The Knoxville Bar Association honored Samantha Monday with its Law & Liberty Award at the Law Day Luncheon, held April 30, 2025, at the Knoxville Crowne Plaza. Monday is the substance abuse case manager for the Knox County Sheriff’s Office.

Tom King featured her in Knox TN Today on January 3, 2023 here.

Samantha Monday

Monday is a civilian employee of the KCSO. Her “beat” is the Roger D. Wilson Detention Center where she has offices and the Knox County Criminal Courts. Her work is built around helping criminals, drug abusers, those with mental health issues and abused women (domestic violence and trafficking) survive and hopefully begin new lives. She works with a plethora of agencies and people to help them all find support, Tom wrote.

“I work within the court system to assist the inmates in getting out,” she said. “I work with defense attorneys, the District Attorney’s office and the Criminal Court judges plus treatment agencies and others to set up their treatment needs for recovery, plus housing and mental health appointments. Whatever they need, I’m there,” she said in that interview.

Successful applicants for the award were expected to have:

  • fostered and maintained good relationships between the legal profession and the community
  • promoted and advanced a better understanding of the law and legal process in the non-legal community
  • demonstrated and encouraged an abiding respect for the rule of law, set an example of good citizenship, stimulated a sense of civic responsibility, or otherwise contributed to the improvement of the legal profession in our community
  • maintained high standards of professional integrity and ethical conduct and demonstrated respect of personal, political, civil and religious liberties.

Constitution Day & School Outreach Committee co-chairs are Hannah M. Clyde, attorney with the McKinnish Law Group PLLC, and Grace Malone Ewell, attorney with Woolf, McClane, Bright, Allen & Carpenter PLLC.

Sheriff’s Office names fatality

The victim from the fatal crash on Millertown Pike has been identified as Jacob Donovan Saunders-Lashley, 25, of Corryton. The announcement came from Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler on May 7, 2025.

Deputies responded to the head-on collision involving two vehicles near the 7300 block of Millertown Pike on May 5, 2025. Emergency personnel from AMR pronounced one driver deceased at the scene, while the other driver was transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center for treatment of his injuries, Spangler said.

Following his release from the hospital, the surviving driver, a 20-year-old male, was charged with vehicular homicide by intoxication. He was booked into the Roger D. Wilson Detention Center.

Notes & Quotes

Spring 2025 Commencement at the UT College of Law will take place Thursday, May 15, at 10 a.m. at the Student Union Auditorium. The speaker will be Sharon G. Lee, retired chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court and a double graduate of the University of Tennessee.

The Knoxville Bar Foundation is accepting applications for grants. Download info and application online here.

Trump moving too fast for you? A nonprofit is publishing a daily update of Executive Orders and legal challenges to same. Info here.

In Memoriam

Jimmy Holbrook

Jimmy Holbrook Jr., 54, of Knoxville, passed away on May 2, 2025. Family visitation was May 5 at Click Funeral Home in Farragut and a private graveside service was held on May 6 at Lakeview Memorial Gardens in Lenoir City, Tennessee.

Mr. Holbrook was a graduate of the University of Tennessee and the UT College of Law. Born in Johnson City, Tennessee, in 1971, he was a graduate of Farragut High School Class of 1989. He practiced law in East Tennessee for 28 years.

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, Lana Holbrook; his children, Brandon Holbrook, Drew Holbrook and wife Delaney, Hannah Archer and husband Kevin; grandchildren, April Archer and Alex Archer; his mother, Sandy Holbrook; and other family and friends.