Former Memphis officers convicted federally in Tyre Nichols case granted new trial
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Three former Memphis Police officers convicted federally in a trial related to the death of Tyre Nichols have been granted a new trial.
Justin Smith, Demetrius Haley, and Tadarrius Bean will go back on trial for federal charges related to the death of Nichols. Judge Sheryl L. Lipman granted the new trial on Thursday.
Lipman took over the case after the abrupt recusal of Judge Mark Norris, who oversaw the federal trial. Norris recused himself from the case days before the former officers were set to be sentenced. Smith and Bean were convicted of obstruction of justice, and Haley was convicted of obstruction of justice and using unreasonable force resulting in injury.
All three were acquitted on all charges at a state trial related to Tyre Nichols’ death. Two other officers, Desmond Mills and Emmitt Martin, pleaded guilty to federal charges related to Tyre Nichols’ death.
In their request for a new trial, attorneys for the former officers argued that Norris was biased against the defendants. Judge Lipman wrote that Judge Norris’ decisions throughout the case “were deliberate and searching” and that she did not find “a single example among the many allegedly biased decisions cited by Defendants that was inconsistent with the law.”
However, Lipman did note that Norris’s clerk was shot the week before the sentencings were first scheduled. During a meeting with federal prosecutors about that shooting, Lipman said that Norris told federal investigators that he believed the shooting was gang-related and that he believed one of the former officers on trial belonged to the gang responsible for the shooting.
According to Lipman, Norris told federal prosecutors that he believed the intended target of the shooting was his former law clerk, who had worked the case and whom the former officers saw in court during the trial. Additionally, an Assistant U.S. Attorney said that, shortly after the shooting, Norris told her that “he could not meet with any member of the Memphis Police Department to give a statement regarding the shooting of his clerk, as MPD is ‘infiltrated to the top with gang members.'”
Attorneys for the former officers argued, “Concluding that one or more of the Defendants was affiliated with a street gang, or that the MPD was infiltrated to the top with gang members, would not be the sort of opinion that Judge Norris could have arrived at based on the evidence presented at trial and instead reflects a ‘deep[-seated] bias against the defendants and the Memphis Police Department.'”
Lipman reiterated that, based on decisions made during the trial alone, a new trial would not be necessary. But, she said, Norris’ statements could constitute the “appearance of judicial bias.”
“Because the risk of bias here is too high to be constitutionally tolerable, and because judicial bias is a structural error, not susceptible to harmless error analysis, a new trial is necessary,” Lipman wrote.
Ultimately, Lipman ruled that a new trial would “serve the interest of justice.”
Because the previous trial resulted in some guilty and some not guilty verdicts, all parties were ordered to submit, by September 15, their positions on what is to be tried in the new trial.
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