By the time Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, stepped up to the podium in front of the National Civil Rights Museum, the rainclouds finally broke open.
A little more than 24 hours had passed since the blanket acquittal of three former Memphis police officers — Justin Smith, Jr., Tadarrius Bean, and Demetrius Haley — who faced a range of charges stemming from their roles in the fatal beating of her son in January 2023.
Two other former officers, Desmond Mills, Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, entered guilty pleas in late 2023.
Facing a crowd of more than 200 supporters gathered below the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down, Wells spoke as rain poured, seemingly on cue. The poignancy of her pain set against a stormy backdrop was not lost on the crowd.
“Let it roll down!” an audience member shouted.
“Yesterday, I didn’t know what to think. We have gotten so much injustice from this city. My son was murdered by five Memphis police officers. He was murdered,” Wells said. “And three of them got off, because those jurors decided to not look at the evidence, but only to look at the fact that my son was a Black man running from the police.”
Her comments capped an outpouring of grief, reflection and raw emotion following the stunning verdict Wednesday in Shelby County Criminal Court. For some, the nine-day trial laid bare the inner workings of an unjust system, proving just how difficult it is to hold police accountable for their actions. For others, it demonstrated the extraordinarily difficult job police often face on the streets, particularly when trying to apprehend a suspect who refuses to cooperate.
Undeniably, the verdict — rendered by a predominately white jury shipped in from East Tennessee because of a change in venue —underscores the deep divisions that run through Memphis and the nation.
The evidence Wells referenced — hours of Memphis Police Department footage culled from mounted dashboard cameras, an overhead Skycop camera, and body-worn cameras — shocked the nation when it was released to the public less than a month after Nichols’ death.
Pulled over for alleged reckless driving, officers forcibly pulled Nichols out of his blue Nissan and screamed conflicting commands before spraying him with a chemical agent and attempting to tase him. Nichols ran from the officers but was caught within a few blocks. He was punched repeatedly and struck with a baton multiple times before collapsing.
As Nichols slipped into unconsciousness, officers were heard boasting about the “haymakers” they inflicted. Haley took photos of Nichols as he sat slumped against a squad car and texted the photos to fellow officers and at least one friend.
What the jury made of all of this is unclear. The names of the jurors are under seal, and the Institute for Public Service Reporting was unable to reach any of them for comment.
Bean’s attorney, John Keith Perry, said in a phone interview that a close examination of the evidence shows that Nichols’ resistance put officers in a difficult spot.
“(Nichols) was the chief contributing factor to what happened,’’ said Perry, who said every focus group that reviewed the videos came to the same conclusion: The officers didn’t commit any crimes.
“Number one, watching the videos in slow motion, it becomes extremely clear that there wasn’t an intent to harm the guy from the majority of the officers. Number two, (is) the behavior of Mr. Nichols,’’ Perry said.
As Perry sees it, Nichols failed to comply at least three times — first, during a long vehicle pursuit; later, as officers tried to handcuff him on the ground when Nichols refused to “get on his stomach or give them his hands”; and, finally, when Nichols took off running.
“These are guys trying to do their job,” Perry said of the officers, “not out here as a goon squad attempting to harm somebody.’’
Nonetheless, the decision of the jury from Hamilton County stunned numbers of people, including longtime criminal defense attorney Claiborne Ferguson.
“I was shocked. I know that there are a lot of people in Memphis that are disappointed, but our system is not necessarily for retribution, and those officers will still face sentencing in federal court,” said Ferguson, who didn’t represent any of the five officers charged in Nichols’ death. His comment refers to the October 2024 federal trial where a jury found the same three officers guilty of violating Nichols’ civil rights.
Sentencing for the federal convictions was delayed following the conclusion of the state trial.
Ferguson said the defense attorneys for the three officers “were smart.”
“It’s difficult for the state to convict police officers,” Ferguson said, “and the prosecution did a great job at pointing fingers at the ones who pled guilty.”
Statistics demonstrate just how difficult convicting a police officer can be. In a 2021 report following the conviction of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd, PBS News wrote that just 20 of 104 police officers charged with murder or manslaughter for on-duty shootings were convicted by juries nationwide between 2005 and June 2019, citing a a study by Bowling Green State University.
In a case with multiple defendants, Ferguson said, attorneys will often engage in a “circular firing squad,” and take turns pointing fingers at their clients’ codefendants.
Because Martin and Mills already pleaded guilty to issuing most of the blows to Nichols, defense attorneys were able to unite in their approach of blaming them. An expert witness for the defense contended the use-of-force from Haley, Bean, and Smith “was not the use-of-force” that ended Nichols’ life, Ferguson said.
Data also suggests that, though statistically rare, police continue to kill numbers of people across the country.
Police have killed 401 people in the U.S. so far this year, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group. In fact, not a single day has passed this year in which police didn’t kill somebody, according to data the organization collected through April 24.
Journalist and political analyst Otis Sanford told ABC24 News earlier this week that he believes the failure to convict the officers charged in Nichols’ death reflects a lack of understanding by the East Tennessee jury of the history of oppression in Memphis.
“The culture historically of Memphis police in some respects has been oppressive to African-American citizens. That’s just a fact,” said Sanford, who serves as chairman of the Institute for Public Service Reporting’s advisory board.
“But (the jury) did not bring the cultural understanding of what Memphis is about when it comes to police and community relations. That played positively for the defense in this case.”
Back at Thursday’s rally, about half of those gathered broke away from the museum’s plaza and joined a march down Main Street following remarks from Nichols’ friends and family members. Many questioned in conversations and in shouts, the integrity of the largely white jury selected out of Hamilton County, where Chattanooga is the county seat.
Chris Yard, a 27-year-old political science major at the University of Memphis, questioned exactly how the jury was selected out of a county where just 18 percent of the population is Black, according to the latest U.S. Census.
“The verdict wasn’t right, and the jury was hand-selected. An all-white jury from Hamilton County? They couldn’t find any [jurors] that were Black? This feels like a trial set in the 1960s,” Yard said. “To have those people come from the other side of the state… they don’t know what goes on Memphis. All they see is news of crime.”
