William Ward Crutchfield (December 6, 1928 – April 3, 2016) was an American politician and a Democratic member of the

Tennessee Senate The Tennessee Senate is the upper house of the U.S. state of Tennessee's state legislature, which is known formally as the Tennessee General Assembly. The Tennessee Senate has the power to pass resolutions concerning essentially any issue rega ...

for the 10th district, which encompassed Marion County and part of Hamilton County. He was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1957 to 1959 and 1961 to 1963. He served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 as well as in all General Assemblies from 1987 to 2007. Crutchfield was a member of the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee; Senate Commerce, Labor, and Agriculture; and the Senate Education Committee. He was Chairman of the Senate Labor Committee during the 83rd and 84th General Assemblies. He served as the Democratic leader during the 101st through 103rd General Assemblies, and he was a Senate Democratic Caucus chairman. He attended the University of Chattanooga (now the

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UT-Chattanooga, UTC, or Chattanooga) is a public university in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1886 and is one of four universities and two other affiliated institutions in the ...

) and received a J.D. from the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...

College of Law in

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state' ...

in 1951. He received an honorable discharge from the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

. He is a former member of the Metropolitan Government Charter Commission. He worked as an attorney, having once been an acting attorney for Hamilton County and an attorney for the Hamilton County Board of Education.

Operation Tennessee Waltz Operation Tennessee Waltz was a sting operation set up by federal and state law enforcement agents, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). The operation led to the arrest of seven Tennessee ...

On May 26, 2005, Crutchfield was arrested as part of the

bribery scandal. He was accused of taking

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

12,000 from a

front company A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy ...

of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

in ''USA vs. Ward Crutchfield and Charles Love''. On July 12, 2007, Crutchfield pleaded guilty to one count of bribery. He resigned from the State Senate on July 27, 2007, and was succeeded by fellow Democrat

Andy Berke Andrew Lawrence Berke (born March 31, 1968) is an American attorney and politician from Tennessee. He served as the mayor of Chattanooga from 2013 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Hamilton and Marion counties in the 1 ...

. On January 17, 2008, he was sentenced to six months'

home confinement In justice and law, house arrest (also called home confinement, home detention, or, in modern times, electronic monitoring) is a measure by which a person is confined by the authorities to their residence. Travel is usually restricted, if allo ...

, two years'

probation Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incarceration), such ...

, and a US$3,000 fine. He died at the age of 87 in 2016.Death of Ward Crutchfield
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crutchfield, Ward 1928 births 2016 deaths Politicians from Chattanooga, Tennessee University of Tennessee at Chattanooga alumni University of Tennessee College of Law alumni Democratic Party members of the Tennessee House of Representatives Democratic Party Tennessee state senators Tennessee lawyers United States Army soldiers Politicians convicted of program bribery Tennessee politicians convicted of crimes 20th-century American lawyers