A federal judge on Thursday ordered a new trial for three former Memphis police officers found guilty of charges related to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker, in 2023. She cited concerns about the appearance of bias, pointing to comments that the judge who presided over the trial reportedly made afterward, suggesting that one of the defendants was a gang member.
Last fall, a federal jury acquitted the former officers of the most serious charge, that they had violated Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing his death. The jury found them guilty on federal witness tampering charges.
But just days before the three men were to be sentenced, Judge Mark Norris abruptly recused himself from the case.
Court documents unsealed on Thursday, as well as the judicial order, show that the defendants requested a new trial after the U.S. attorney’s office disclosed conversations that took place after the verdict. One of Judge Norris’s law clerks had been shot during an apparent carjacking in October, days after the verdict, and the judge repeatedly expressed frustration with the police investigation and lack of federal charges in that case to federal prosecutors, according to the documents.
Then, in a May meeting with the prosecutors, Judge Norris suggested that one of the defendants in the Nichols case was a member of a gang, according to the documents. He went on to say that the gang might have been responsible for the shooting of his law clerk, because the law clerk had been staying at the home of another clerk who had worked on the case.
Those comments prompted a federal prosecutor to recall a conversation she’d had with Judge Norris months earlier, during which the judge told her that the Memphis Police Department was “infiltrated to the top with gang members,” according to the documents.
In court filings unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Department said there was no evidence that any of the officers charged in the Nichols case, or any Memphis police officials, were in a gang.
The three officers asked for a new trial in June, arguing that the judge’s reported comments showed he was biased against not only them, but also the Memphis Police Department.
Chief Judge Sheryl H. Lipman, who was assigned the case after Judge Norris’s recusal, granted the request for a new trial on Thursday, saying that it “would serve the interest of justice.”
In her order, she said that had the request been based only on Judge Norris’s conduct during the trial, “then a new trial would be unnecessary.”
But, she concluded, “the risk of bias here is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.”
Judge Norris, who was nominated by President Trump in 2018, has given no reason for his recusal. Judge Lipman’s order notes that her decision was based on the “unrebutted description of the conversations as presented.”
An assistant who answered the phone in Judge Norris’s chambers on Thursday said the judge could not publicly comment given the ongoing case. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis, which had argued against a new trial, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The three former officers — Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean and Justin Smith — had been scheduled for sentencing December. Two other former officers charged in the Nichols case — Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr. — pleaded guilty and testified against their former colleagues.
“Judge Lipman did the morally and ethically correct thing,” said Martin Zummach, a lawyer for Mr. Smith.
Lawyers for Mr. Haley and Mr. Bean did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Nichols was driving home from work on Jan. 7, 2023, when he was stopped by some of the officers for speeding up to beat a red light. Surveillance and body camera footage showed that he was aggressively yanked out of the car. After he broke free and ran away, officers caught up to Mr. Nichols, punching and kicking him while he cried for his mother.
Mr. Nichols died three days later.
The officers were fired shortly after, as the brutal footage horrified many in Memphis and across the country. But the case has produced mixed verdicts over the course of two trials, one in state court and one in federal. All three men have maintained their innocence, arguing that the use of force was in line with their training.
An out-of-town jury acquitted the officers in May of state charges that included second-degree murder. But in a separate federal case last fall, a jury found Mr. Haley, Mr. Bean and Mr. Smith guilty on a charge of witness tampering. Mr. Haley was also found guilty of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing bodily injury.
At least some of the federal charges will be revisited in a new trial. Judge Lipman, an Obama nominee who has sat on the court since 2014, gave the parties until Sept. 15 to say what charges should go to trial.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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