MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Attorney’s for two of the former Memphis Police Officers charged with killing Tyre Nichols, filed motions asking to separate their trials from the other officers. Attorney Martin Zummach, who represents Justin Smith, said their motion should be granted if it will give them a fair trial.
Local Memphis Attorney Murray Wells tells ABC24 that this case is different than most others.
“This one is really crazy and I’ve had a lot of cases that are in the news a lot,” Wells said.
Wells said the City of Memphis’ decision to release so much evidence likely plays a key role in how the defendant’s attorneys could be feeling.
“The City of Memphis made some choices in this case that if I was a defense lawyer for one of the officers charged, I would be a little frustrated,” Wells said. “The City of Memphis just broadly dumped everything they had out into the general public and it’s going to be really tough to find anyone in Memphis that doesn’t know about this.”
Attorney Martin Zummach represents former officer and member of the now disbanded SCORPION Unit, Justin smith and Attorney John Keith Perry Jr. represents former officer and SCORPION Unit member Tadarrius Bean.
Both attorneys filed a motion on Wednesday to sever their clients from each other in the case, meaning each defendant would have their own, individual trial.
Perry Jr wrote:
“Clearly the objective is to preserve the dignity of the trial process and ensure that the interest of justice is served. However, the only way this can truly be achieved is by severing the defendants and allowing each one to be tried as individuals, based solely on their individual actions.”
If granted, the motion is likely to increase the amount of time it would take to find enough jurors for each individual trial.
“They would have to sever them in a way that they wouldn’t be doing the trials at the same time,” Wells said. “The severance could be months, even sometimes I’ve seen severance that take a year.”
There’s also a possibility of needing to move the trial to another location, but it may be difficult avoiding people who’ve seen the officers actions and the trial would still need to take place in Tennessee, according to Wells.
“Even if they did a transfer to somewhere, some other jurisdiction, which is a possibility, it’s still going to be really hard not to find somebody that knows about it,” Wells said.
“Not only do [people] know the story, [but] they’ve seen the video, they’ve seen the evidence and they’ve heard people comment on what that evidence means from the police chief to some editor at the New York Times.”
As the five former Memphis Police officers head into court Friday morning, another big question is whether or not additional hours of video and records from the incident will be released to the public.