Abstract
In the early morning hours of Friday, September 2, 2022, a young woman named Eliza Fletcher was jogging down Central Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee when a man violently abducted her.2 Shortly after the abduction, the Memphis Police Department issued a city-wide watch for Mrs. Fletcher, volunteers searched wooded areas around town, and news outlets broadcasted the few known details of her abduction.3 Mrs. Fletcher disappeared near the University of Memphis Campus just a few hundred feet from a local private school, providing police with a cache of surveillance footage that helped them quickly pinpoint a suspect.4 On September 3, just thirty-six hours after Mrs. Fletcher’s abduction, police officers identified Cleotha Abston5 as the likely perpetrator after matching DNA on a pair of shoes recovered at the abduction site to Abston’s genetic information in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”).6 The following day, while police continued to search for Mrs. Fletcher, local prosecutors charged Abston with especially aggravated kidnapping and tampering with evidence.7 Finally, on Monday, September 5, police discovered Mrs. Fletcher’s body at an abandoned house in South Memphis.8 Approximately one year before Abston killed Mrs. Fletcher, he kidnapped and raped a woman named Alicia Franklin.9 The Memphis Police Department (“MPD”) failed to adequately investigate Ms. Franklin’s accusations against Abston.10 Following Ms. Franklin’s rape, “and to [her] horror and resulting emotional distress, [Abston] [was] suspected of abducting and murdering . . . Mrs. Eliza Fletcher.”11It was not until Abston’s arrest in the Fletcher case that Memphis police tested Ms. Franklin’s rape kit.12 Six months after Mrs. Fletcher’s murder, Ms. Franklin sued the City of Memphis, claiming that MPD acted negligently when it failed to test her her rape kit or investigate Abston.13 Ms. Franklin’s complaint posited the following theory: had police officers taken her allegations seriously and tested her rape kit, law enforcement agencies would have matched Abston’s DNA information located in CODIS and arrested him before he could murder Eliza Fletcher.14 An alternative explanation is that Ms. Franklin’s rapekit met the fate of thousands of rape-kits in Tennessee that go untested on shelves for months or even years due to an extensive testing backlog.15 The trial court presiding over Ms. Franklin’s lawsuit dismissed her claims in July 2023, citing a common, nearly insurmountable bar to such claims—the public duty doctrine.16
Recommended Citation
Harrison, Cooper
(2025)
"The Public Duty Doctrine & State Governmental Tort Liability: A Brief History and a Solution for the Current Paradigm,"
University of Memphis Law Review: Vol. 55:
Iss.
2, Article 10.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/um-law-review/vol55/iss2/10