As of this week, any records of former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s criminal behavior during her time in office are officially expunged from the record.
This after she spent nearly $175,000 in taxpayer money on an extramarital tryst.
The Tennessean reported this month that Barry had completed her three-year probation.
Steve Hayslip, spokesman for Metro Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk, told The Tennessee Star Friday that as Barry’s record “is now expunged, this office has no knowledge of her case whatsoever.”
Metro Nashville Office of the Criminal Court Clerk spokesman Nicholas Kiefer said Friday that he could find no record for the former mayor in his case management system. Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Dorinda Carter said Friday that “there is no one with that name in our system.”
As The Star reported in 2018, Barry pleaded guilty in Davidson County court to felony theft charges. One condition of her plea agreement was to resign from the office of mayor. She pleaded guilty to felony theft of property over $10,000. This was a conditional plea agreement for which Barry received three years unsupervised probation. She also had to pay $11,000 in restitution and if she followed her plea agreement for the next three years, officials would dismiss and expunge the charges.
In plain, non-lawyer English, Barry walked into the courtroom never having been convicted of a felony. When she left, she still was not a convicted felon.
Barry entered a plea under Tennessee’s judicial diversion statute, Tennessee Code Annotated 40-35-313. This is often referred to as a conditional guilty plea. In this type of case, the defendant makes a conditional plea but the judge does not enter the judgment (the legal instrument that convicts someone). The person then serves a period of probation and if they successfully complete probation, the charge against them is dismissed and their record can be expunged.
As The Star went on to say that year, what made the case so unusual were the plea conditions. Barry had unsupervised probation. Most people who plead have to meet with a probation officer once a month. They have to take drug screens. If they have restitution, they have to pay it on a schedule. They have to find employment. They have a probation officer looking over their shoulder and if they violate a term of their probation, they go to jail.
As The Star also reported that year, Barry’s actions earned her top billing in the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s 2018 Pork Report.
Beacon, a Nashville-based free market think tank, releases a report detailing government waste, fraud, and abuse in Tennessee once a year. The disgraced former mayor won Pork of the Year thanks to an online poll on Beacon’s website.
“We won’t get into the personal aspect of the affair,” said Beacon President Justin Owen at the time, in a series of online videos that accompanied the think tank’s press release.
“What matters to us is that Mayor Barry did this on the taxpayers’ dime. She used taxpayers’ money to pay overtime pay to her bodyguard so she could be with him more often. The mayor of Nashville doesn’t need security in Paris, France or in Greece, but, ultimately she used taxpayer money to further her affair and that is why she pled guilty to felony theft as a result.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
[…] Tennessee Star Former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s Past Criminal Behavior Formally Expunged from the Record–by Chris […]
Democrat politicians get away with everything including murder, it’s wrong – just like Cuomo in New York – Kill the people in nursing homes, have 8 women say he abused them, he is told to step down and says “no, i don’t feel like it and I am not gonna” And that just is fine – I hope Tennessee does not become the sewer NY is. This double standard is getting tired and people are not going to put up with it much longer – If laws do not apply to everyone then they apply to no one
If she’d have been anything but a politician she would’ve served time and not ever get her name expunged!! Now that’s what I call white privilege and political bullshit once again!!!
What a disgrace if she had been a republican would she have gotten by this easy. She stole over a hundred thousand dollars from taxpayers and only had to pay back 11 thousand, crime sure does pay. Then her record is cleaned, only crooked politicians can get away with this. This is one of the reasons people don’t trust the government . When will we stop being so bias’s and so obviously crooked . The law is the law and should apply to everyone equal.
If you plead guilty to crime it cannot be expunged “.
Is this favoritism for a ex disgraced Mayer ??
The whole Berry thing stinks to high heaven. She should have been jailed.
What about “the rule of law” and “no one is above the law”? Isn’t that what Speaker Pelosi said? You know, she’s right, it’s the “equal protection of the laws” in the 14th Amendment, one if the two which was to end slavery by making us all equal under the law. Oh but, “some are more equal than others”.
and dems talk about privilege.
how many folks DON’T get their records expunged after serving probation?
Leftist privilege, as Saul Alinsky counseled them, “always accuse others of what you do, while you’re doing it.”