Criminal cases in Shelby County moved about 100 days faster from June to July through a system that has historically moved slower than its Tennessee peers and national benchmarks.
The median time to resolve a felony case fell from 622 days in June to 527 days in July — a drop of 95 days, or about 15 percent. Misdemeanor disposition time fell from about 98 days to 88 days, according to Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy’s office.
This is thanks largely to the increased use of data, the office said. It now uses data to track cases, identify bottlenecks, and “better manage how cases move through the criminal justice system.”
It publishes that data on a new data dashboard called the Case Outcomes Tracker. It tracks prosecutor caseloads, how long cases remain open, and how they are ultimately resolved. The office’s Chief Data Officer, Bobby Zipp, said the reporting has “contributed to faster case resolution, giving leadership greater visibility into case flow and helping identify where resources and attention are most needed.”
“We’re not collecting data just to produce reports,”Mulroy said in a statement. “We’re using it to make this office work better.
“It helps us see where cases are getting stuck, better manage our prosecutors’ workloads, and move cases toward resolution faster.”
Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy
“It helps us see where cases are getting stuck, better manage our prosecutors’ workloads, and move cases toward resolution faster. And just as importantly, we’re making that information available so the public can see how cases are moving through the system and how they’re being resolved.”
In one example of increased data use, the office announced in February that his office started working with an AI-powered evidence management agent. Memphis-based Foltrigg.ai designed the program for free to help prosecutors here.
“It organizes, searches, summarizes, and analyzes large volumes of digital evidence,” Mulroy said in February. “Prosecutors can search it with natural language prompts. It saves time so our prosecutors can focus on the legal analysis, working with victims, a public safety generally.”
The program did not make decisions or replace human judgment, Mulroy said. But it was expected to “to move cases forward faster, improve outcomes for victims, and support our staff in one of the country’s busiest DA offices.”
527 days to dispose of a felony case is still almost a year and half.
The new data dashboard shows that cases are moving quicker here. However, 527 days to dispose of a felony case is still almost a year and half. That is slow, compared to other state courts and the national average.
The national standard is to dispose of 98 percent of felony cases within one year, according to a 2020 report from the National Center for state Courts. That report, though, found courts at the time were disposing of about 83 percent of criminal cases in one year.
In that metric, Shelby County ranked last among Tennessee’s six most populous counties in a March 2025 report by the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. Only about 33 percent of felony charges filed in Shelby County in 2022 were disposed within one year. Hamilton County disposed of 48 percent, Davidson County 54 percent, Williamson County 61 percent, Rutherford County 64 percent, and Knox County 71 percent.
The comptroller’s report found several reasons why Shelby County’s disposition of cases moved slowly. First among them was volume.
“In each of the six years analyzed, the number of felony charges filed in Shelby County was nearly double that of Tennessee’s other three most populous counties,” reads the report. “The number of felony charges filed in Shelby County’s Criminal Court exceeded 12,000 in 2018 and 2019, surpassing the number filed in the other three counties’ Criminal Courts.
“In Davidson County’s Criminal Court, which consistently ranked second after Shelby County, the number of felony charges filed in 2018 and in 2019 was between 4,000 and 6,000.”
Other causes for a slow-moving system at the time was change in defense counsel, wait time for evidence testing, and personnel turnover in the Shelby County criminal justice system.
