Nashville Prosecutor Fired Over Female Sterilization in Plea Deals - the Root
Wiki-Eugenics
A prosecutor in Nashville, Tenn., was fired after reports emerged that he had demanded that women involved in some plea negotiations undergo sterilization, the Associated Press reports.
Brian Holmgren, a former Davidson County assistant district attorney, told the AP on Wednesday that he had been fired. He declined to say why he was dismissed, and officials would not discuss what prompted his dismissal.
But the move comes after an investigation by the AP revealed that sterilization surgery was used as part of plea bargains at least four times in the past five years in child abuse and neglect cases.
More: Nashville Prosecutor Fired Over Female Sterilization in Plea Deals - the Root
Meantime, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk announced Wednesday he discovered a backlog of more than 130 child abuse and child sexual abuse cases that had never been handled, the Tennessean reported.
Holmgren worked in the department responsible for the unresolved matters, some of which were more than ten years old, according to the newspaper.
Sterilization coerced by the legal system evokes a dark time in America, when minorities, the poor and those deemed mentally unfit or “deficient” were forced to undergo medical procedures that prevented them from having children.
“The history of sterilization in this country is that it is applied to the most despised people — criminals and the people we’re most afraid of, the mentally ill — and the one thing that that these two groups usually share is that they are the most poor. That is what we’ve done in the past, and that’s a good reason not to do it now,” Paul Lombardo, a law professor and historian who teaches at Georgia State University, told the AP.
Previous report here on LGF.