted to us,” Hall said then.
Hall ended Davidson County’s 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a pregnant woman spent hours in labor while shackled in the jail. He has said the county was exempt from a new state law requiring every sheriff’s office to sign a 287(g) deal by the end of the year. His departure falls before that deadline. He has also pointed to the Behavioral Care Center, a jail diversion program for people with mental illness, and to a court fight that won the county more state money for holding state inmates.
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Christina Botteri is the Executive Editor of The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow her on X at @christinakb.
Photo “Sheriff Daron Hall” by Sheriff Daron Hall.
