Memphis, Tennessee (AP) — Memphis police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death wanted to punish him after he ran from a 2023 traffic stop and thought they could get away with it, a prosecutor said Wednesday as closing arguments began in the federal trial of three of the officers.
“They wanted it to be a beatdown,” prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert told jurors in the federal trial of Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who are accused of violating Nichols’ civil rights and of trying to cover up the beating. “That’s what it was.”
Prosecutors have argued the beating was part of a common police practice referred to in officer slang as the “street tax” or “run tax. ”…