Three former police officers were acquitted on Wednesday of all the state charges against them, including second-degree murder, in the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man whose brutal beating in 2023 stunned the nation.
It was the second trial for the three men, Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith. They were accused of fatally beating Mr. Nichols, a FedEx employee who had been driving home from work when he was stopped by officers more than two years ago.
The three were convicted of witness tampering in a separate federal trial last fall, but acquitted of a more serious charge of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing his death. Federal jurors also found Mr. Haley guilty of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing bodily injury.
Two other former officers involved in the beating — Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III — took guilty pleas in the earlier federal case; Mr. Mills also pleaded guilty in state court. It remains unclear how the state case against Mr. Martin, who has been described as the most violent officer in the beating, will be handled.
The jury in the state case, seated from the Chattanooga area in eastern Tennessee to ensure a fair trial, deliberated more than eight hours after a seven-day trial in Memphis. In addition to second-degree murder, the three defendants had been charged with aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.
Sentencing in the federal trial is expected later this year. Mr. Nichols’s family has also sued Memphis and its Police Department.
The three former officers were emotional after the verdict was read on Wednesday, with Mr. Haley appearing to cry. Mr. Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, who gave wrenching testimony about the injuries that her son had sustained, did not show any emotion. She and her husband left the courtroom without any comment.
“Today’s verdicts are a devastating miscarriage of justice,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, two civil rights lawyers who have represented Mr. Nichols’s family, said in a statement. They added that they were “outraged, and we know we are not alone.”
Surveillance and body camera footage from Jan. 7, 2023, showed five officers restraining, kicking and pummeling Mr. Nichols after a traffic stop, despite his efforts to comply with their aggressive commands. None of the officers reported the violence. At one point they left Mr. Nichols bruised and slumped against a police car.
He died three days later, leaving behind a young child.
The assault was widely criticized as another example of a Black man facing excessive force at the hands of law enforcement. All of the officers were also Black.
Memphis officials quickly fired them, and disciplined or fired a number of other deputies, paramedics and police officials. They also dissolved the elite policing unit that the five officers belonged to.
A Justice Department investigation, started after Mr. Nichols’s death, found that the Police Department had engaged in a pattern of excessive violence and discriminatory treatment of Black people, including children. More than a third of Tennessee’s Black population lives in Memphis.
“Policing in Memphis must always be ever-evolving and continuously improving,” Chief Cerelyn J. Davis of the Memphis Police Department said after the verdict, adding that “we recognize the pain and grief this incident has caused.”
State jurors analyzed the actions of each individual officer: who was there when Mr. Nichols was first stopped, who chased him when he broke away and fled, who caught him near his mother’s house, who landed a blow or restrained his arms.
Prosecutors described a tragedy fueled by anger, adrenaline and frustration, in which a group of men helped each other beat another man to death. The core of their case was rooted in the videos, and the severity of Mr. Nichols’s injuries.
“Are good people capable of doing bad things?” Melanie Headley, the assistant district attorney for Shelby County, asking during closing arguments. “That night, Jan. 7, 2023, those three officers did bad things. And when Tyre cried for help, they didn’t do anything. Nobody helped him.”
Prosecutors in both trials said that Mr. Nichols was speeding on his way home. When officers stopped him, they yanked him from the car, pepper-sprayed him and fired at him with a stun gun, before Mr. Nichols broke free and ran toward his mother’s home.
More officers caught up with him, restraining, kicking and hitting him with a baton.
Over and over again, lawyers played the videos, stopping and starting to identify the defendants and scrutinize each action: the punches that the officers referred to as “haymakers,” the kicks, the strikes and the commentary after.
Mr. Mills testified in the state case as part of his plea agreement with the state; he has yet to be sentenced in either case, but prosecutors have recommended that he serve both sentences concurrently. A lawyer for Mr. Martin, who also pleaded guilty, did not respond to a request for comment. Steven J. Mulroy, the county district attorney, said after Wednesday’s verdict that “it remains to be seen” how the case against Mr. Martin will proceed.
“It was a bad situation and I was trying to get out of trouble,” Mr. Mills said, when pressed on why he did not immediately disclose the scope of what had happened to Mr. Nichols. “I knew it was real bad.”
The defense lawyers sought to use Mr. Mills’s testimony to shift the blame for the severity of the beating away from their own clients. They also highlighted Mr. Martin’s role in the brutality.
“We are here because of choices, as mentioned, Tyre Nichols made and Emmitt Martin made,” said Martin Zummach, a lawyer for Mr. Smith. He added, “I’m going to beg 12 people who end up on this jury to stop the misery that Justin Smith has been going through.”
Repeatedly, lawyers for Mr. Bean, Mr. Haley and Mr. Smith downplayed their roles and framed their actions as an appropriate response to an unknown suspect who had run from the police.
“It’s not a case where they’re abusing the badge and trying to go out there and prove a point or to try to kill somebody,” said John Keith Perry, a lawyer for Mr. Bean.
Lawyers for Mr. Bean and Mr. Smith also summoned character witnesses, arguing that the defendants had been otherwise upstanding members of the police force. And they sought to cast Mr. Nichols, whose car contained small amounts of marijuana and psilocybin mushroom, as well as stolen ID cards, as a formidable opponent who was able to resist larger police officers.
“That’s sort of the really tragic part of this whole entire case,” said Stephen R. Leffler, a lawyer for Mr. Haley. “Had Mr. Nichols pulled over when he got the blue lights and submitted to the officers’ questioning or whatever, in all likelihood, they wouldn’t have arrested him.”
After the verdict was read, all three former officers embraced their lawyers and each other. At least one family member could be heard yelling, “Thank you, Jesus” outside the courtroom.
Mr. Mulroy, the district attorney, would not speculate why the jurors had acquitted all three officers, or whether seating an out-of-town and mostly white jury had made a difference.
“It’s hard for us to imagine how someone could say that none of the defendants were guilty of any of the charges,” he said. He added that he would continue advocating overhauling police practices and culture in the city.
“Our office will continue to push for accountability for everybody who violates the law,” he said, “including, if not especially, those who are sworn to uphold it.”
