TN Man Granted Retrial After Jury Room’s Confederate Decor
By Alisha Ebrahimji, A Tennessee court has decided a Black man convicted of aggravated assault deserves a new trial because evidence was improperly admitted and the jury deliberated in a room filled with tributes to the Confederacy, according to court documents. Judge James Curwood Witt Jr. said in an opinion filed last week that the room’s decorations honored a Confederacy that “not only defended slavery, but endorsed it fully using dehumanizing and racist language.” Tim Gilbert, 55, was sentenced in June 2020 to six years in prison for aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, and unlawful possession of a weapon after