Three former police officers have been convicted of federal charges related to the fatal beating of Tire Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, a 2023 incident that sparked nationwide protests and calls for police reform.
All three were found guilty of witness tampering when the verdict was handed down Thursday. But they were acquitted of the most serious charge: violating the civil rights of Nichols, 29, by causing his death.
However, one officer, Demetrius Haley, was found guilty of violating Nichols' civil rights and causing bodily injury, as well as witness tampering.
Federal charges of witness tampering carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The sentence is expected to be handed down in January.
“A victory is a victory. They're all going to jail,” Rodney Wells, Nichols' stepfather, told The Associated Press news agency outside the courthouse.
Haley and the other two former officers, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith, were among five members of a special police unit accused of beating Nichols to death on January 7, 2023.
The beating was captured on police body camera footage and video from a nearby street pole camera, and the footage has since gone viral.
They show Nichols fleeing a traffic stop, after being pepper sprayed and tasered. He ran towards his mother's house, but the police caught up with him first and threw him to the ground, where they then punched, kicked and hit him with a baton.
Nichols was heard calling for his mother during the beating.
He died three days later, and an autopsy showed that he died from repeated blows to the head.
Prosecutors have argued that the incident was part of a pattern of violence by the police unit, known as SCORPION, an acronym for “Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods.”
They allege that the SCORPION unit beat fleeing suspects, referring to the beatings as a “street tax” or “career tax.”
In the Nichols case, prosecutors also accused the officers of concealing the extent of the beating from their superiors and medical professionals.
Throughout the trial, jurors were repeatedly shown graphic clips of the body camera footage. The video also showed officers standing as Nichols struggled with his injuries.
The defense, however, argued that the situation had been potentially dangerous and therefore the officers had not used “unreasonable force.”
Officers testify
The death of Nichols, a Black man, sparked nationwide calls for police reform. Advocates also demanded that the officers involved, who were also Black, be held legally accountable.
Two of the officers, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr, pleaded guilty before trial to federal charges related to excessive force and witness tampering. They eventually testified against their colleagues Haley, Bean and Smith during the trial.
Mills broke down in tears on the witness stand, saying he was sorry for the beating and acknowledging that it orphaned Nichols' young son. He added that he wished he had stopped hitting.
Mills later said he agreed to the cover-up in hopes that Nichols would survive and the incident would “pass.”
Martin testified that Nichols was “defenseless” while he was beaten. After the beating, he explained that there was an agreement between the agents that “they were not going to snitch on me and I was not going to snitch on them.”
In response, the defense accused Martín of being one of the main aggressors of the attack.
The five officers have also been charged with second-degree murder in Tennessee state court, although that trial has not yet begun.
