“That little taste of effecting change gave me the feeling that I’ve got a knack for it,” Vines, now 45, says. “I also learned that a lot of people don’t like change.”

Vines is learning that lesson again. In his first three years as federal prosecutor in Nashville, he has tackled head-on the ossified status quo in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee—an office in recent years distinguished by its low profile in the community, staffing levels half those of the Memphis and Knoxville offices, and a level of morale best described as abysmal. As with his Law Review experience, he has set about recruiting outside talent and overhauling the office’s entire method of operating.

But this time, so far, public hosannas have been absent. Instead, Vines faces an age-discrimination lawsuit brought by a former assistant prosecutor, media derision of his hiring of an organizational psychologist, a publicly released 12-page memo from a manager in the office excoriating his methods, and a special review by the U.S. Attorney General’s office. Nashville’s defense attorneys, accustomed over the years to the same assistant U.S. attorneys operating in the same fashion, accuse—in background conversations—the former corporate lawyer of being unqualified to lead prosecutors and of creating a “phony” track record of convictions.

“We’re playing the game differently from what they’re used to. I can imagine the criminal defense bar isn’t too happy about it,” Vines observes.

To be sure, staying on the good side of defense lawyers shouldn’t be a top priority for a prosecutor, especially if the bonhomie is based on mediocrity on the part of a U.S. attorney’s office. As former Attorney General Robert Jackson said during his 1940-1941 term: “The prosecutors have more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America.” These are responsibilities best left to people committed to excellence. The same is true for more commercial matters. Effective prosecutors, whether they are investigating and prosecuting federal crimes or enforcing civil rights and remedies, also are good for business and the economy. Paraphrasing New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, successful and just prosecutions “encourage competition based on performance and value, not on impropriety.”

A case in point: Vines’ office is working with the Franklin Police Department and the FBI in a matter involving a former employee of medical claims management firm AIM Healthcare. The employee allegedly stole client data from AIM and used it to start a competing firm, Arbor Healthcare. Franklin Police Chief Jackie Moore, who has worked with Vines on this and several other matters, says the Nashville prosecutor “has kicked it up a notch.” Noting that the Middle District “didn’t have the top quality reputation that the office is now creating,” he says that after rebuilding two law enforcement offices he knows such processes can be messy and lead to finger-pointing. “But these major annoyances fade to insignificance in the long term if you’re building a good product, and Jim Vines is building an excellent agency.”

Law enforcement agencies in general, one of the federal prosecutor’s most important constituencies, give Vines and his efforts high marks. Harry Sommers, a 20-year Drug Enforcement Agency veteran who is special agent in charge in Nashville, says Vines leads the office and understands narcotics prosecutions as well as any U.S. attorney he has seen. In particular, Sommers lauds Vines for “putting the right people in the right jobs.” Vines wins similar praise for his gun prosecutions from Ron Turk, assistant special agent in charge for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Tennessee.

However, internally, Vines and crew must deal with the repercussions of a profound change in the culture of the Nashville office and of the majority of the 94 U.S. attorney’s offices across the country. Until 15 or 20 years ago, the position of assistant U.S. attorney was seen as a coveted steppingstone to a successful career in private legal practice. Stints as an assistant were usually just a few years—enough time to pack in loads of valuable courtroom experience. Turnover among the assistants was so frequent that natural attrition—and a tradition of new federal prosecutors requesting resignation letters from all assistants—prevented the build-up of deadwood. But slowly, things began to change. Steadily, salaries and benefits of the position rose. What was once a steppingstone has become more of a comfy couch. “Being an assistant U.S. attorney now is regarded as a good, respected job, so people tend to stay there,” says David Burnham, a former New York Times reporter who authored Above the Law, a critique of the Department of Justice. Replacement of all the assistants has gone away in most offices. The assistants “are a professional career group now,” Burnham says. As a result, as offices develop their own distinct cultures and levels of success, the individual U.S. attorney’s leadership has become much more critical than in years past.

The history of the Nashville office has closely tracked these changes. In earlier decades, the office produced such legal luminaries as legendary trial lawyer Jim Neal, federal appeals judge Gil Merritt and lawyer-senator-actor Fred Thompson. Neal recalls leaving “main” Justice in Washington, where he served as an assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy prosecuting Jimmy Hoffa, to take the U.S. attorney post in Nashville. Of the six assistants in Nashville in 1964, “a couple were close to the replaced U.S. attorney and quit. I got rid of a couple, and I brought in some new ones. I understand that it’s hard to bring in your own crew today.”

Forty years later, assistants are staying much longer. “The pay is fairly good”—a 10-year veteran assistant can expect to earn in the neighborhood of $120,000 plus great benefits—“there’s good job security, and no concerns about collecting your revenue,” Neal notes. “At some point, it’s hard to leave.” By the early 1990s, the office’s reputation for minting top legal talent had begun to fade. A law enforcement official from that time says “prosecutions had grown pretty spotty” and depended on which assistant U.S. attorney was assigned the case. The Midstate’s top law firms, which earlier had routinely poached some of the office’s best young assistant prosecutors, turned their attentions elsewhere. And when they did identify prospective hires in the U.S. attorney’s office, they rarely could put together a high enough compensation package to compete with the federal pay plans. After so many years working for the government, the assistants no longer were interested in coming in at an associate’s wage, and law firms were not often inclined to offer partnership to a career assistant prosecutor who could not bring a book of clients.

The careerist path of assistants is present at most U.S. attorney’s offices today, but that alone hasn’t caused offices to stagnate. In fact, years of working cases and developing relationships with law enforcement officials and judges should confer an important advantage to the career prosecutor. So what had caused morale in Nashville to reach the point that staffers in the Estes Kefauver Federal Building kept their office doors closed? An unfortunate coinciding of events—the stasis among assistants coupled with the extraordinary turnover of chief prosecutors. Vines’ appointment in 2002 to the $140,000-a-year post made him the fourth U.S. attorney in Nashville in the previous four years.

John Roberts succeeded Joe Brown as federal prosecutor and retired in 1998. Assistant Wendy Goggin then was appointed on an interim basis, and her demanding and brash style caused friction within the office before she was kicked upstairs to Washington. Quenton White came in from the world of nonprofits to lead the office but was gone after a year. The office’s ethics chief, Richard Clippard, followed next. By the time Vines took office in April 2002, the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville was demoralized and “not overtly active,” as one local defense lawyer puts it.

In the months between his nomination and swearing in, Vines says he grew increasingly excited about the post as he learned more about its morale and performance weaknesses. He figured he could draw on his experiences at W&L and more importantly at Bridgestone/Firestone. There, he inherited an environmental law office with similar challenges, spent six months diagnosing the problems and another year implementing and watching his improvement program. The native of Alexandria, Va., where his father was a longtime employee of the Federal Aviation Administration, describes his seven-year tenure at Bridgestone as “a little bit of law mixed with organizational management.”

Both before and after his stint at the tire company, Vines was in private practice, most recently with Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. Much has been made of his lack of prosecutorial experience, and Vines concedes that such experience would have been helpful. Criminal prosecution at the federal level is perhaps the most difficult legal practice because it’s easy to get into trouble with the large number of protections in place to safeguard defendants’ right. “I tried to find the best prosecutors to rely on to handle the prosecutions and to educate me in the process,” Vines says. Even so, a prosecutorial background might have given him more credibility in the eyes of the office’s existing assistant attorneys. Still, as First Assistant Zach Fardon explains, it’s not uncommon for U.S. attorneys to lack such experience. “Jim didn’t pretend to know the lingo and procedures, so he looked for people who could bring those experiences.”

Bringing in outside talent was one of the first steps Vines took in what he now concedes was the naive expectation of an 18-month turnaround in the office. The biggest hire was that of Fardon. An assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago, Fardon played a key role in the successful prosecutions of former governor George Ryan and others in a bribes-for-driver’s licenses scam. His March 2003 hiring in Nashville came as no visible progress was being made on cases against several cronies of former governor Don Sundquist. Fardon brought with him a structure and intensity he learned in Chicago, as well as experience during leadership transitions and subsequent internal office changes, which he says rejuvenated the staff but were not appreciated by everyone.

In addition to Fardon, Vines recruited Paul O’Brien from Memphis to lead narcotics prosecutions, and landed David Rivera from Puerto Rico and Sam Williamson from the highly regarded Southern District of New York office, among others. These, plus the April hiring of Courtney Trombley, the U.S. Marines attorney representing the infantry officer accused of murder during a car search in Iraq, are fulfilling Vines’ quest to make the Middle District of Tennessee a “talent magnet” for up-and-coming prosecutors. (Both he and Fardon are quick to say there are great lawyers among the original staff.) He also secured federal funding that has enabled an increase in the number of assistants from 21 when he arrived to 33, a development that earns nearly unanimous approval from the Midstate legal community.

Having imported new office leadership, Vines has changed the way cases are developed. Though grand juries have always been used for indictments, it’s their investigative powers that hold special force. Without grand jury involvement, gun-in-the-waistband and drugs-in-the-pocket cases can be made, but more difficult cases cannot. For example, without any fear of retribution, federal prosecutors are better positioned to take on state and local public corruption cases. The interstate nature of drug trafficking makes it a good fit, too. But these cases, pursued in this manner, require more intense preparation. Assistant U.S. attorneys stay busy compiling documents and scheduling and previewing witnesses as grand jury investigations ramp up. They also must write analyses of case procedures and strategies. “This stems from my firm belief and Zach’s firm belief that you really don’t know your case until you sweat over the computer trying to put it together,” Vines says.

The results of these changes are increasingly evident. According to data compiled by TRAC at Syracuse University, the median sentence rose 16% to 37 months in 2003. Anec-dotally, it appears that 2004 numbers were still higher. The office is involved in more cases, which creates additional work for the courts and the public defender’s office, and leads many in the defense bar to charge Vines with creating a phony track record by taking on easy cases. “The proof is in the pudding,” Vines retorts. The office, which he says had a history of recusing itself from cases with jurisdictional challenges, now is taking on new types of cases, like public corruption. In February, Monteagle businessman John Stamps, a good friend of Sundquist’s, was indicted on tax evasion. The obstruction of justice trial of another Sundquist crony, Al Ganier, is set for this month. The office’s conviction rate on drug cases has risen to above 90% from 78% before he took office and convictions overall are up some 10%. Child pornography cases are being more actively prosecuted under the leadership of assistant Carrie Daughtrey, the daughter of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Cissy Daughtrey and Tennessean political columnist Larry Daughtrey. (“Jim’s not feathering the nest with conservatives,” one Vines supporter notes.)

These successes were knocked off the front pages in February by press reports of a 12-page memo written by the deputy chief of the Nashville office’s civil division, Mike Roden. He alleges that Vines is hurting morale and exposing the office to charges of age discrimination. As one outsider with knowledge of the office says, Vines’ commitment to “truth in evaluations” undoubtedly hurt some feelings, given its rarity in federal agencies. Among the activities Vines was criticized for was speaking with Nashville law firms in hopes of finding some of his attorneys a “soft place to land.” What in the private sector would be viewed as a compassionate act is perceived differently in the public sector.

About the time of the Tennessean article on the Roden memo, 62-year-old retired assistant attorney Larry Moon filed an age discrimination complaint. Shortly thereafter, a special review of the allegations was launched under the aegis of the associate deputy attorney general in Washington. For his part, Vines says he cannot discuss the matter, but welcomes the review. Discussing another topic, Vines notes he has the authority to make reassignments within his office, but that firing someone—something he has not tried to do—would be a last option and one that would require Washington authorization.

Findings from the review should be in shortly. Critics are watching closely, for they suspect that Vines’ original sponsor for the job, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, is none too eager to have a blow-up about the time he engineers a presidential run. Frist’s office would not discuss the investigation or offer their evaluation of Vines’ performance, saying only that “Jim Vines is an excellent attorney.” His term officially extends another year, but in practice, chief prosecutors typically serve until the president leaves office or he discharges them.

Regardless, the activity in Vines’ office continues at a brisk pace. In March, his office asked the TBI to investigate state Sen. John Ford’s dealings with TennCare contractor Doral Dental. And Fardon’s cases against Sundquist’s friends appear to be gaining momentum. These complex prosecutions are the fruits of changes Vines has introduced to the Middle District. While the next chief prosecutor will have the liberty to scrap Vines’ new system, it’s hard to see that happening. Most prosecutors are more fascinated by law than organizational management and are just as likely to leave the new, more rigorous processes in place.

In the meantime, the Nashville office is establishing a reputation as a group that eagerly and diligently prosecutes important but difficult cases. Those efforts now include intellectual property violations, thanks to the recent selection of Nashville for a federal effort against computer hacking and IP theft. Local music industry leaders applaud the new unit. Their confidence in the U.S. attorney’s office is bound to result in many more effective prosecutions of such crimes.

It’s safe to say the same for all other federal violations committed in the Midstate. Jim Vines and crew are shaking things up—the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Tennessee is playing the game differently. Yes, some individuals are taking exception but Sam Williamson, deputy chief of the criminal unit, puts it best: “The U.S. attorney’s office is becoming much more important in the life of Middle Tennessee, and that is as it should be.”

Back to issue home page

Email to a Friend Print-Friendly Format