Photo: Getty Images North America
A federal judge has ordered new trials for three former Memphis police officers convicted in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols.
Nichols, 29, died three days after being brutally beaten by several officers during a January 7, 2023 traffic stop. Video showed officers punching, kicking, and striking Nichols with a baton as he called out for his mother, steps away from his home.
In 2024, a federal jury convicted three officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, and Justin Smith, on various felony counts. Haley was found guilty of two counts of deprivation of rights and two counts of witness tampering. Smith and Bean were each convicted on one count of witness tampering but acquitted on the more serious civil rights charges.
U.S. District Judge Mark Norris, who presided over the federal trial and was scheduled to sentence the men, later recused himself amid allegations that he made a biased comment. Following the October 8, 2024, shooting of his law clerk in a carjacking incident, Norris allegedly said he could not work with the Memphis Police Department because it was “infiltrated to the top with gang members.”
Norris' statement was recalled from a post-trial conversation and cited as evidence of potential bias, according to an assistant U.S. attorney.
On Thursday (August 28), U.S. Chief District Judge Sheryl Lipman ruled that the appearance of bias was constitutionally intolerable, per NBC News.
“What is required is not only an absence of actual bias, but an absence of even the appearance of judicial bias,” Lipman wrote. “The risk of bias here is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.”
She ordered new trials for Bean, Haley, and Smith, all of whom haven't been sentenced.
“I think Judge Lipman did the right thing,” Martin Zummach, an attorney for Smith, said. “We have to get a new trial. That’s the only right thing to do.”
Two other former officers involved in Nichols' fatal beating, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills, pleaded guilty to federal charges and are awaiting sentencing.
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