MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The prosecutor stated during the trial that three former Memphis police officers were highly agitated and filled with energy when they violently attacked Tyre Nichols after he escaped from a traffic stop in 2023, leading to his death. The officers are currently facing second-degree murder charges.
NOTE: The video is from a previous report.
In the trial, Prosecutor Paul Hagerman presented the jury with video evidence of the assault involving Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, and Justin Smith, all of whom have pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them. These officers had previously been found guilty of federal charges and are looking at lengthy prison sentences.
The attack on Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was recorded by a police surveillance camera located near his family’s residence. This disturbing footage sparked nationwide outrage, reignited the debate on reforming law enforcement practices in the United States, and placed the Memphis police department under intense public scrutiny in the predominantly Black city.
Police video showed officers pepper-spraying Nichols and hitting him with a Taser before he ran away from the traffic stop on Jan. 7, 2023. The five officers, who are all Black, chased Nichols and caught him just steps from his home, and then beat him as he called out for his mother. The video showed the officers milling about, talking and laughing as Nichols struggled.
Hagerman said Nichols was being held by his arms by two of the officers as he was punched and kicked and hit with a police baton. After the beating, as a severely injured Nichols sat on the ground, officers failed to tell medical personnel that Nichols had been hit in the head, the prosecutor said.
Hagerman said the officers helped each other beat Nichols to death. An autopsy showed Nichols died three days after the beating of blunt force trauma.
He said the officers had a duty to stop the beating but none of them did so. They were “overcome by the moment,” the prosecutor said.
“Nobody is going to call them monsters,” Hagerman said. “It doesn’t take monsters to kill a man.”
In his opening statement, Bean’s attorney said the officer responded to a call that police were looking for a man who had fled a traffic stop and had been pepper-sprayed and hit with a Taser. Bean, who was not at the initial stop, saw Nichols, turned on his body camera, and chased him down, said attorney John Keith Perry.
Perry said the situation became “high risk” when Nichols continued driving for about 2 miles (3.2 km) after one of the officers turned on his vehicle’s blue lights in an attempt to stop Nichols for speeding. Nichols then failed to follow orders to give officers his hands so that he could be handcuffed, Perry said.
“He was actually resisting arrest the whole time,” Perry said, adding that the officers just “wanted to do their job effectively.”
The jury for the state trial was chosen in Hamilton County, which includes Chattanooga, after Judge James Jones Jr. ordered the case be heard from people outside of Shelby County, which includes Memphis. Defense lawyers for the officers had argued that intense publicity made seating a fair jury difficult.
The officers are charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Two other officers, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., also have been charged but will not stand trial with their former colleagues. Martin and Mills are expected to change their not guilty pleas in state court, according to lawyers involved in the case. Sentencings for all five officers in the federal case is expected after the state trial.
After Nichols’ death, five officers were fired, charged in state court and indicted by a federal grand jury on civil rights and witness tampering charges.
Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to the federal charges under deals with prosecutors. The other three officers were convicted in October of witness tampering related to the cover-up of the beating. Bean and Smith were acquitted of civil rights charges of using excessive force and being indifferent to Nichols’ serious injuries.
Haley was acquitted of violating Nichols’ civil rights causing death, but he was convicted of two lesser charges of violating his civil rights causing bodily injury.
In December, the U.S. Justice Department said a 17-month investigation showed the Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and discriminates against Black people.
The department is more than 50% Black and Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis is Black.
The five officers were part of a crime suppression team called the Scorpion Unit that since has been disbanded. The team targeted drugs, illegal guns and violent offenders with the goal of amassing arrests, while sometimes using force against unarmed people.
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