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After a request from a defense lawyer, the court agreed to delay the release of 20 hours of additional video and audio from the night five officers brutally beat Mr. Nichols, as well as details about charges in the case.
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By Jessica Jaglois and Emily Cochrane
MEMPHIS — Two months after Tyre Nichols was brutally beaten by a group of Memphis police officers, city officials are preparing to release about 20 hours of additional video and audio that could provide more details about what happened on that night in early January.
The public release of the footage had been expected as early as Wednesday afternoon, a day after the city announced that it had concluded administrative investigations into a total of 13 Memphis police officers and four Fire Department employees. Five of those officers — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — have already been charged with second-degree murder, official misconduct, official oppression and kidnapping.
But a few hours before the footage and other materials were expected to be made public on Wednesday, a judge granted a request from Blake Ballin, a lawyer for Mr. Mills, to delay the release of any video, audio, personnel files or reports until both prosecutors and defense lawyers for the officers could review them.
It is unclear how long those reviews will take. The judge, James Jones Jr., said the release of the materials “in the public interest, will be ordered as soon as practicable.” In a statement on Wednesday night, Mr. Ballin said the actions were “the result of the need to balance the interests of transparency with the defendants’ right to a fair trial.”
“It is vital that potential jurors do not form opinions or draw conclusions prior to hearing the actual evidence in this case,” he added.
In a statement, the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office said that it supported the city’s decision to release the footage and hoped to review the material “to ensure it doesn’t prejudice the defendant or jeopardize our prosecution.”
“We know the judge has the final say in this matter and trust that the appropriate decision has been made to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” the statement said. “We will work to review the material promptly in the hopes that the majority of it will be released sooner rather than later.”
At a City Council meeting on Tuesday, Jennifer A. Sink, the chief legal officer for the city of Memphis, said that the city had finished its administrative investigation and was working to release the footage and documents.
A seventh officer, as yet unidentified, had been fired, she said, in addition to the six whose firings were previously announced. Three other officers have been suspended without pay, Ms. Sink said, and one retired before a disciplinary hearing. Administrative charges against two officers were dismissed.
Within the Fire Department, two emergency medical technicians and a lieutenant were fired, and a fourth employee was suspended, Ms. Sink said at the meeting. Details of the administrative charges and disciplinary decisions that were not previously announced were expected to be released along with the new video footage and audio.
Mr. Nichols, a 29-year-old FedEx worker and aspiring photographer, died three days after five officers repeatedly kicked, punched and beat him after pulling him over on the night of Jan. 7. The violence and callousness, captured on camera in videos that were released by the city almost three weeks later, shocked Memphis residents and people across the nation; it also exposed a pattern of intimidation and brutality by officers responsible for protecting the public.
The city has not released footage of the police stopping Mr. Nichols, who was Black, as he was driving home. Police officers initially said Mr. Nichols was driving recklessly, but some of the officers who pulled him over and chased him did not turn on their body cameras, or removed them during the encounter — a policy violation — according to police records.
The hour of body camera and surveillance footage that was released in late January instead showed in graphic detail how the stop became violent, as five officers, all Black men, forced Mr. Nichols from his car and threatened him, even though he did not appear to resist them. After one officer sprayed pepper spray at his face, Mr. Nichols broke away from them and ran toward his family’s house, which was nearby.
Officers soon caught up with Mr. Nichols and beat him for three minutes as he screamed for his mother and attempted to shield himself from their blows. According to internal affairs documents, one officer, Demetrius Haley, took a photo of Mr. Nichols, bloodied and propped up against a car, and sent it to at least five people.
Mr. Nichols was taken to a hospital, where he arrived in critical condition, and died three days later.
At a hearing last month, Mr. Bean, Mr. Haley, Mr. Martin, Mr. Mills and Mr. Smith pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges they face.
The Memphis Police Department fired the five officers shortly after Mr. Nichols’s death. A state agency is reviewing a request that all five be permanently barred from working as police officers elsewhere in the state.
A sixth officer, Preston Hemphill, was dismissed from the force in late January, after he was found to have fired a Taser at Mr. Nichols as he fled from the initial encounter with the officers. Mr. Hemphill, who is white, has not been charged with a crime, but the police department has asked that he, like the others, be banned from working for any Tennessee police force.
The other seven officers and four Fire Department employees have also not been charged with crimes, though they faced internal investigations. Two E.M.T.s, Robert Long and JaMichael Sandridge, and Lt. Michelle Whitaker, all of whom responded to the scene of the beating, were fired on Jan. 30. Officials said Ms. Whitaker did not get out of the fire truck, and that Mr. Long and Mr. Sandridge waited 19 minutes to give care to Mr. Nichols.
City, police and fire department officials have pledged to take additional steps, including toughening city ordinances that help govern the police department. The Scorpion unit — the high-profile specialized unit that the five officers belonged to — has been disbanded, and the leaders of both the police and fire departments have said they intend to overhaul the cultures of their respective agencies.
The Justice Department confirmed on Wednesday morning that it would examine the Memphis Police Department’s practices and its use of force, specialized units and de-escalation tactics, reviewing policies, training and data. Separately, the agency also plans to create a guide for mayors and police chiefs around the country “to help them assess the appropriateness of the use of specialized units.”
Both Mayor Jim Strickland and Cerelyn Davis, the police chief, had requested the investigation into the Police Department.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Ms. Sink did not explain what led to the charges against the remaining group of police and fire department employees, who have not yet been publicly identified, or why their punishments varied. But she previously told the City Council that the investigation had extended beyond officers who were physically present at the scene.
“We get one shot — one shot to do this,” she told the Council in late February.
On Tuesday, she said all the officers who had struck or aimed a Taser at Mr. Nichols had been fired in January. One person who was suspended without pay, she added, placed his hands on Mr. Nichols’s legs “at the tail end” of the encounter.
“But that was not a strike or an assault,” Ms. Sink told the City Council.
Council members appeared incensed to learn that one police officer, facing administrative charges, retired before a hearing could be scheduled and before he could still receive a pension. At the hearing, which Ms. Sink said took place despite his retirement, officials said the recommendation would have been to fire the officer.
“It’s upsetting,” said JB Smiley Jr., the vice chairman of the Memphis City Council. Referring to the fact that Mr. Nichols’s mother and stepfather are Memphis taxpayers, he added: “I just don’t like the fact that his parents essentially is paying this officer to go on and live. That’s troubling. We have to find ways to to fix that.”
All of the disciplined officers will be able to appeal. On Friday, Mr. Long, one of the E.M.T.s whose license was suspended, had an initial hearing to challenge the suspension, telling officials that the police officers that night were “impeding patient care” and had refused to remove Mr. Nichols’s handcuffs.
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