A federal judge of Tennessee ordered new trials on Thursday for three former police officers from Memphis who were found guilty of crime in the death of Nichols after a traffic stop in 2023.
A federal jury sentenced Tadarrius Bean last year, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith for the death of Nichols, 29, who died after being struck and kicked by police officers, assaults that were captured on a surveillance video.
The three men were acquitted in May for state accusations.
In a decision Thursday, the chief judge of the American district Sheryl Lipman found no decision biased by the federal judge in the 2024 case, as the lawyers’ lawyers argued.
But she said that new trials were justified due to a comment that the judge would have made after the trial that the Memphis police service was “infiltrated at the top with gang members”.
US district judge Mark Norris would have commentary after his clerk of the law was killed in the chest during a hijacking on October 8, five days after the federal jury condemned Bean, Haley and Smith, according to legal documents.
An American deputy prosecutor argued that she recalled that Norris had expressed that “he could not meet any member of the Memphis police service to make a statement concerning the shooting of his clerk, because MPD is` infiltrated at the top with the members of the gang ”, “according to the context of the case cited by Lipman.
Norris, who was to condemn Bean, Haley and Smith in December, challenged the case on June 13. The three were not convicted.
LIPMAN has cited other decisions according to which the regular procedural clause of the Constitution may sometimes require a challenge even when a judge has no bias.
“What is necessary is” not only an absence of real bias, but also an absence of the appearance of a judicial bias “, wrote Lipman, citing a past case.
Lipman wrote that “the risk of bias here is too high to be tolerable by the Constitution” and that, consequently, the three officers deserved new tests.
Martin Zummach, who represents Smith, said on Thursday: “I think Judge Lipman did the right thing.”
Zummach said the defense lawyers learned of the comments assigned to Norris three days before the conviction. “I said immediately:” We have to get a new trial. This is the only good thing to do “” he said.
Bean and Haley lawyers immediately responded to requests for comments sent by e-mail.
Nichols was beaten by police after being arrested during a traffic stop on January 7, 2023 and he fled on foot, and the police beat him more after having caught up, the video that captured the incident showed. He died three days later.
The video, released about three weeks later, seemed to show aggressive, chaotic and sometimes incoherent demands of the Nichols police – as he supplied his hands while his arm was held and he was fired on his feet. They also seem to show that the police strike him while he was detained.
Haley was found guilty of two counts of deprivation of rights resulting in bodily injury and two leaders of falsification of a witness, a victim or an informant.
Smith and Bean were found guilty of a leader of a witness, a victim or an informant, and they were acquitted on the other three counts against them.
Zummach, Smith’s lawyer, said that because Smith and Bean have been acquitted the most serious civil rights charges, they cannot be charged with these charges during a new trial.
In total, five police officers now trainers were charged at the federal level. Former police Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills pleaded guilty. They were not convicted.
