MEMPHIS — Defense lawyers for three former officers accused of fatally beating a Black man in this city last year argued that their clients acted properly in pursuing a fleeing motorist, while a prosecutor told jurors that video will show police had no reason to use force.
Former Memphis police officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith face federal charges including using excessive force, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to witness tamper and deliberate indifference to Nichols’s medical condition.
The 29-year-old FedEx employee was punched, kicked and struck with a baton repeatedly on Jan. 7, 2023, according to publicly released surveillance and body-camera footage. He died in the hospital three days later.
Attorneys for the three defendants told jurors the video evidence wouldn’t paint a full picture. Their opening statements described a city ridden with crime and patrolled by brave, overworked police officers eager to make Memphis a safer place.
Nichols fled from police, they said, and officers responded with appropriate force according to their training.
John Keith Perry Jr., an attorney for Bean, gave an account that seemed at odds with videos released after the incident, which sparked protests and reform efforts in Memphis.
Perry said Nichols was “hit a total of four times” and kicked three times, and drove into the oncoming lane of traffic and fled from officers for two miles before they caught up with him.
No such pursuit is reflected in video evidence provided in the city’s public records disclosures since the killing.
Perry added that testimony would show officers responded with force that was “probably 10 percent as forceful as MPD teaches you that you’re supposed to,” and that Nichols fought officers “like hell for four minutes.”
The officers, Perry said, were “called upon to do the most dangerous job in the most dangerous city in America. Period. And they were doing a hell of a job.”
Two officers involved in the beating have pleaded guilty to using excessive force and conspiracy to witness tamper. As part of the plea agreements, the Justice Department recommended Emmitt Martin III face a sentence not to exceed 40 years in prison and Desmond Mills Jr. to face no more than 15 years.
Judge Mark S. Norris will make the final sentencing judgments for all five officers, who also were indicted on state-level murder charges.
Attorney Martin Zummach, representing Smith, told jurors that his client would testify in his own defense at the federal trial, which is expected to last three to four weeks.
Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Nichols’s family in its $550 million lawsuit against the city and several of its employees, gathered with relatives including Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, and stepfather, Rodney Wells, and prayed outside the courthouse during the court’s lunch break.
“From the very beginning, Tyre’s family has prayed for justice and accountability, and now that a jury has been selected, his family continues to pray that the jury will receive all of the evidence and that they will render justice for Tyre,” Crump said.
Crump said he and Nichols’s family would not be commenting on the specifics of the federal trial, but RowVaughn Wells said she hoped that her son’s name wouldn’t be sullied by the proceedings.
“My son was a good person, and he wasn’t the criminal that they’re trying to make him out to be,” she said.
During opening statements, each of the three defense attorneys spelled out for jurors the meaning behind the acronym Scorpion, the now-disbanded specialized police unit to which the officers belonged: “Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in our Neighborhoods.”
The unit employed a form of “hotspot” policing, targeting high-crime communities across Memphis with police saturation.
Michael Stengel, an attorney representing Haley, separately addressed a pervasive rumor that spread across the city in the months following the killing — that Nichols had been romantically involved with a female companion of one of the five officers, and that he was pulled over and beaten in retaliation.
Stengel said that rumor — which has not been alleged as part of the prosecution’s case — had re-emerged in written surveys of potential jurors, which have not been made public.
The rumor was not true, he said, and would not be supported by any evidence at trial.
The first witnesses called after opening statements testified about the horrific nature of Nichols’s injuries, and about the composition of the video evidence that prosecutors will present during the trial.
