Federal prosecutors, who rested their case on Thursday, contend that three former Memphis police officers deprived Nichols of his civil rights during a traffic stop on January 7, 2023, and then conspired to lie about it.
The New York Times analyzed several key points from the prosecution's case, including the secretive and punishment-focused culture of the Memphis Police Department and the impressions of multiple medical and emergency personnel also testified not only to the extent of Nichols’s injuries but also that they were not fully informed about the violence he had endured. Dr. Marco Ross, the chief medical examiner, testified that Nichols had extensive brain injuries and would have required permanent nursing care if he had survived.
Prosecutors called nearly 20 witnesses during the trial of Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, and Justin Smith. The overall portrayal was of officers failing to intervene as Nichols, a 29-year-old Black FedEx worker, was beaten and restrained even though he did not pose a threat. Last September, five officers, all of whom are Black, were indicted. Two have since pleaded guilty to some of the charges. Officer Emmitt Martin III described how he initiated a traffic stop after seeing Nichols speed up to beat a red light. Nichols, he repeatedly said, “wasn’t a threat.” Martin also described how officers imposed what prosecutors called a “run tax”: extra violence against anyone who ran from the police, which would never be disclosed to their superiors. The other officer to take the stand, Desmond Mills Jr., corroborated much of Martin’s description of the pressures within the Police Department’s street crime unit, known as Scorpion.
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