In a late twist in the Tyre Nichols case, attorneys for Nichols’ mother have asked a federal court to remove five former Memphis police officers from the family’s civil rights lawsuit, a procedural move that could reshape one of the city’s most closely watched cases. The filing adds a new wrinkle to litigation that has run alongside state criminal trials and federal proceedings for nearly three years.
The brief asks the court to drop Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith from Wells v. City of Memphis, according to the Daily Memphian. The outlet reported in a one-sentence March 28, 2026, docket update that the motion is the latest development in the nearly three-year-old civil case.
All five officers were fired from the Memphis Police Department after Nichols’ Jan. 7, 2023, traffic stop and later became the focus of state and federal prosecutions. Federal reporting shows that Martin and Mills pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges, while the other officers faced trials and convictions on related obstruction and witness-tampering counts, with mixed outcomes in state court, according to the AP…