In January 2023, five Black Memphis police officers viciously beat 29-year-old father Tyre Nichols to death. Two of them, Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, had already pleaded guilty. But the other three, Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, and Justin Smith, were acquitted of all state charges, including second-degree murder. Why? Defense lawyers didn’t have to prove they didn’t brutalize Nichols. All they had to do was convince the jury that beating him to death was “lawful.”
The all-white jury came hundreds of miles from Memphis, supposedly to prevent a “biased” jury from being seated. The defense placed all of the blame on Martin and Mills. They mythologized policing as an exceptionally dangerous job that most people don’t “have the guts to do.” White jurors humanized the Black cops because they belonged to an institution designed to maintain white supremacist violence. When that violence is law, killing is “lawful.”
These systemic ploys aren’t new to us. Community outrage has manifested into wanted posters for the officers, “dead or unalive.” Nichols’ family filed a $550 million lawsuit that is expected to “bankrupt” Memphis in 2026.
All five cops were convicted of witness tampering in a previous federal trial. In June, they are expected to be sentenced to decades in prison.
Reformists will continue to insist that more Black cops, bodycams, and training will end police violence. Anti-Black legal playbooks will remain in place. But we saw what happened. That “not guilty” verdict is as legitimate as policing itself.