Meet Marcus
Marcus, a Nashville native, attended Meigs Magnet School and Hume-Fogg before graduating from Southwest Dekalb High School in Decatur, GA. Returning home to Nashville, he attended Tennessee State University, earning a Presidential Scholarship and a partial Athletic Scholarship after walking on to the TSU football team. He graduated Summa Cum Laude with his Bachelor's degree in Political Science with a minor in Psychology.
After graduation, Marcus went back to his old neighborhood to teach government and Spanish at East Nashville Magnet High School while coaching the boys' track team. His experiences as a teacher and coach in Nashville help to inform his positions on the link between poverty and a lack of access to mental health treatment and proper resources; which continue to drive recidivism up.
After teaching high school, Marcus balanced working a new legal compliance role and starting a young family with his wife while taking courses at the Nashville School of Law. Marcus founded Shute Law, a general practice law firm in Nashville, TN, that handles a wide range of cases from criminal defense, contract disputes, landlord-tenant matters, intellectual property rights, estate planning, and probate matters.
Marcus and his wife, Natalie, have two daughters and a chocolate lab.
Marcus Knows Firsthand…
… About the racial disparities that continue to impact our criminal justice system. While in law school, Marcus was once illegally detained, searched, and cited after leaving a restaurant. During all of this, he sat in handcuffs for simply “fitting a profile.” While he was an intern with the public defender’s office, he was once introduced to a judge in open court and presumed to be a defendant.
No matter how great or small, these indignities should always be an alien experience to any Nashvillian or person who encounters our justice system.