Tyre Nichols Death: State Trial Begins for Former Police Officers

State prosecutors took their own case to trial on Monday against three former Memphis Police Department officers who fatally beat Tyre Nichols, aiming to secure a murder conviction after jurors in a separate federal case delivered a mixed verdict last fall.

In many ways, the state trial will resemble the one that played out in federal court: It will focus heavily on surveillance and body camera footage that captured the officers beating Mr. Nichols after he tried to flee a traffic stop on foot in January 2023. The trial will also consider whether the three defendants acted in accordance with their police training.

But on the first day of proceedings in a stuffy Memphis courtroom, there were some notable differences, including testimony from Mr. Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells.

“My son was beaten to a pulp,” Ms. Wells said, her voice shaking with emotion as she described his injuries at the hands of the officers. “There is no way my son would have survived from that,” she added.

The three men on trial Monday — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith — already face the possibility of years in prison after they were convicted on federal witness tampering charges in October. Mr. Haley was also found guilty of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing bodily injury, though all three men were acquitted of the most serious charge, violating civil rights by causing death.

Two other former officers who took part in the beating, Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, pleaded guilty to those federal charges and testified against their former colleagues in that trial. Mr. Mills is also cooperating with state prosecutors.

The three men are scheduled to be sentenced in federal court later this year, after the conclusion of the state trial.

The death of Mr. Nichols, which came three days after his encounter with police officers that night in 2023 turned violent, horrified Memphis and the nation. Footage later released by the Police Department showed the officers restraining and beating Mr. Nichols, who was 29, for roughly three minutes before leaving him bloodied and propped up against a police car without medical attention for several minutes.

The brutality captured in the videos was particularly searing in Memphis, which is home to more than a third of Tennessee’s Black residents, given that Mr. Nichols and the officers charged in connection with the beating were all Black.

It also brought a wave of scrutiny over the Memphis Police Department, including a federal civil rights investigation that found patterns of excessive force and more aggressive treatment of Black people than of white people. Mr. Nichols’s family is suing Memphis in a separate civil case.

State prosecutors framed their case, more than two years after Mr. Nichols died, as an opportunity to deliver justice for the young FedEx worker. They said the three former officers were fueled by anger, frustration and adrenaline during the beating and the moments afterward, when they failed to quickly provide medical aid.

The seven state charges — which were delivered in an indictment 16 days after Mr. Nichols died — also include kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.

“Nobody’s going to call them monsters — it doesn’t take monsters to kill a man,” said Paul Hagerman, the deputy district attorney for Shelby County. He added that it was “five men helping each other beat a man to death.”

Mr. Hagerman compared Mr. Nichols’s injuries to those from a car accident as he described the autopsy report. At least one juror appeared visibly shaken when a picture of Mr. Nichols in his hospital bed was shown at the start of his mother’s testimony.

Lawyers for the three former officers argued that they had been tasked with a difficult job in crime-ridden parts of Memphis and had acted in accordance with their police training.

“A tragedy does not mean a homicide occurred,” said Michael Stengel, a lawyer for Mr. Haley. He said that Mr. Haley “chose to engage in policing, which can get ugly and dangerous and dirty.”

The national attention surrounding the case and the outcome of the federal trial have presented challenges for the state prosecution. Judge James Jones Jr. seated a jury from the Chattanooga area, across the state in eastern Tennessee, acknowledging concerns from the defense lawyers about a fair trial.

Lawyers for the three officers emphasized in their opening statements that Mr. Martin and Mr. Mills, who both pleaded guilty, kicked or pummeled Mr. Nichols, suggesting they were more responsible for his death.

“There’s no way those men should be responsible for Emmitt Martin,” said Martin Zummach, a lawyer for Mr. Smith, referring to his own client and the other two on trial.

Defense lawyers also described Mr. Nichols as someone who could not be subdued: John Keith Perry, a lawyer for Mr. Bean, said that Mr. Nichols was the size of a Southeastern Conference wide receiver. And the defense signaled it would possibly move to discuss credit cards found in Mr. Nichols’s car after the beating, items that one defense lawyer said had been stolen.

The trial is expected to continue for the remainder of the week.