Tyre Nichols

Case background and investigation

Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was stopped by Memphis police officers on the evening of January 7, 2023, near East Raines Road and Ross Road in Memphis, Tennessee. According to PBS NewsHour, officers pulled him from his car and used pepper spray and a Taser; he ran, and officers caught up with him near his home, where five officers punched and kicked him and struck him with a baton while he called for his mother. He was taken to St. Francis Hospital and died on January 10, 2023. The Shelby County Medical Examiner found that he died of blunt force trauma to the head and ruled the death a homicide, according to Wikipedia.

The five officers, Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith, were members of the department's SCORPION unit. They were fired and, on January 26, 2023, charged in state court with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. The SCORPION unit was disbanded two days later. In September 2023 a federal grand jury indicted the five on civil rights, conspiracy and obstruction charges.

Mills pleaded guilty to federal charges on November 2, 2023, and Martin on August 23, 2024; both agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and to plead guilty in state court, according to PBS NewsHour and other reports. Mills testified against his former colleagues at the state trial.

The other three went to trial. In October 2024 a federal jury convicted Haley on all four counts and convicted Bean and Smith only of obstruction of justice through witness tampering, acquitting them of the civil rights counts. On May 7, 2025, a Shelby County jury acquitted Bean, Haley and Smith of all state charges, including second-degree murder.

On August 28, 2025, U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman ordered a new federal trial for Bean, Haley and Smith, finding that comments by the original trial judge, Mark Norris, who had since recused himself, created an unacceptable risk of bias, NPR reported. Federal prosecutors appealed that order to the Sixth Circuit in September 2025, and in April 2026 the appeals court dismissed the defendants' cross-appeals for lack of jurisdiction while the government's appeal remained pending, according to Action News 5. Nichols's family has also filed a $550 million civil lawsuit against the City of Memphis and the officers.