The House Criminal Justice Committee of the Tennessee legislature was discussing a bill to add the firing squad to electrocution and lethal injection as the state’s death penalty options when Rep. Sherrell suggested one more.
“Could I put an amendment on that that would include hanging on a tree, also?” he inquired during Tuesday’s proceedings.
Sherrell paused and sat with his hands folded before him, the fingers interlaced. His mouth briefly closed and his cheek registered a swirl of his tongue, as if he were savoring the moment.
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Among the other committee members who can be seen in a video of the proceedings is Rep. Joe Towns Jr., a Democrat from Nashville. He could not be reached by The Daily Beast afterward, but his clearly horrified expression said it all.
Sherrell did not respond directly to requests for comment, but he released a statement on Wednesday through the House Republican caucus press secretary apologizing for his “very poor judgment.”
“My exaggerated comments were intended to convey my belief that for the cruelest and most heinous crimes, a just society requires the death penalty in kind,” Sherrell said.
“Although a victim’s family cannot be restored when an execution is carried out, a lesser punishment undermines the value we place on protecting life. My intention was to express my support of families who often wait decades for justice. I sincerely apologize to anyone who may have been hurt or offended.”
The prospect of stringing someone from a tree has a particular history in a southern state such as Tennessee, especially in some of the rural communities such as Sherrell represents. That includes his hometown, Sparta, where a runaway slave was dragged from the jail and hung from a tree on a hill in the town cemetery in 1855. One man tried to stop the lynching, and a newspaper recorded the mob’s reply.
“Hang the speaker to the other end of the rope.”
And Sherrell was not talking about a gallows on Tuesday. He meant a noose dangling from a tree limb, just like in Sparta 168 years ago and in thousands of lynchings that followed across the South. He ended his pause by saying the firing squad is “a very good idea” and asked to become a co-sponsor of the legislation.
Sherrell is already one of two sponsors of a bill to rename part of a Nashville street after Donald Trump that is currently named after the late civil rights icon and longtime U.S Rep. John Lewis in 2021. Lewis attended American Baptist College and Fisk University in Nashville. He was a leader of the 1960 sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in downtown Nashville. The four months of non-violent protests led to Nashville becoming the first city to admit Blacks to previously segregated public places.
Trump’s only significant connection with Nashville was a 30-minute speech he delivered at the Municipal Auditorium in May 2017, followed by a visit to The Hermitage, the plantation where President Andrew Jackson once kept 200 slaves. Jackson says in his letters that he lynched two Native American chiefs. Trump laid a wreath on Jackson’s tomb on what would have been Old Hickory’s 250th birthday.
“We will make America great again!” Trump declared.
Unless Sherrell succeeds in renaming it President Donald Trump Boulevard, the address of his legislative office will remain 425 Rep. John Lewis Way. The street was previously Fifth Avenue and the official state assembly website still uses that name, which is only fitting for Sherrell. He was one of only two state legislators who voted against a 2022 bill requiring schools to include Black history and Black culture in their curriculums in grades five through eight.
And Sherrell’s bigotry is not limited to race. He was a co-sponsor of a 2020 bill that ensures private adoption and foster care agencies can reject gay couples. Just last month, he championed a bill to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youths
“Our preacher would say, ‘If you don’t know what you are, a boy or girl, a male or a female, just go in the bathroom, take your clothes off and look in the mirror,” Sherrell said. “You’ll find out what you are.”
Throughout four terms in the legislature, Sherrell has repeatedly shown exactly who he is. And his fellow Republicans have responded by making him the majority floor leader, whose official duties include “working toward passage of all Administrative bills approved by the Republican Bill Review Committee.”
“Paul Sherrell is an extraordinary legislative leader who is admired and respected by his Republican colleagues,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth was quoted saying at the time of the selection in 2018.
Assistant Majority Leader Ron Gant said, “I know he will work tirelessly to ensure Tennessee remains a model of success that our entire nation can follow.”
The person who made Tennessee a model for the nation to follow was John Lewis, for whom a street is so rightly named. Lewis is one of the figures Sherrell did not want school kids to study.
But Sherrell was taught a little lesson of his own in Black history on Tuesday with his suggestion about hanging from a tree. It even came with just a ghoulish hint of a smile, followed by an apology.
