A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A jury in Memphis is expected to begin deliberations today in a high profile police brutality case.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Police video shows a group of officers beating Tyre Nichols, a Black man they'd pulled over during a traffic stop last year. The jury repeatedly saw footage showing the officers who were also Black, brutalizing Nichols. He died three days later. That video is evidence in a federal civil rights trial.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Debbie Elliott has been covering the trial and joins us now from Memphis. Debbie, let's just start off with the charges that these officers are facing.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: OK, three fired detectives, Justin Smith, Tadarrius Bean, and Demetrius Haley, are accused of several felonies here, depriving Tyre Nichols of his civil rights by excessive use of force, willful failure to intervene, deliberate indifference to his serious medical need, and finally, conspiring to cover up the attack and obstruct justice. You'll remember the beating happened after a traffic stop in January of last year. Now, these officers were part of the so called SCORPION task force. It was created to root out street crime in Memphis. And it was known for aggressive policing tactics. The five officers involved here were immediately fired. That task force has since been disbanded. Two of those former officers pleaded guilty and testified against the others during this trial.
MARTÍNEZ: How are federal prosecutors laying out their case?
ELLIOTT: You know, that this was just a beatdown, that these ex-cops used unreasonable force. It was five of them against one 175-pound man. During closing arguments, federal prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert said, these officers didn't count on surveillance video catching what happened when they thought no one was watching. She urged the jurors to trust their eyes - quote, "You saw the punches. You saw the kicks. You saw the baton strikes."
The video also shows officers seemingly bragging about the beating as Nichols gasps for his life on the pavement. Gilbert pointed out that some of the language that they used afterward, they said, quote, "Hit him. Beat that man," and "We about to kill that man." She also emphasized how Nichols had his hands in front of his face to protect himself as he was calling out for his mother who lived just a block away. Nichols, who was 29, died, as you said, three days after the beating, and the coroner testified it was homicide from blunt force trauma.
MARTÍNEZ: Well, the defense - how are these former officers trying to explain what happened?
ELLIOTT: You know, each defense lawyer tried to clear their individual clients in different kinds of ways. But the general theme from all three of them is that this was a high-risk traffic stop and that the officers acted reasonably after Nichols ran a red light and then failed to stop when pursued by a police vehicle with blue lights on. John Keith Perry, who represents Tadarrius Bean, denied that officers were bragging about the beating. He said instead that the jury should interpret that as they were commenting that, quote, "this man was taking all that they had."
Then Martin Zummach, who is Justin Smith's lawyer - he focused on Tyre Nichols' behavior. He said, Nichols made choices of how to respond that night, asking, quote, "is there a constitutional right to run from police?" So now it's up to the jury to sort of weigh all these arguments and the evidence they heard, and we'll hear what they decide.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. NPR's Debbie Elliott in Memphis. Debbie, thank you very much.
ELLIOTT: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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