Jamie Satterfield, Tennessee Lookout

Video obtained by the Tennessee Lookout confirms that a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent stepped on the neck of a Grainger County slaughterhouse worker who was facedown on the floor with another agent on his back during a controversial raid in April 2018.

Additional videos and depositions obtained also show that federal agents seized, searched, cursed, handcuffed and detained all Latino workers at the Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tenn., without any proof of wrongdoing but allowed white workers to go free without further investigation.

The Tennessee Lookout earlier this month filed a motion seeking the unsealing of video footage from the slaughterhouse raid that federal agents sought to keep under wraps. U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Seger unsealed the footage and related documents, including excerpts of deposition testimony, two days later. ...

A Tennessee appellate court says there’s nothing “inherently prejudicial” in grand jurors and jurors deliberating the fates of Black people from inside the “Confederate jury room” — where the walls are adorned with a Confederate flag, portraits of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gen. John C. Brown, and other Confederacy memorabilia — in a courthouse located in a town known as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan.

In a ruling made public Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals is refusing to vacate drug convictions meted out to Black man Barry Jamal Martin by a jury that deliberated in a room awash in Confederal memorabilia.

The ruling directly contradicts a prior decision by a separate panel of the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals issued in December 2021 that vacated the convictions of Black man Tim Gilbert based on the jury’s exposure to the same Confederate memorabilia. The same attorney — Evan P. Baddour — represented both men in their appeals. ...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled the prayers of Washington state high school football coach at the 50-yard line after games are protected free speech and now a Tennessee teacher claims his expletive-laced social media posts on topics ranging from masking during the COVID pandemic to former President Donald Trump are also protected.

A lawsuit filed by former Sullivan County teacher Jeremy McLaughlin — suspended for three days without pay over posts he made to social media while off-duty — is set to become the first test case in Tennessee of the recent court decision that granted First Amendment speech protection to the prayers of Washington state high school football coach Joe Kennedy, court records show.

McLaughlin contends in his U.S. District Court lawsuit he became the target of a witch hunt by parents angered over his speech in support of virtual learning and pro-masking at a Sullivan County Board of Education meeting in August 2020. ...

The FBI has charged a Tennessee man who traveled to the Capitol Building during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection with shooting at a federal building in downtown Knoxville earlier this month.

Mark Thomas Reno is charged in an FBI warrant unsealed this week in U.S. District Court with damaging federal property for allegedly firing upon the John J. Duncan Federal Office Building on Locust Street in downtown Knoxville July 3.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jill McCook on Thursday ordered Reno, who lives in Jefferson City, Tenn., jailed without bond pending further proceedings in the case. He is accused of damaging three windows at the federal building — two in the lobby and one in the IRS office — in what the complaint describes as a drive-by shooting. ...

Federal agents accused of targeting, mocking and, in some instances, brutalizing Latino workers at a Grainger County slaughterhouse claim their lives will be endangered by the public release of video from the controversial raid, court records show.

Although the video is currently under seal, an investigation by the Tennessee Lookout reveals the footage appears to show a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent putting his boot on the neck of a Latino worker who was facedown on the floor with his hands behind his back and keeping it there for 24 seconds.

That same agent — U.S. Department of Homeland Security Agent John Witsell — punched another Latino worker in the head without provocation in the same April 2018 raid at the Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse in Grainger County, court records show. ...