A federal judge has thrown out the convictions of three former Memphis police officers in the fatal 2023 beating of Tyre Nichols and ordered that they be retried. Chief U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman issued the ruling on 28 Aug 2025, granting new trials to Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who were found guilty in October 2024 of obstruction of justice through witness tampering after Nichols’ death. Lipman said the defendants’ constitutional right to an impartial tribunal was compromised by comments attributed to then-presiding Judge Mark S. Norris. According to a notice filed by federal prosecutors, Norris told officials he believed the Memphis Police Department was "infiltrated to the top with gang members" and suggested at least one defendant was gang-affiliated, remarks made shortly after a law clerk of his was shot during a carjacking. Norris recused himself from the case in June; Lipman concluded that the "risk of bias here is too high to be constitutionally tolerable," even though she found no impropriety in his trial rulings. Nichols, 29, died three days after officers yanked him from his car, pepper-sprayed, Tasered, punched and kicked him following a traffic stop on 7 Jan 2023—an assault partly captured on surveillance video that spurred nationwide protests and renewed demands for police reform. Bean and Smith were acquitted of the most serious civil-rights charges during the 2024 federal trial; Haley was convicted of violating Nichols’ civil rights as well as witness tampering. Two other officers involved in the incident, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., previously pleaded guilty to federal civil-rights violations and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Lipman has not yet set a date for the retrial of Bean, Haley and Smith, and she directed lawyers to submit briefs on which charges should be reheard.