The day of reckoning is upon three former Memphis, Tennessee, police officers: Taddarius Bean, Demetrius Haley, and Justin Smith, who are set to stand trial for the murder of Tyre Nichols. Bean, Haley, and Smith are three of the five officers who have been criminally charged for Nichols’ murder. The other two, Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin III, took a plea deal and will face a separate trial, respectively.
This case has already received extensive coverage by BOSSIP and other mainstream media outlets, which created a challenge in finding impartial jurors. In an effort to curb any potential biases, AP News notes that Judge James Jones Jr. ruled that although this trial is taking place in Memphis, the jury must be selected from Hamilton County, which encompasses the city of Chattanooga.
Local Memphis spoke to trial attorney Arthur Horne III, who believes this change of venue may favor the officers’ defense attorneys as Hamilton County is significantly more conservative.
“I think they were trying to get one of the counties that was close to the same type of jury make up as Memphis…I think Hamilton County might be 25 percent African American, where Memphis is predominantly African American,” he said.
Horne says that a diverse Memphis jury would certainly favor the prosecutors, but a fair trial was nearly impossible.
Per usual, all the jurors in this trial will be sequestered with no access to the outside world’s opinions once the trial begins. Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp believes that the trial may last two weeks in order to hear all the testimonies.
This should be an easy case for jurors to decide. Tyre Nichols had his humanity completely stripped away by these bacon-scented brothas, and it cost him his life; they should all be required to pay that debt with theirs.
Last year, prior to the start of the federal trial, Tyre’s mother, Rowvaughn Wells, said the following to Action News 5 reporter Jerry Askin:
“I just want to remember my son when he walked out the door, the way he walked out that door. He came in the kitchen, and he hugged me and he said, ‘Mama, I’ll see you later.’ And I said, ‘Okay Ty’, but I never got a chance to see him later.”
First jail, then hell.
