Jurors were handpicked from faraway Chattanooga to reach a not-guilty verdict after millions witnessed the brutal beating and lack of medical attention leading to the death of the 29-year-old African American father
Race Relations
Yet another group of violent police officers have been acquitted in the death of an African American this time in the city of Memphis.
Although the police officers involved in the brutal beating and eventual death of Tyre Nichols were also Black, they were operating from the same mindset as their white counterparts who routinely brutalize and murder African Americans and other oppressed people.
This case gained international attention when video of the horrendous beating suffered by Nichols on January 7, 2023, after he sensed the brutal intention of the law-enforcement agents. Nichols, 29, was a recent resident of Memphis having moved there to join his mother and stepfather from California.
After beating Nichols and subduing him on the street, officers were seen in the surveillance video kicking the victim in the head. When the paramedics finally arrived, one was viewed on the same video standing around and not administering any emergency care. Nichols died several days later in the hospital.
When informing Nichols’ family about his condition in the hospital, the police misrepresented what occurred by falsely claiming that the victim was intoxicated. All five police officers involved in the incident were terminated from the Memphis police department. Three of these same officers exonerated by the Tennessee jury have already been found guilty of federal civil rights charges while remaining to be sentenced.
The sentencing date on the federal convictions has been set for June 16. It remains to be seen what impact the acquittals of three of these officers on state murder charges will have on the sentencing.
What is striking about this situation is that the victim and the police officers are all African Americans. These incidents reinforce the well proven notion that the institution of policing in the United States, having its origins in the system of African enslavement, remains true to its mission. In many cases irrespective of national origin and race, the imbued assumptions about the social character of African Americans results in outcomes that could be dangerous to the point of deadly.
Changing the Venue to Obtain an All-White Jury
Defense lawyers for the police officers made an argument to the courts that the enormous publicity surrounding the beating death of Nichols made it impossible for the cops to receive a fair trial. Therefore, African Americans in Memphis who have come of age in ongoing eras of multi-generational police misconduct and brutality were denied the ability to sit in judgement on whether what was done to Nichols constituted murder under the laws of the State of Tennessee.
A report on the jury selection process and the outcome of the verdict noted:
“Hamilton County, Tennessee, is 358 miles from Memphis. Attorneys traveled there to find a jury for the three ex-Memphis police officers on state trial in the Tyre Nichols beating death.
Defense attorneys wanted the change of venue over concerns that an impartial jury couldn’t be found near Shelby County because of so much publicity about the Tyre Nichols case. ‘There was a motion filed by the defense to change venue, and there was a study done on the amount of publicity in the very large cities in Tennessee and it was found that Chattanooga had the lowest amount of pre-trial publicity with regard to this case. And so that’s why it was chosen,’ said Paul Hagerman, prosecutor in the Tyre Nichols case.” (https://wreg.com/news/local/how-chattanooga-jury-impacted-verdict-in-tyre-nichols-case/)
Memphis is a city of 618,000 people with approximately 65% of them being African Americans. Within the broader Shelby County there are 910,000 people with 52.6% being African Americans. Shelby County has the highest concentration of African Americans than any other area of the state.
Two years ago, it was published in various sources that Memphis was the largest municipality with a majority African American population in the U.S. Detroit had for years held this status yet the decline in population in the city has resulted in Memphis filling this category.
Understanding this demographic reality, the defense strategy for the police was to select a jury from another region of the state which had a much lower percentage of African Americans such as Hamilton County. The same above-quoted article goes on to say:
“Hamilton County has a population of around 380,000; 76% are white and 20% are Black. While we are not sure about the demographics of the full jury pool that was called for the Tyre Nichols case, the final 12 jurors that decided it were all white. ‘They did not look like Mr. Nichols. They did not look like the officers that were charged, and we are supposed to be judged by what? People that are our own peers,’ said a friend of the Nichols’ family. ‘But this jury was not reflective of the city of Memphis, and I think that was a big win for the defense, because I think the jurors tend to be more conservative from places like Chattanooga and East Tennessee, other parts of East Tennessee, Knoxville, which they’re going to be more friendly to the police, and I think that’s what you saw here this week,’ said Art Horne, a Memphis Attorney.”
Consequently, the manipulation of the judicial system has denied justice once again to the family of an African American killed after an interaction with the police. This demonstrates the failure of the legal apparatus operating in various states throughout the country to guarantee justice and fair treatment in their engagements with law-enforcement agents along with the courts.
Over the last five years the social mood related to law-enforcement misconduct has gone from public outrage characterized by mass demonstrations, urban rebellions and ideological offenses against institutions of racism and national oppression to the political suppression of any mention of the need for massive reforms, the defunding and abolition of the police. This refusal to confront the actual historical legacy of policing in the U.S. has been carried on by successive administrations from both the Republican and Democratic Parties.
Police Brutality Remains a Major Concern in the U.S.
Violence inflicted by law-enforcement agents is continuing to rise throughout the U.S. During 2025, so far by the end of April, 413 people are estimated to have been killed by police.
These figures supplied by Mapping Police Violence are gathered through the research done by the organization itself. On the website of this data collecting group, it says that the law-enforcement agencies refuse to cooperate with their work and therefore they have no other choice than providing the data themselves. (https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/)
African Americans are far more likely to fall victim to police violence through racial profiling and media stereotypes related to criminality. The police, courts and penal institutions are coercive mechanisms of social control which reinforce national oppression and class exploitation.
Mapping Police Violence says on its website:
“When examining data around police violence outcomes of police killings, we show that Blacks are approximately three times more likely to be killed in comparison to their White counterparts (Mapping Police Violence, 2022). Additionally, it is worth noting that 97% of the killings in our database occurred while a police officer was acting in a law enforcement capacity. This dataset does not include killings by vigilantes or security guards who are not off-duty police officers. Recent studies employing Mapping Police Violence data have found that the threshold for police killings of Whites are much higher than those of Blacks (DeAngelis, 2021). Similarly, other research using Fatal Encounters data finds that Blacks are two times more likely to be killed by police ‘…even when there are no other obvious circumstances during the encounter that would make the use of deadly force reasonable.”
These statistics are often hidden from the general public due to the complicity of the corporate and government-controlled media outlets. These entities which pass for objective journalistic institutions are owned by the same class interests which have collaborated with the present administration of President Donald Trump.
The issuing of executive orders which call for the militarization of the streets to implement a neo-fascist agenda must be resisted by broad elements within U.S. society. The role of the police, courts and military forces, including the national guard, will prove critical to the unfolding struggle to reverse the current rightward trajectory.
