Federal Judge Says Prosecutors Are ‘Personally Adverse’ to Him

A Tennessee federal judge accused US prosecutors of “insolence and indifference” after he suggested they impeded an investigation into the attempted murder of his former clerk during a high-profile case and misrepresented his follow-up efforts.

In an unusually pointed decision, Judge Mark Norris of the US District Court for the Western District of Tennessee laid bare escalating tensions with the US attorney’s office in Memphis over its handling of the attack on the clerk, who was shot after Norris oversaw the trial related to the police killing of an unarmed Black man.

The clerk was shot in the chest and robbed by people who broke into his residence last year, days after the verdict in the civil rights case against the officers who killed Tyre Nichols at a traffic stop in 2023, according to the judge.

The Trump appointee alleged that government lawyers, in court filings, mischaracterized his remarks about police during meetings regarding the handling of the attempted murder. And he claimed that certain members of the US attorney’s office “were personally adverse” to him.

“Incredibly, these individuals have taken the initiative to transform my efforts to encourage an appropriate investigation of the attempted murder of my law clerk into something else entirely,” Norris said.

Norris’ Oct. 17 decision stemmed from a joint recusal request this month by an American Civil Liberties Union chapter and the Memphis Police Department in separate litigation, which cited his alleged comments about the police.

In declining to recuse, Norris said that the request “concerns not so much the impartiality of the Court regarding MPD as asserted by the movants, but rather the independence of the judiciary in light of threats—internal and external—to the Court.”

“Given these threats, upholding the rule of law in defense of our constitutional republic is the matter at hand,” Norris wrote.

A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office declined to comment.

Disputed Comments

In the Oct. 17 court filing, Norris took issue with prosecutors’ descriptions of several comments he allegedly made when attempting to check in on the clerk case. Norris felt investigative efforts had fallen short.

Norris said in the decision that members of the US attorney’s office “unilaterally decided, without more” that the incident didn’t involve federal crimes. The judge described this as a “self-fulfilling” approach that was “inexplicable and wholly inappropriate.”

He also said prosecutors made “wrongful assertions regarding this court” in filings in the civil rights case over the Nichols’ killing.

The government “wholly mischaracterizes” a meeting he had in May with top prosecutors, including the office’s criminal chief, Beth Boswell, regarding the investigation into the clerk matter, Norris said.

Norris denied he suggested at the meeting that one of the officers in the Nichols case was in a gang and that the people involved in the attack had gang ties. He also denied having told Boswell in an earlier conversation that the Memphis Police Department is “infiltrated to the top with gang members.”

Boswell claimed the judge made those remarks in a June court filing in the case over Nichols’ death. Norris recused himself from the case over Nichols’ killing before sentencing, and the chief judge of the court granted the former officers a new trial in August.

However, Norris said he didn’t recuse because of any personal bias, but rather because members of the US attorney’s office were biased against him.

Norris said when prosecutors first made the alleged mischaracterizations about him, he recused to avoid entering the conflict.

He noted that judges do “not have the luxury of reacting defensively” and “should not ordinarily punch back.”

But he said in the Oct. 17 filing that “there is, however, a reasonable limit to how far it is possible to let such flapdoodle fly.”

Norris also noted that the dispute comes amid rising threats against the federal judiciary. The US Marshals Service tracked 562 total threats to judges last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, an increase over the 509 logged the prior fiscal year.

The case is Blanchard v. City of Memphis, W.D. Tenn., No. 2:17-cv-02120, 10/17/25.