Put attorney Mary Sullivan Moore in a courtroom, and she’ll kick butt and take names. During her years as a prosecutor for the district attorney’s office in Hamilton County, she developed a reputation for being tenacious in her pursuit of justice, especially in cases involving child abuse. And as a criminal defense attorney and juvenile lawyer, she’s still a tough opponent.
But give her a business to run, and she’s all thumbs. Or at least she was when she quit the DA’s office and launched her own practice two years ago. Thanks to the Business Development Center, she now knows what a Federal Tax Identification number is, and her quarterly statements are a breeze to prepare.
“As an associate at a law firm and as an assistant DA, I didn’t have to crunch any numbers or worry about the bottom line, so that was intimidating,” she says.
Moore established an office at the Business Development Center, which gives new business owners three years to grow the wings they need to take off on their own. Moore took advantage of every asset.
“I took the classes on how to do my projections. And they have people that can help you market your business and CPAs that can assist with your taxes. All of those things were tremendously helpful,” she says.
With her business in good hands, Moore was able to concentrate on making a seismic change in her career. As a prosecutor, she’d put murderers, rapists and child abusers behind bars, but as a defense attorney, she was going to be representing the same kinds of people. The thought gave her pause. “I didn’t know if the general criminal population was going to accept me,” she says.
The abundant stacks of papers in her office suggest clients have not been hard to come by. “The criminals either wanted me on their side because I was really, really tough on them, or I was fair when I prosecuted them,” she says.
Although crossing over to the other side of the courtroom wasn’t easy for Moore, two things have made the transition go more smoothly than she anticipated: her ability to decline sex offense cases and her passion for juvenile defense. If Moore’s heart has a tender spot, it’s kids.
“A lot of children are in a bad situation because they have no parental guidance or family support. It’s amazing some of them can make it to 18 without committing a juvenile offense,” she says.
When a child is accused of committing a crime, Moore is there to take their case. She’s currently representing 16-year-old Markel Mitchell, one of four males charged in connection with a Red Bank burglary-turned-murder.
Moore says the biggest challenges kids face today are lack of family support and gangs. “When a child has no support at home, he feels like he’s in control, and that scares him,” she says.
Like predators, gangs move in on these vulnerable youth and force them to commit crimes, Moore says. Although the perception of the general public is that gangs offer the familial support and bonds that are missing from a young person’s life, that’s not how Moore sees it.
“The gangs force them to join. They target good kids that haven’t even gotten into a fight at school, and then approach them and tell them to steal for them or they’ll hurt their little sister. And it escalates from there and becomes the only life they know,” Moore says.
Fortunately, as someone who for years has worked to help young people, and who still does guardian ad litem work on their behalf, Moore is in a position to help some of the kids with whom she crosses paths. For example, through her connections at Bethel Bible Village, she recently secured a young man a place to stay. Although both of his parents live in Chattanooga, the boy’s mother did not want him, and his father had reluctantly taken custody of him and then put him in a house with no running water. His situation broke Moore’s heart.
Now that the young man is in a nurturing environment, things are looking up for him. He’s even attracting college basketball scholarships.
“He has a lot going for him. It’s gratifying to see a child go through a bad situation and come out well on the other end,” Moore says.
Moore’s passion for “all things children” grew out of her relationship with her grandfather, Dr. Joe Lavecchia, a pediatrician and one of the co-founders of T.C. Thompson Children’s Hospital. As a child, she loved going to his office and running the halls.
“At that time, victims of violence didn’t have a voice. In the early ’70s, the courts treated rape victims and children poorly. I remember asking my grandfather if I should become a doctor, and he told me I didn’t have the temperament for it. He told me to go into law instead,” she says.
Moore took her grandfather’s advice to heart. She received her law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1994 and her Master of Law degree from Tulane University Law School in 1995. When Moore returned to Tennessee with her credentials in hand, she knew what kind of lawyer she did and didn’t want to be.
“I didn’t want to do tax, bankruptcy, or read contracts all day. I knew I wanted to be in a courtroom,” she says.
Since Moore was good at arguing (as a child, she could reason her way out of trouble), litigation seemed fitting. To quickly gain experience, she took a job with an insurance defense firm in Nashville, then secured work at Luther Anderson so she could return to her hometown. In 2000, District Attorney Bill Cox hired Moore as an assistant DA.
Her penchant for arguing her side of an issue served the DA’s office well.
“You have to believe in what you’re arguing. And you have to present your argument in three ways, including visually and audibly, so the other side can better understand your position. I deliberately do that when I’m trying to persuade someone to think the way I’m thinking,” she says.
When Moore became an assistant DA, she funneled the zeal her grandfather had cultivated in her into her work as a special prosecutor for child abuse. Not content with simply taking the cases that crossed her desk, she made it her job to make Hamilton County as safe a place for children as possible.
Her crowning achievement along these lines was the sex offender round-up she spearheaded in 2003.
“I told my boss I wanted to round-up all of the sex offenders in Hamilton County. Shelby County had done a round-up, and the child abuse prosecutor there told me what an awesome task it would be because we’d have to involve the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and every entity in the county, including the sheriff’s office, all of the police departments and the Department of Children’s Services,” she says.
Three months before the round-up, Cox held a press conference during which he gave sex offenders three months to register with the sheriff’s office. When the deadline arrived, Moore’s team grabbed all of the information they had on the whereabouts of the unregistered reprobates and set out to bring them in.
“I remember it was cold. We got up at 4 o’clock in the morning and rallied together. We arrested 72 percent of the convicted sex offenders in the first 48 hours,” she says.
The round-up was rewarding to Moore because it allowed her to protect the potential victims of a devastating crime. But most of the time, Moore’s job involves helping someone to put the pieces of his or her already shattered life back together.
“When someone goes to a lawyer, whether it’s about a car wreck, or a divorce, or a crime, something is broken. It’s my job to fix it the best I can, because it’s never going to be perfect again,” she says.
Moore has become good at making repairs. As an experienced trial lawyer, she’s tried hundreds of civil and criminal trials, and has an excellent success rate. Today, her vast trial experience allows her to defend the gravest cases, as she’s worked both sides at one time or another.
“Having been a prosecutor makes me a better defense attorney because I can see the problems in the prosecution’s case,” she says.
Moore is not only a solo practitioner, she’s also a single mother of three, including two daughters, ages 12 and 8, and a niece, 10, who came into her care when Moore’s mother died. The support Moore receives from other moms in North Chattanooga, where she lives, is invaluable, she says.
“My cell phone is always ringing. A lot of crime takes place on weekends. So I need a good support system.”
In addition to maintaining her law practice and caring for her children, Moore serves her community and profession as a volunteer. She’s been a long-standing member of the Chattanooga Bar Association and the Southeast Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women, where she’s served as president, vice president and secretary. Moore also served several years on the Northside Learning Center Board of Directors, has been on the board of directors for the Chattanooga Women’s Institute, and has served as a Kiwanian. She currently serves on the advisory board of Chattanooga Kids on the Block and is an active volunteer for the Children’s Advocacy Center of Chattanooga.
And somehow, Moore has the time to teach a business law class at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
While some attorneys are either tough or compassionate, Moore is both. As a prosecutor, she sent more than a few killers, rapists and child abusers to jail, while as a criminal defense attorney, she’s making a difference in the lives of her clients. And while some lawyers are either good prosecutors or effective defense attorneys, she’s once again both, which makes her a tough nut for her former colleagues at the DA’s office to crack. In addition, she’s smart, zealous, experienced and brave, and she’s an active force for good in her community.
Above all, Moore is an aggressive advocate for children. Her passion for young people motivated her work as a prosecutor, and it still drives her as a defense attorney. For all of her accomplishments in a courtroom, her legacy lies in them.