Page 138 - Cityview Jan-Feb 2017

FACES OF EAST TENNESSEEKnoxville’s Prosecutor-in-ChiefKnox County District Attorney General Charme Allen spent a lifetime preparing for the jobStory by Rebecca Whalen •DISTRICT ATTORNEY GENERALCHARME ALLEN always knew she’d serve the criminal justice system. She was unclear what form that would take, but she had an innateunderstanding that this was her calling. And it began when she was a child.Seated next to her grandfather each night at the dinner table, Allen’s ears were ooded with the stories of his past as Gordon County sheri . When the meals were nished, she would sit with him in the family room, poring over items kept from that period of his life. The most notable and admittedly strange, she says, were the 8x10 black and white crime scene photos.Fascinated by all she learned from the patriarch of her family, Allen, the rst in her family to pursue higher education, would eventually head o to earn her Bachelor of Sciencein Criminal Justice from West Georgia College. When it was time to decide what was next, she realized that her love of the system, together with her inquisitive nature and desire to aid victims in their ght, primed her for a life in law enforcement.“The only interest I had to go to law school was to be a prosecutor,” she says. “I never wanted to go into civil lawor criminal defense. I had a complete fascination with the prosecution from the get go. I wanted to be in law enforcement but be able to do it in a court room and ght for victims.”She would later earn her Doctorate in Jurisprudence fromPhotography by Bryan Allenthe University of Tennessee, the key that opened the door to her service to Knox County.While many may believe Allen’s introduction to the Knox County District Attorney’s o ce began when she took o ce as Assistant District Attorney in 1992, Allen actually began her service in 1989 as the sole o ce clerk while she studied at UT. Each day was an opportunity to gain valuable experience as she shadowed those whose positions she would one day ll.“Every day all the prosecutors ate lunch together arounda conference table, and...they would let me come into the conference room with them while they ate,” she says. “I got to listen to great prosecutors, listen to their stories, and listen to their philosophies and let them teach me about the law.”When Allen decided to run for District Attorney General in 2014, she thought deeply about her in uences and the time she had already put in to this community. “This was like a home to me and I was invested in this place,” she says. “[I wanted] somebody who was here for the right reasons—who wanted to do the right thing, seek justice, and understand what we were about and what we had built over time.”Today, Allen feels fortunate to surround herself with a diverse team lled with young bright minds, institutional knowledge, and great legal scholars. And while the team is a bit too large to eat lunch at the conference table, Allen o en thinks back to her time as a clerk and the many lessons she learned there.136JANUARY FEBRUARY 2017