3 Former Officers Acquitted of Most Serious Charge in Tyre Nichols’s Death
The New York Times
The former officers were found guilty of witness tampering but not of the charge that would have held them responsible for causing his death.
Three former Memphis police officers were found guilty on Thursday of federal witness tampering charges in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man. But all three defendants were acquitted of the more serious charge of violating his civil rights by causing his death.
One officer, Demetrius Haley, was convicted on a lesser charge of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing bodily injury.
The three defendants — Mr. Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith — and two other former officers who pleaded guilty to their role in the violence, still face additional state charges, including second-degree murder.
The mixed verdict in the federal trial in Memphis comes nearly two years after Mr. Nichols’s death, which sickened many across the nation, who viewed it as the latest example of a young Black man being subjected to excessive force at the hands of the police.
Video of the January 2023 encounter showed that after Mr. Nichols fled a traffic stop, officers viciously punched and kicked him, ignoring his cries for his mother and his attempts to comply with a barrage of conflicting commands. None of the officers reported the extent of the beating.
Sentencing on the federal convictions is expected to occur in January, with the witness tampering charge carrying a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The most serious charge could have led to a life sentence.
A businessman in the Bronx falsified information on thousands of returns, committing one of the largest tax frauds in Department of Justice history, prosecutors said.
Officials in Wisconsin gave little new information on Tuesday about a shooting that left a student and a teacher dead and six others injured.
The president-elect’s latest attempt to overturn his Manhattan conviction was rebuffed by the judge overseeing the case, who called it “mere hearsay and conjecture.”
Undocumented immigrants whose children or spouses are U.S. citizens are feeling particularly vulnerable to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats to push them out.
The man whom authorities call a serial killer was charged with second-degree murder in the case of Valerie Mack, who disappeared in 2000.
The Commerce Department is banning the few remaining operations of China Telecom in the United States, a move that appears unlikely to deter Beijing from conducting sophisticated cyberoperations.
The police in Wisconsin are working to establish a motive for the attack, which left a student and teacher dead and six others injured.
The defendant, Rex Heuermann, is due in court Tuesday. Investigators have been trying to tie him to other unsolved killings on Long Island.
Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to withhold as much as $4.3 million in matching funds from Mayor Eric Adams, hampering his re-election bid.
He built Mississippi’s Republican Party into a conservative powerhouse, making himself a regional power broker in the process.