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  • 2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

    2 witnesses in Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial testify Murdaugh’s voice is on video made just before killings | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two witnesses in the murder trial of Alex Murdaugh told the court Wednesday they are “100%” certain that Murdaugh’s voice is on footage prosecutors say undermines the disgraced former South Carolina attorney’s claim he was not present at the scene of the killings when his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul were fatally shot.

    The video, just short of a minute long, was filmed on Paul’s phone starting at 8:44 p.m. the night of the killings in 2021, according to Lt. David Britton Dove, a supervisor in the computer crimes center at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division who extracted forensic data from the phones belonging to Murdaugh, his son and his wife. In his review of the trio’s phones, the footage was the only video or photo Dove deemed relevant to the investigation, he said, telling the court it appeared to be recorded in the area of the Murdaugh family’s kennels.

    Three different voices could be heard in the footage, Dove testified Wednesday. And while Dove did not personally know the voices, he said, “You can tell that they’re different voices.”

    Prosecutors believe one of those voices belongs to Murdaugh, and that voice is the only other on the video besides the victims and places him at the scene at the time of the murders. Two witnesses Wednesday backed up that claim.

    Rogan Gibson, who described himself as a close friend of Paul’s and the Murdaughs as being like a second family, told investigators shortly after the killings that along with the voices of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, he was “99% sure” the third person heard was Alex Murdaugh. Last November, he told investigators that he was 100% sure, and repeated that in court Wednesday.

    When asked by state prosecutor Creighton Waters if he recognized Alex’s voice, Gibson said, “Yes, sir.”

    “100%?” asked Waters. “Yes, sir” replied Gibson.

    Will Loving, another witness who was Paul’s friend, also testified that he was “100%” sure it was Alex’s voice on the video.

    Prosecutors have indicated cell phone evidence is key in their case against Murdaugh, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of his wife Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and his 22-year-old son Paul on June 7, 2021.

    Murdaugh called 911 the night of the killings to report he’d found his wife and son shot dead at the family’s home in Islandton, South Carolina – a property known as Moselle.

    But prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to avoid “personal legal and financial ruin,” per court filings. Separate from the murder charges, he is also facing 99 charges stemming from alleged financial crimes, per the state attorney general.

    Evidence will show, the state has claimed, that Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were “about to come to light” when his wife and son were killed.

    Gibson said he had known the Murdochs practically all his life, and testified that it was Alex Murdaugh’s voice that could be heard in the video calling for the family’s yellow lab, Bubba, to drop a chicken from his mouth.

    Paul Murdaugh called Gibson the night of the shooting, at 8:40 p.m., to ask if something was wrong with Gibson’s dog, Cash, which was in a kennel at the Murdaugh property. The two tried to hold a video call so that Gibson could see the dog, but the reception was not good enough, Gibson testified. Paul told him he would take a video of the dog and send it to him if the FaceTime call didn’t work, Gibson said, but he never received the footage.

    Gibson testified that he tried to call and text Paul after the failed video call, but his friend never responded.

    Murdaugh appeared to sob while the video played in court the first time.

    Prosecutor Waters of the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting the case due to the Murdaugh family’s decades-old ties with the local solicitor’s office – teased the video in his opening statement last week, saying that while Alex claimed to investigators he was napping at the house, video evidence would show he was present at the family’s kennels, where the bodies of his son and wife were found.

    “You’ll see that video and you’ll hear from witnesses that identify Paul’s voice, Maggie’s voice and Alex’s voice,” Waters said, telling the court Paul was filming a dog that belonged to his friend because they were concerned about the animal’s tail. Murdaugh “told anyone who would listen he was never there … The evidence will show that he was there. He was at the murder scene with the two victims” minutes before Paul’s phone “locks forever.”

    In his own opening statement, defense attorney Dick Harpootlian said the audio from the video obtained by the prosecution would simply show Murdaugh and his wife having a “normal discussion” with “no animosity.” Paul is “very happy,” Harpootlian claimed. “Nobody’s down there threatening him. Daddy is not pulling out a shotgun and killing him.”

    During cross examination by the defense Wednesday, Gibson said Alex and Paul Murdaugh had a great relationship, and spoke about Alex as an affectionate and loving father who was involved with his sons. Alex was like a second father to him, Gibson said.

    Murdaugh cried a lot and “was just real distraught, sad, just tore up” about the deaths, Gibson testified.

    “Can you think of any circumstance that you can envision, knowing them as you do, where Alex would brutally murder Paul and Maggie?” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked.

    “Not that I can think of,” Gibson answered.

    The defense attorney also questioned Gibson about the sheds, workshops and vehicles frequently being left unlocked at the Murdaugh property, and guns often left unprotected or just laying around. Gibson conceded it would be easy for someone to sneak on the property and steal something. On redirect from the prosecution, Gibson acknowledged he had never heard Paul complain about people doing that.

    In his testimony Tuesday, Dove, the 15th witness called by the prosecution, detailed the communications of Maggie’s phone the night of the killings, including a text from Alex at 9:47 p.m. that read, “Call me babe.” It was never read.

    In his opening statement last week, Waters told the jury Murdaugh repeatedly called his wife that evening before texting her that he was going to visit his mother and driving to Almeda, South Carolina.

    “It’s up to you,” Waters said, “to decide whether or not he’s trying to manufacture an alibi.”

    According to Dove’s testimony Tuesday, the night she was killed, Maggie read two text messages – at 8:31 p.m. and 8:49 p.m. – in a group chat with family about Murdaugh’s father, who was in ailing health, seconds before her phone locked for the final time.

    The display of Maggie’s phone turned off minutes later, at 8:53 p.m. At 8:54 p.m., the orientation changed to landscape and the camera activated – an indication, Dove said, the phone was moved and the camera tried to locate Maggie’s face in an unsuccessful attempt to unlock.

    Maggie’s phone showed repeated missed calls from her husband over the course of the next hour, Dove testified, along with evidence it had switched to portrait mode. That, the expert said, was another indication the phone was likely held in someone’s hand. A final call from Murdaugh was missed just before 10:04 p.m.

    But those calls appeared to be missing from Murdaugh’s phone, Dove said Wednesday, testifying that call logs show a gap in calls between June 4 and 10:25 p.m. the night of June 7.

    “A gap like that would indicate” that calls were “actually removed from there,” Dove said, adding the only way to remove the calls from the log would be to do so manually.

    Asked specifically if the calls were deleted from the log, Dove said, “it would appear that way,” noting there was no way to know when they were deleted or who was responsible.

    Additionally, Murdaugh was in the same group chat as his wife when relatives were texting about his dying father, Dove said Wednesday. And while evidence shows Maggie read both messages, Murdaugh did not read them until the next day, Dove said, despite telling state investigators about his concern for his father’s health.

    This behavior appeared to be outside Murdaugh’s typical texting habits, Dove testified, saying Murdaugh typically had a habit of checking texts within 5 minutes, or sometimes 30 to 40 minutes.

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  • Pope Francis attracts more than one million worshippers to DRC Mass | CNN

    Pope Francis attracts more than one million worshippers to DRC Mass | CNN

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    Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
    CNN
     — 

    More than one million people attended Pope Francis’ Mass in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Wednesday, the Vatican Press Office said, citing figures estimated by local authorities.

    Francis’ trip to the DRC – the first papal visit since 1985 – comes at a time the African nation is beset by armed fighting and a worsening refugee crisis.

    It is part of a six-day trip in the DRC and South Sudan – two countries where Catholics comprise about half of the population and the Church is a key stakeholder in health and education systems as well as in democracy-building efforts. Both countries have abundant natural resources, but are grappling with poverty and strife.

    Pope Francis celebrates a holy Mass at N'Dolo Airport in Kinshasa in the DRC on Wednesday.

    A CNN team on the ground witnessed crowds singing and dancing at N’Dolo Airport from the early hours of the morning, waiting for their first glimpse of the Pope, who toured the air field in an open Popemobile.

    Francis spoke to attendees in his homily about peace and directly challenged those who wield weapons.

    “May it be the right time for you, who in this country call yourself a Christian but commit violence,” Francis said. “To you the Lord says, ‘Put down your arms and embrace mercy.’”

    “We Christians are called to cooperate with everyone, to break the cycle of violence, to dismantle the machinations of hatred,” the Pope said.

    Francis said the population was suffering from “wounds that ache, continually infected by hatred and violence, while the medicine of justice and the balm of hope never seem to arrive,” according to Reuters.

    Decades of militia violence have taken grip of the DRC, as state forces struggle to curb rebel groups. Conflict between government troops and the M23 rebel group, which seeks control of the country from its stronghold in eastern DRC, has left many dead and displaced thousands.

    According to the UN World Food Programme, 26 million people in the DRC face severe hunger.

    Francis met with victims of violence from the east during his visit, and said he was “left without words” after hearing their harrowing stories.

    “We can only weep in silence,” the Pope said, as he thanked the victims for their courageous testimony.

    He is scheduled to leave Kinshasa Friday for South Sudan’s capital, Juba, where he will be joined by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.

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  • Cohen says he handed over phones to Manhattan DA | CNN Politics

    Cohen says he handed over phones to Manhattan DA | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Michael Cohen, former President Donald Trump’s former attorney, has handed over his cell phones to Manhattan prosecutors, he told “CNN This Morning” on Wednesday.

    Prosecutors are zeroing in on the Trump Organization’s involvement in hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels as part of an effort to stop her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump days before the 2016 presidential election. A grand jury in New York has been convened to hear evidence related to the effort, sources familiar with the matter have told CNN.

    Cohen met last month with the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Trump has denied the affair.

    CNN has reported that former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker was set to meet with prosecutors this week as part of the probe. The district attorney’s office also reached out to Keith Davidson, who represented Daniels in the hush money deal, in recent weeks.

    Manhattan prosecutors are looking into whether Trump and his business falsified business records by improperly treating the reimbursement as a legal expense. That charge is a misdemeanor in New York unless it can be tied to another crime, such as campaign finance laws.

    Prosecutors working under the previous DA, Cy Vance, had explored bringing charges related to the hush money scheme but some attorneys on the team were not convinced that a charge involving a federal election law violation would survive legal challenges, people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

    Last year, a jury convicted two Trump Organization entities of a decade-long tax fraud scheme, which appears to have emboldened prosecutors.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Tech CEO apologizes for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in layoff announcement | CNN Business

    Tech CEO apologizes for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in layoff announcement | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A tech CEO is apologizing after quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in a layoffs announcement.

    On January 24, PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada sent a letter to employees announcing the digital operations management company would eliminate about 7% of its workforce.

    Tejada quoted King at the end of that letter.

    “I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,’” she wrote. “PagerDuty is a leader that stands behind its customers, its values, and our vision — for an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust.”

    On Friday, Tejada apologized for quoting King.

    “The quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive,” she said in the memo. “I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.”

    When asked for additional comment, a representative for PagerDuty pointed to the blog post updated with Tejada’s apology.

    The tech industry has seen a spate of layoffs in recent weeks. Amazon announced in early January that it would lay off more than 18,000 workers. And Salesforce said it plans to cut about 10% of its staff. Microsoft, meanwhile, is laying off 10,000 employees.

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  • Former Wagner commander describes brutality and incompetence on the frontline | CNN

    Former Wagner commander describes brutality and incompetence on the frontline | CNN

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    Oslo, Norway
    CNN
     — 

    A former Wagner mercenary says the brutality he witnessed in Ukraine ultimately pushed him to defect, in an exclusive CNN interview on Monday.

    Wagner fighters were often sent into battle with little direction, and the company’s treatment of reluctant recruits was ruthless, Andrei Medvedev told CNN’s Anderson Cooper from Norway’s capital Oslo, where he is seeking asylum after crossing that country’s arctic border from Russia.

    “They would round up those who did not want to fight and shoot them in front of newcomers,” he alleges. “They brought two prisoners who refused to go fight and they shot them in front of everyone and buried them right in the trenches that were dug by the trainees.”

    CNN has not been able to independently verify his account and Wagner has not replied to a request for comment.

    The 26-year-old, who says he previously served in the Russian military, joined Wagner as a volunteer. He crossed into Ukraine less than ten days after signing his contract in July 2021, serving near Bakhmut, the frontline city in the Donetsk region. The mercenary group has emerged as a key player in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    Medvedev said he reported directly to the group’s founders, Dmitry Utkin and Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    He refers to Prigozhin as “the devil.” If he was a Russian hero, he would have taken a gun and run with the soldiers,” Medvedev said.

    Prigozhin has previously confirmed that Medvedev had served in his company, and said that he “should have been prosecuted for attempting to mistreat prisoners.”

    Medvedev told CNN that he did not want to comment on what he’d done himself while fighting in Ukraine.

    Wagner lacked a tactical strategy, with troops coming up with plans on the fly, Medvedev said.

    “There were no real tactics at all. We just got orders about the position of the adversary…There were no definite orders about how we should behave. We just planned how we would go about it, step by step. Who would open fire, what kind of shifts we would have…How it how it how it would turn out that was our problem,” he said.

    Medvedev spoke to CNN from Oslo after crossing its border in a daring defection that, he says saw him evade arrest “at least ten times” and dodge bullets from Russian forces. He crossed into Norway over an icy lake using white camouflage to blend in, he said.

    He told CNN that he knew by the sixth day of his deployment in Ukraine that he did not want to return for another tour after witnessing troops being turned into cannon fodder.

    He started off with 10 men under his command, a number that grew once prisoners were allowed to join, he said. “There were more dead bodies, and more, and more, people coming in. In the end I had a lot of people under my command,” he said. “I couldn’t count how many. They were in constant circulation. Dead bodies, more prisoners, more dead bodies, more prisoners.”

    Advocacy groups say prisoners who enlisted were told their families would receive a pay-out of five million rubles ($71,000) if they died in the war.

    But in reality “nobody wanted to pay that kind of money,” Medvedev said. He alleged that many Russians who died fighting in Ukraine were “just declared missing.”

    Medvedev was emotional at times in the interview, telling CNN that he saw courage on both sides of the war.

    “You know, I saw courage on both sides, on the Ukrainian side as well, and our boys too… I just want them to know that,” he said.

    He added that he wants to now share his story in order to help bring Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice.

    “Sooner or later the propaganda in Russia will stop working, the people will rise up and all our leaders …will be up for grabs and a new leader will emerge.”

    Wagner is often described as Putin’s off-the-books troops. It has expanded its footprint globally since its creation in 2014, and has been accused of war crimes in Africa, Syria and Ukraine.

    When asked if he fears the fate meted on another Wagner defector, Yevgeny Nuzhin, who was murdered on camera with a sledgehammer, Medvedev said Nuzhin’s death emboldened him to leave.

    “I would just say that it made me bolder, more determined to leave,” he said.

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  • A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

    A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    [Breaking news update, published at 5:55 p.m. ET]

    Three Memphis Fire Department personnel who responded to the Tyre Nichols beating have been fired, according to the department.

    [Previous story, published at 5:04 p.m. ET]

    Fallout from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols now includes a sixth Memphis officer removed from duties, demands for more criminal charges against officers and calls for nationwide police reform.

    Officer Preston Hemphill “was relieved of duty with the other officers” involved in the January 7 encounter with Nichols, Memphis police Maj. Karen Rudolph said Monday.

    Hemphill has actually been on administrative leave since the beginning of the investigation, Memphis police spokesperson Kimberly Elder told CNN. Elder declined to say whether Hemphill is being paid or whether any other officers were put on leave.

    Body cam footage reveals Hemphill fired a Taser at Nichols and saying, “One of them prongs hit the bastard.”

    Later, Hemphill says to another officer: “I hope they stomp his ass.”

    Five other Memphis officers have been fired and face charges of second-degree murder in connection with the beating death of Nichols.

    Hemphill has not been charged. “He was never present at the second scene” that escalated to the beating, and Hemphill has been cooperating with the investigation, his attorney Lee Gerald said.

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family wonder why authorities were quick to fire five Black police officers and charge them with murder – while staying relatively quiet about Hemphill role in the encounter.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged, is extremely disappointing. Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light?” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a statement Monday.

    “It certainly begs the question why the White officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye.”

    But officials knew releasing video footage of Nichols’ beating without filing charges against officers could be “incendiary,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Sunday. “The best solution was to expedite the investigation and to expedite the consideration of charges so that the charges could come first and then the release of the video,” he said.

    Video of the gruesome beating “outraged” the Memphis police chief. The footage showed “acts that defy humanity,” Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said.

    The attack has fueled broader public scrutiny of how US police use force, especially against people of color. And weeks after Nichols’ death, many questions remain. Among them:

    • Whether more officers will face charges or other: Memphis City Council member Frank Colvett said he wanted to know why more officers at the scene of Nichols’ beating scene had not been disciplined or suspended.

    It’s also not clear whether Hemphill or others will face criminal charges. “We are looking at all of the officers and first responders at the scene,” Shelby County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Erica Williams said Monday. “They could face charges, or they could not, but we are looking at everyone.”

    It was “unprecedented” for indictment charges against the officers to come within weeks, said Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney.

    • How Memphis’ police chief will fare: While some have praised Chief Davis’ swift action in the case, she also created the controversial SCORPION unit that the charged officers were linked to. “There is a reckoning coming for the police department and for the leadership,” Colvett said. “She’s going to have to answer not just to the council but to the citizens – and really the world.”

    • What happens to fire and sheriff’s personnel: Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

    • If Nichols’ death spurs national-level police reform: The Congressional Black Caucus has asked for a meeting with President Joe Biden this week to push for negotiations on police reform.

    Video of the fatal encounter is difficult to watch. It starts with a traffic stop and later shows officers repeatedly beating Nichols with batons, punching him and kicking him – even as his hands are restrained behind his back at one point.

    Nichols is heard calling for his mother as he was kicked and pepper-sprayed.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs. Another 23 minutes passed before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was hospitalized and died three days later.

    “All of these officers failed their oath,” said Crump, one of the attorneys representing the Nichols family, “They failed their oath to protect and serve.”

    At the residential street corner where Nichols was beaten, mourners created a makeshift memorial. Across the country, protesters marched in cities including New York, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles.

    Nichols’ family remembered him as a good son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets. They recalled his smile and hugs and mourned the moments they’ll never have again.

    Family members promised to “keep saying his name until justice is served.”

    Protesters gather Saturday in New York to denounce the police beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

    The five fired officers charged in connection with Nichols’ beating – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – are expected to be arraigned February 17.

    From top left: Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Demetrius Haley. From bottom left: Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean.

    Mills Jr. didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation with Nichols and instead was a “victim” of the system he worked within, his attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN.

    Martin’s attorney, William Massey, said “no one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”

    Attorneys for the other former officers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The Memphis Police Association declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it,” the union said in a statement.

    The Shelby County district attorney’s office said each of the five fired officers face seven counts, including: second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping in possession of a deadly weapon, official misconduct and official oppression.

    But a second-degree murder charge – which requires intent to kill – might be harder to prove than a first-degree felony murder charge, said Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice at Brooklyn Law School.

    “For first-degree felony murder, it means that a murder happened in conjunction with an underlying felony,” said Hoag-Fordjour, noting she practiced law in Tennessee.

    “Here, every single charge that the Memphis district attorney charged these five individuals with were felonies. And the underlying felony that would support a first-degree murder charge – felony murder – is kidnapping.”

    The kidnapping counts against officers may seem unusual because “we obviously deputize law enforcement officials to make seizures, to make arrests,” Hoag-Fordjour told “CNN This Morning” on Monday.

    “But at this point … what would have been legitimate behavior crossed the line into illegitimacy.”

    While first-degree felony murder might be easier to prove, Hoag-Fordjour said, second-degree murder convictions are still possible.

    Under Tennessee law, a person can be convicted of second-degree murder if they could be reasonably certain their actions would result in somebody’s death, Hoag-Fordjour said.

    And some of the blows dealt to Nichols – including kicks to the head and strikes with a baton while he was subdued on the ground – could be deemed deadly, she said.

    The five fired officers charged in Nichols’ beating were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph said Saturday.

    Hemphill, the officer placed on administrative leave, was also a member of the SCORPION unit, a source familiar with his assignment confirmed to CNN.

    The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

    “That reprehensible conduct we saw in that video, we think this was part of the culture of the SCORPION unit,” Crump said.

    “We demanded that they disbanded immediately before we see anything like this happen again,” he said. “It was the culture that was just as guilty for killing Tyre Nichols as those officers.”

    Memphis police will permanently deactivate the unit. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted,” the department said.

    Colvett supported the dismantling of the SCORPION unit.

    “I think the smart move and the mayor is correct in shutting it down,” the council member said. “These kinds of actions are not representative of the Memphis Police Department.”

    The case should give the city a chance to “dig deeper” into community and police relations, City Council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas said.

    “We saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.

    Crump called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but t.

    “The brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was murder and is a grim reminder that we still have a long way to go in solving systemic police violence in America,” Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Steven Horsford said Sunday in a statement.

    The Tennessee State Conference NAACP president applauded Davis for “doing the right thing” by not waiting six months to a year to fire the officers who beat Tyre Nichols.

    But she had had harsher words for Congress: “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary,” said Gloria Sweet-Love. “The blood of Black America is on your hands. So, stand up and do something.”

    On the state level, two Democratic lawmakers said they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the general assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.

    The bills would seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Tennessee state Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a part of Memphis and Shelby County.

    While Democrats hold the minority, with 24 representatives compared to 99 GOP representatives, this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature, Rep. Joe Towns Jr. said.

    “You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something,” he said. “If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?”

    Correction: An earlier version of this story had the wrong first name for Tyre Nichols.

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  • Monterey Park hero and Tyre Nichols’ family invited to attend State of the Union address | CNN Politics

    Monterey Park hero and Tyre Nichols’ family invited to attend State of the Union address | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers have invited the parents of Tyre Nichols and the man who disarmed a gunman in a Southern California mass shooting to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on February 7.

    Nichols’ death days after being beaten by police in Memphis on January 7 and the mass shooting at a Lunar New Year celebration in Monterey Park on January 21 that killed 11 has outraged many Americans and brought renewed calls for sweeping gun and policing reform ahead of Biden’s address.

    Congressional Black Caucus executive director Vincent Evans tweeted on Sunday that the caucus chairman, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada, invited Nichols’ parents to Washington as guests of the caucus, and that they have accepted the invitation.

    CNN has reached out to Nichols’ family for comment.

    Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the Monterey Park gunman as he attempted to attack a second dance studio near Los Angeles, was invited to the speech by Democratic Rep. Judy Chu of California.

    Chu said Tsay’s story “was so amazing” that she called him to be her guest at the president’s address. But just one hour after Chu spoke with him, Biden called Tsay to personally offer his own invite, Chu said. The White House declined to comment on Sunday.

    Tsay, 26, was awarded a medal of courage from the Alhambra Police Department during a ceremony Sunday. Biden called him last week to thank him for his act of bravery, CNN previously reported.

    “I wanted to call to see how you’re doing and thank you for taking such incredible action in the face of danger,” Biden told Tsay. “I don’t think you understand just how much you’ve done for so many people who are never going to even know you. But I want them to know more about you.”

    In an interview on MSNBC on Sunday, Horsford said he called Nichols’ family to extend the invitation.

    “Earlier today, I spoke to the family of Tyre Nichols on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus to first extend our condolences to them, to let them know that we stand with them, to ask them what they want from us in this moment, to honor the legacy of their son, and to extend an invitation to them to be our guest at the State of the Union on February 7 so that we can make sure that this issue of police culture, culture of policing, which, unfortunately in this country has now contributed to countless deaths,” he said.

    Protesters took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent police beating.

    Nichols, 29, could be heard yelling for his mother in the video, which begins with a traffic stop and goes on to show officers repeatedly beating him with batons, punching him and kicking him – including at one point while his hands were restrained behind his back.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs, and 23 minutes went by before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was eventually hospitalized and died three days later.

    Biden said in a statement he was “outraged and deeply pained” after seeing the video. “It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.”

    The CBC is requesting a meeting with Biden this week to push for negotiations on police reform, Horsford said in a statement Sunday.

    “We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” he wrote. “The brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was murder and is a grim reminder that we still have a long way to go in solving systemic police violence in America.”

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  • Pope Francis to visit two fragile African nations | CNN

    Pope Francis to visit two fragile African nations | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Pope Francis starts a trip on Tuesday to two fragile African nations often forgotten by the world, where protracted conflicts have left millions of refugees and displaced people grappling with hunger.

    The Jan. 31-Feb 5 visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, takes the 86-year-old pope to places where Catholics make up about half of the populations and where the Church is a key player in health and education systems as well as in democracy-building efforts.

    The trip was scheduled to take place last July but was postponed because Francis was suffering a flare-up of a chronic knee ailment. He still uses a wheelchair and cane, but his knee has improved significantly.

    Both countries are rich in natural resources – DRC in minerals and South Sudan in oil – but beset with poverty and strife.

    DRC, which is the second-largest country in Africa and has a population of about 90 million, is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985 when it was known as Zaire.

    Francis had planned to visit the eastern city of Goma but that stop was scrapped following the resurgence of fighting between the army and the M23 rebel group in the area where Italy’s ambassador, his bodyguard and driver were killed in an ambush in 2021.

    Francis will stay in the capital, Kinshasa, but will meet there with victims of violence from the east.

    “Congo is a moral emergency that cannot be ignored,” the Vatican’s ambassador to DRC, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, told Reuters.

    According to the U.N. World Food Programme, 26 million people in the DRC face severe hunger.

    The country’s 45 million-strong Catholic Church has a long history of promoting democracy and, as the pope arrives, it is gearing up to monitor elections scheduled for December.

    “Our hope for the Congo is that this visit will reinforce the Church’s engagement in support of the electoral process,” said Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican, Christ Trott, who spent many years as a diplomat in Africa.

    DRC is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985 when it still was known as Zaire.

    The trip takes on an unprecedented nature on Friday when the pope leaves Kinshasa for South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

    That leg is being made with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.

    “Together, as brothers, we will live an ecumenical journey of peace,” Francis told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday address.

    The three Churches represent the Christian makeup of the world’s youngest country, which gained independence in 2011 from predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of conflict and has a population of around 11 million.

    “This will be a historic visit,” Welby said. “After centuries of division, leaders of three different parts of (Christianity) are coming together in an unprecedented way.”

    Two years after independence, conflict erupted when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with those loyal to Vice President Riek Machar, who is from a different ethnic group. The bloodshed spiralled into a civil war that killed 400,000 people.

    A 2018 deal stopped the worst of the fighting, but parts of the agreement – including the deployment of a re-unified national army – have not yet been implemented.

    There are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan and another 2.3 million have fled the country as refugees, according to the United Nations, which has praised the Catholic Church as a “powerful and active force in building peace and reconciliation in conflict-torn regions”.

    In one of the most remarkable gestures since his papacy began in 2013, Francis knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan’s previously warring leaders during a retreat at the Vatican in April 2019, urging them not to return to civil war.

    Trott, a former ambassador in South Sudan, said he hoped the three Churchmen can convince political leaders to “fulfil the promise of the independence movement”.

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  • Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

    Video of Nichols’ beating prompts renewed calls for police reform | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    New York to San Francisco. Baltimore to Portland. Boston to Los Angeles, and countless cities in between.

    Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video capturing the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    On Sunday morning, Nichols’ family attorney made note of the outrage as he aimed a simple but pointed message at Washington.

    “Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed,” Ben Crump said on CNN’s “State of Union.”

    President Joe Biden referenced the failed legislation in his statement about Nichols on Friday, and many leaders – from the chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio – are acknowledging a potential role for federal legislation.

    The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting a meeting with Biden this week to push for negotiations. “We are calling on our colleagues in the House and Senate to jumpstart negotiations now and work with us to address the public health epidemic of police violence that disproportionately affects many of our communities,” CBC Chair Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, wrote in a statement on Sunday.

    Gloria Sweet-Love, the Tennessee State Conference NAACP president, called on Congress to step up during a Sunday evening news conference in Memphis. “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary. The blood of Black America is on your hands. So stand up and do something.”

    But with Congress as divided as ever, it appears public outrage is once again on a collision course with Washington partisanship.

    Here’s what you need to know about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, why it failed, and what chances it stands in the current political climate.

    The legislation, originally introduced in 2020 and again in 2021, would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction.

    It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.

    According to a fact sheet on the legislation at the time, the measure would also allow “individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.”

    The fact sheet also states that the legislation would “save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants” and would mandate “deadly force be used only as a last resort.”

    The bill twice cleared the House under Democratic control – in 2020 and 2021 – largely along party lines. But it never went anywhere in the Senate, even after Democrats won control in 2021, in part, because of disagreements about qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court.

    Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina spent some six months trying to hash out a deal that could win 60 votes in the Senate, but talks were stymied by a number of complicated issues.

    “It was clear at this negotiating table, in this moment, we were not making progress,” Booker told reporters in the spring of 2021. “In fact, recent back-and-forth with paper showed me that we were actually moving away from it. The negotiations we were in stopped. But the work will continue.”

    With the legislation stuck, Biden signed a more limited executive order to overhaul policing on the second anniversary of Floyd’s death. It took several actions that can be applied to federal officers, including efforts to ban chokeholds, expand the use of body-worn cameras and restrict no-knock warrants, among other things.

    But the president cannot mandate that local law enforcement adopt the measures in his order; the executive action lays out levers the federal government can use, such as federal grants and technical assistance, to incentivize local law enforcement to get on board

    And since then, little has happened on the federal legislative front.

    Here’s the reality: the road for police reform has only become more challenging in the new Congress now that House Republicans, who have placed their priorities elsewhere, are in the majority.

    Senate Democrats picked up one more seat in last year’s midterm elections to pad their majority, but they’re still far short of the 60 votes that would be need for such an effort to succeed. That means any policing overhaul that can find meaningful support in Congress will likely be stripped of the kind of measures that protesters are calling for.

    State officials have been initiating investigations into local police departments, recognizing that the federal government can’t take on every case nationwide.

    And, in some cases, local governments have taken their own steps. In the year after Floyd was killed, at least 25 states had considered some form of qualified immunity reform. In 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed into law a series of police reforms that created a system to decertify law enforcement officers found to have engaged in serious misconduct – joining the majority of states that have similar decertification authorities.

    But, for many, it’s not nearly enough. Read this CNN Opinion piece from Sonia Pruitt, a retired Montgomery County, Maryland, police captain:

    “Many have noted the police assault on Nichols is reminiscent of that on Rodney King, a Black man whose beating at the hands of Los Angeles police officers in 1991 was captured on video. But the beating of Nichols is actually much worse because it shows that after nearly 32 years, the needle of police reform has barely moved, and seemingly minor traffic violations continue to lead to the deaths of Black and other minority men and women in police encounters.”

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  • Protesters across the US decry police brutality after Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Protesters across the US decry police brutality after Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent Memphis police beating that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, among other cities across the nation on Saturday, raising signs bearing his name and calling for an end to abuses of authority.

    In Memphis, at a makeshift memorial near the corner where Nichols was beaten, resident Kiara Hill expressed her disappointment and said the neighborhood was quiet and family oriented.

    “To see the events unfold how they’ve unfolded, with this Tyre Nichols situation, is heartbreaking. I have a son,” Hill told CNN. “And Tyre, out of the officers on the scene, he was the calmest.”

    Nichols could be heard yelling for his mother in the video of the January 7 encounter, which begins with a traffic stop and goes on to show officers repeatedly beating the young Black man with batons, punching him and kicking him – including at one point while his hands are restrained behind his back.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs, and 23 minutes passed before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was eventually hospitalized and died three days later.

    “All of these officers failed their oath,” Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday. “They failed their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video: Was anybody trying to protect and serve Tyre Nichols?”

    Since Nichols’ death, the backlash has been relatively swift. The five Memphis officers involved in the beating – who are also Black – were fired and charged with murder and kidnapping in Nichols’ death. The unit they were part of was disbanded, and state lawmakers representing the Memphis area began planning police reform bills.

    Crump said that the quick firing and arrests of the police officers and release of video should be a “blueprint” for how police brutality allegations are handled going forward. He applauded Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis for arresting and charging the officers within 20 days.

    “When you see police officers commit crimes against citizens, then we want you to act just as swiftly and show as the chief said, the community needs to see it, but we need to see it too when it’s White police officers,” Crump said.

    These are the moments that led to Tyre Nichols’ death

    The five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, among other charges, according to the Shelby County district attorney.

    The officers, identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., are expected to be arraigned February 17.

    The attorney for one of the officers indicted, Mills Jr., put out a statement Friday night saying that he didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation.

    All five officers were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph told CNN on Saturday. The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

    Memphis police announced Saturday that it will disband the unit, saying that “it is in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate the SCORPION Unit.”

    But disbanding the unit without giving officers new training would be “putting lipstick on a pig,” city council chair Martavius Jones told CNN Saturday.

    City council member Patrice Robinson also told CNN disbanding the unit does not go far enough in addressing issues within the agency.

    “We have to fight the bad players in our community, and now we’ve got to fight our own police officers. That is deplorable,” Robinson said. “We’re going to have to do something.”

    Atlanta police officers watch as protesters march during a rally against the fatal Memphis police assault of Tyre Nichols, in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 28, 2023.

    The fallout from the deadly encounter also stretched to other agencies involved.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

    A pair of Democratic state lawmakers said Saturday that they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the Tennessee General Assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.

    The bills will seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a portion of Memphis and Shelby County.

    Rep. Joe Towns Jr., who also represents a portion of Memphis, said legislation could pass through the state house as early as April or May.

    While Democrats hold the minority with 24 representatives compared to the Republican majority of 99 representatives, Towns said this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature.

    “You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something. If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?” Towns said.

    John Miller bodycams orig thumb

    ‘There is no OK here’: Ex-NYPD official reacts to Memphis footage

    By the time she saw her son, badly bruised and swollen in his hospital bed, Nichols’ mother says she knew he wasn’t going to make it.

    “When I saw that, I knew my son was gone, the end,” RowVaughn Wells told CNN.

    Through tears, the mother said the officers charged with her son’s death “brought shame to their own families. They brought shame to the Black community.”

    “I don’t have my baby. I’ll never have my baby again,” she said. But she takes comfort in knowing her son was a good person, she said.

    The 29-year-old was a father and also the baby of his family, the youngest of four children. He was a “good boy” who spent his Sundays doing laundry and getting ready for the week, his mother said.

    Nichols loved being a father to his 4-year-old son, said his family.

    “Everything he was trying to do was to better himself as a father for his 4-year-old son,” Crump said at the family’s news conference.

    “He always said he was going to be famous one day. I didn’t know this is what he meant,” Wells said Friday.

    A verified GoFundMe campaign started in memory of Tyre Nichols had raised more than $936,000 as of early Sunday morning. The online fundraiser was created by Nichols’ mother and reads in part: “My baby was just trying to make it home to be safe in my arms. Tyre was unarmed, nonthreatening, and respectful to police during the entire encounter!”

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  • The names and places that define America’s week of ‘tragedy upon tragedy’ | CNN Politics

    The names and places that define America’s week of ‘tragedy upon tragedy’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Tyre Nichols. Monterey Park. Half Moon Bay.

    Three new entries in America’s roster of tragedy burst from obscurity to their haunting moment in the media spotlight and exemplified societal undercurrents of violence, injustice and grief.

    A week that began with the nation reeling from more mass shootings ended with the release of a video capturing the beating of yet another Black man pulled over for a police traffic stop who ended up dead.

    Nichols, a 29-year-old from Memphis, became the latest victim suddenly introduced to millions of Americans after his death. A grand jury Thursday returned murder indictments against five since-fired police officers involved in his arrest. With tensions rising in Tennessee and further afield, the city of Memphis released body camera and surveillance video of the arrest on Friday evening. The footage drew stunned reaction from law enforcement experts and outrage from officials, including President Joe Biden.

    In California, meanwhile, grieving families are processing the horror that suddenly pitches a town or city into the public eye and epitomizes an epidemic of lone gunmen unleashing massacres in everyday places where people trusted they were safe.

    At a dance studio on Saturday night in Monterey Park, 11 people between the ages of 57 and 76 were killed celebrating Lunar New Year. Unbelievably, on Monday, it happened again. Seven innocent people died in a mass shooting that unfolded at a mushroom farm and near a trucking facility. The community’s sense of peace was “destroyed by senseless death,” California Assemblymember Marc Berman said.

    Aside from the brutal, sudden arrival of needless death, this week’s shootings and the aftermath of the loss of another young man are not linked. But there is a sense that the rituals of anger and mourning after such horrors are familiar. A fresh batch of relatives is thrust into the gauntlet of interviews and news conferences as well as the political melees often stirred by tragic incidents. They are like new characters reciting the same lines of anger and disbelief in an endless cycle of loss.

    The trauma afflicting California and Memphis this week also touches on areas in which a polarized political system has failed, repeatedly, to make progress to stop such tragedies from happening. The rituals after mass shootings – of politicians expressing condolences, liberals demanding gun reform and conservatives deflecting blame from lax firearms laws – lead almost always to not much being done.

    A similarly politicized debate over police reform delivers futility after almost every incident of apparent brutality. After a spate of deaths of young Black men at police hands, a bipartisan attempt to address officer conduct foundered in 2021 and has little chance of a revival in now-divided Washington. Caricatured arguments over whether Democrats want to “defund” the police – many do not – and the amped-up politics around guns effectively paralyze any hope of change.

    The tragedy of Tyre Nichols is deepened by its familiarity. He was taken to the hospital after his arrest on January 7 and died three days later from injuries sustained when he was taken into custody. After his family and attorneys met with police and viewed videos of his arrest, momentum steadily built for accountability as the story generated local and then national headlines. It all led up to Thursday’s indictments.

    The face of Nichols is now smiling out from a photo on every television station or news website. His name has joined those of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright and countless others who in death rose to prominence and became examples of America’s struggles against police brutality. Others like Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, more broadly, have become casualties of societal and individual racism.

    It’s important that these names are remembered – given both the individuals they were and the unresolved national pain they represent. Prominent civil rights and wrongful death attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci made this point in a statement issued on behalf of the Nichols family on Thursday.

    “This young man lost his life in a particularly disgusting manner that points to the desperate need for change and reform to ensure this violence stops occurring during low-threat procedures, like in this case, a traffic stop,” they wrote.

    “This tragedy meets the absolute definition of a needless and unnecessary death. Tyre’s loved ones’ lives were forever changed when he was beaten to death, and we will keep saying his name until justice is served.”

    Yet it’s haunting that millions of Americans who never met Nichols only now know him in death. It’s a dehumanizing trend that victims become metaphors for a social blight or political failures and their lifetimes are fitted into established narratives when they can no longer write their own stories. That’s why an anecdote about Nichols – like how he loved to rush out in the evenings to take snapshots of sunsets – is so important to restoring a piece of his humanity.

    The release of the video on Friday, which had officials from Biden on downwards warning against a violent reaction, offered new insight into Nichols’ death. As will the prosecution of the five former officers. A trial will also likely feature context about a challenging public order and crime situation in Memphis, intensive police tactics and how conditions set off a chain of events where a routine traffic stop could end so awfully.

    Unlike many recent incidents where young Black men have been disproportionately impacted in encounters with White police officers, the case in Memphis involved five Black officers.

    But CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers said that the incident nevertheless underscored a criminal justice system that was failing.

    “For many of us, we haven’t been critical necessarily of the race of the officer whether or not they are White, Black, Hispanic or otherwise, but it’s the system. And what you are seeing over and over, again and again, is a system that perpetuates violence against people of color,” Sellers said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

    Each of the five police officers has been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression. While each played a different role in the incident, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said, “The actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible.”

    But lawyers for two of the men cautioned that the full facts of the case are yet to emerge. “No one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die,” said William Massey, who is representing Emmitt Martin, one of the former officers. “Justice means following the law and the law says that no one is guilty until a jury says they’re guilty.”

    Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay in California now join the roll call of cities whose notoriety is burned into America’s consciousness by mass shootings, including Columbine, Newtown, Uvalde, Parkland, San Bernardino and others too numerous to count.

    Everyone who died represents a crushing individual tragedy, a family severed and future memories obliterated by an assailant armed with a gun.

    Valentino Marcos Alvero, 68, hoped to retire in a year and return home to the Philippines, but in the meantime loved to “dance around the house,” his son Val Anthony Alvero said. Mymy Nhan, 65, also loved to dance and for years went to the studio in Monterey Park where she died, a family statement said.

    While the mass shootings left a pall of fear and loss over the Golden State, there was one ray of light epitomized by 26-year-old Brandon Tsay, who wrestled with the Monterey Bay shooter in another dance studio in Alhambra, eventually disarming him and potentially averting even greater carnage. Biden called Tsay on Thursday to thank him for “taking such incredible action in the face of danger.”

    “I don’t think you understand just how much you’ve done for so many people who are never going to even know you,” the president told a modest Tsay, according to a transcript.

    “You are America, pal. You are who we are. … America’s never backed down, we’ve always stepped up, because of people like you.”

    Overall, though, it was a harrowing week in which the grief never seemed to stop, best summed up in a tweet by California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    “Tragedy upon tragedy.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • First responder on scene testifies he did not see ‘visible tears’ from Alex Murdaugh after his wife and son were found dead | CNN

    First responder on scene testifies he did not see ‘visible tears’ from Alex Murdaugh after his wife and son were found dead | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The first law enforcement official to respond to the scene where Alex Murdaugh’s wife and son were found killed testified Thursday that one of the first things Murdaugh mentioned after the sergeant from the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office arrived was a boating accident involving his son years ago.

    Murdaugh, a now disbarred attorney and member of a prominent legal family, is on trial in Walterboro, South Carolina, for the murders of his wife Margaret (known as Maggie) and his son Paul, who was 22 at the time of the June 7, 2021, crime.

    “This is a long story. My son was in a boat wreck months back, he’s been getting threats, most of them benign stuff we didn’t take serious,” Murdaugh can be heard saying on body camera footage played in court. “I know that’s what it is.”

    Murdaugh’s son Paul was allegedly the driver of the boat that wrecked in February 2019, killing 19-year-old Mallory Beach. At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death. He pleaded not guilty, and court records show the charges were dropped after his death.

    Sgt. Daniel Greene of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office testified that Murdaugh offered this information right away, and he had not asked Murdaugh about it.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges.

    Murdaugh was at the scene when Greene arrived, and although Murdaugh appeared to be upset, “I didn’t see any visible tears,” Greene testified.

    Murdaugh was visibily upset in court, though, when footage from Greene’s body camera was shown to the jury, at one point wiping his eyes.

    The jury also heard the 911 call Murdaugh placed to report that he had found his wife and son shot and on the ground near his kennel on the family’s property.

    “I can tell he’s shot in the head, and he’s shot really bad,” Murdaugh, speaking of his son, can be heard saying on the recording.

    Asked if they had shot themselves, he replied: “Oh no, Hell no!”

    In his cross examination of Greene, Murdaugh’s defense attorney Dick Harpootlian sought to cast doubt on the procedures taken by the first law enforcement responders to preserve the integrity of the evidence on scene.

    Vehicle tracks weren’t secured “in any way,” Harpootlian said, adding that any tracks that were there were driven over by “multiple vehicles, law enforcement vehicles.”

    Harpootlian asked Greene about where he and members of his agency were standing and walking, a spot he suggested was “on top of an area where shots have been fired.”

    Prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of committing the murders to distract attention from a series of alleged illicit schemes he was running to stave off “personal legal and financial ruin,” according to court filings. Evidence will show, the state claims, that Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes were “about to come to light” when his wife and son were killed.

    Murdaugh faces 99 charges stemming from 19 grand jury indictments for various crimes, according to the state attorney general’s office, including allegedly defrauding his clients and former law firm of nearly $9 million. Just last month, the AG’s office announced Murdaugh had been indicted for tax evasion for failing to report almost $7 million of income earned through illegal acts, for which he allegedly owes the state almost $500,000.

    “You’re gonna hear some of what was going on in Alex Murdaugh’s life, leading up to that day – stuff that happened that very day, stuff that was leading up to a perfect storm that was gathering,” lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said in his opening statement Wednesday, after two days of jury selection ended with 12 trial jurors and six alternatives being seated.

    The prosecution’s opening statements were just “theories” and conjecture, Harpootlian said.

    Not a single witness will tell the jury that Murdaugh and Maggie’s relationship was anything but loving, Harpootlian said. Paul, he said, was the “apple of his (father’s) eye,” as exhibited by a Snapchat video the jury will see from the night of the killings, showing the father and son laughing and bonding over trees they planted.

    “To find Alex Murdaugh guilty of murdering his son, you’re going to have to accept that within an hour” of bonding, “that he executes him in a brutal fashion,” Harpootlian said. “Not believable.”

    The prominence of the Murdaugh family name overshadows the trial: Three generations of Murdaughs have served over 87 years as solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which oversaw prosecutions throughout the South Carolina Lowcountry. Podcasts and documentaries have been made about the family and the murders.

    The office of South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is prosecuting the case due to the family’s close ties to the local solicitor’s office.

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  • Memphis police permanently disband unit tied to deadly beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

    Memphis police permanently disband unit tied to deadly beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    A day after the public release of video showing the horrific police beating of Tyre Nichols, the Memphis police department announced it is permanently deactivating the unit that five of the involved officers belonged to.

    The SCORPION unit, launched in 2021, was tasked with tackling rising crime in the city, but has been heavily criticized in the aftermath of the 29-year-old man’s killing. Nichols was brutally beaten on January 7 after a traffic stop. He required hospitalization and died on January 10.

    The five Memphis officers who were fired and charged in Nichols’ death all were members of the unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph told CNN on Saturday.

    A Nichols family attorney this week called for the unit to be disbanded.

    In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, Memphis police said it was “in the best interest of all to permanently deactivate” the unit.

    “The officers currently assigned to the unit agree unreservedly with this next step,” police said. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted.”

    The police statement comes less than 24 hours after the release of the graphic videos of police striking the Black man. Protests began forming Friday night, with people in several cities taking to the streets and raising signs bearing Nichols’ name.

    Saturday’s marches and rallies are expected in Memphis, Boston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Athens, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio, among other cities.

    Protesters near Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta on Saturday repeated Nichols’ name and demanded justice. They then proceeded to march through downtown.

    In Memphis, protesters late Friday shut down an Interstate 55 bridge near the downtown area, chanting, “No justice, no peace,” according to a CNN team on the scene. There were no arrests stemming from the demonstration, police said.

    Ahead of the release of the videos, Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, called for peaceful protests.

    Memphis City Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas told CNN’s Boris Sanchez on Saturday that before the video release, there was a fear of violent protests because of a lack of police accountability in previous incidents.

    “I think last night, we saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.

    In New York, skirmishes broke out between several protesters and police officers as demonstrators crowded Times Square, video posted to social media shows.

    Three demonstrators were arrested, one of whom was seen jumping on the hood of a police vehicle and breaking the windshield, the New York Police Department said.

    Protesters also gathered in Washington, DC, at Lafayette Square to demand justice for Nichols, according to social media video.

    Along the West Coast, protesters marched in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, carrying signs reading, “Justice for Tyre Nichols” and “jail killer cops.”

    Video of the January 7 encounter shows “acts that defy humanity,” Memphis police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis warned before the footage’s release to the public.

    Police officers and protesters clash in New York on January 27.

    The arrest begins with a traffic stop for what officers said was reckless driving and goes on to show officers beating Nichols with batons, kicking him and punching him – including while his hands are restrained behind his body – as the young man cries out for his mother, video shows.

    The encounter ends with Nichols slumped to the ground in handcuffs, leaning against a police cruiser unattended as officers mill about. Nichols was later hospitalized and died three days later.

    Video shows 23 minutes passed from the time Nichols appears to be subdued and on his back on the ground before a stretcher arrives at the scene.

    Footage of the violent encounter was released because Nichols’ family “want the world to be their witness and feel their pain,” Shelby County District Attorney Steven Mulroy said.

    “While nothing we do can bring Tyre back, we promise you that we are doing all we can to ensure that Tyre’s family, and our city of Memphis, see justice for Tyre Nichols,” Mulroy added.

    The Memphis Police Department has been unable to find anything to substantiate the probable cause for reckless driving and said video of the encounter shows a “disregard for life, duty of care that we’re all sworn to,” Davis said.

    Five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest – who are also Black – have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, according to the Shelby County district attorney. They were identified as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    Also, two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation after the sheriff viewed the video.

    Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump said the family did not know there were two members of the sheriff’s office at the scene of the beating, telling CNN on Saturday, “this was the first they heard of it.”

    The Memphis Police Association, which represents city police officers, expressed condolences to the Nichols family and said it does not condone the mistreatment of citizens or abuse of power.

    The association said it has “faith in the criminal justice system.”

    “That faith is what we will lean on in the coming days, weeks, and months to ensure the totality of circumstances is revealed,” according to a statement. “Mr. Nichols’ family, the City of Memphis, and the rest of the country deserve nothing less.”

    According to Easter-Thomas, the City Council meeting next week will be “robust.”

    Easter-Thomas said she wants to ensure the police department knows the council supports them but expects officers to do their jobs with the “utmost fidelity.”

    Martavius Jones

    ‘We all knew the fate’: Memphis lawmaker emotionally describes Nichols video

    The Memphis police chief likened the video to the 1991 Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King that sparked days of unrest in the city.

    “It’s very much aligned with that same type of behavior,” Davis said.

    Crump also made the comparison. “Being assaulted, battered, punched, kicked, tased, pepper sprayed. It is very troubling,” he said.

    “The only difference between my father’s situation and now is hashtags and a clearer camera,” Rodney King’s daughter Lora King told CNN. “We have to do better, this is unacceptable.”

    “I don’t think anybody in their right mind, anybody that respects humanity is OK with this,” she said, adding that she’s saddened for Nichols’ family and loved ones. “I’m just sad for just where we are in America, we’re still here.”

    A protest over Nichols’ death is set for Saturday in Los Angeles.

    President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply pained” after seeing the video. “It is yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain, and the exhaustion that Black and Brown Americans experience every single day.”

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  • Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick sentenced to over 6 years in jail | CNN Politics

    Jan. 6 rioter who assaulted Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick sentenced to over 6 years in jail | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A man who assaulted United States Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray on January 6, 2021, was sentenced on Friday to 80 months behind bars.

    Julian Khater pleaded guilty in September to two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. His co-defendant, George Tanios, pleaded guilty last summer to disorderly conduct and entering and remaining in a restricted building. Khater was also ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and $2,000 in restitution.

    Tanios was sentenced to time served and one year of supervised release. He previously spent more than five months behind bars.

    The day after the attack, Sicknick died after suffering several strokes. Washington, DC’s chief medical examiner, Francisco Diaz, determined that the officer died of natural causes and told The Washington Post that the riot and “all that transpired played a role in his condition.”

    Sicknick’s family and partner were present for the sentencing and law enforcement officers dressed in uniform filled the courtroom.

    According to the plea agreements, Tanios bought two cans of bear spray in preparation for his trip with Khater to Washington on January 6. During the Capitol attack, when the two men arrived near a line of police officers by the steps of the Capitol, Khater said to Tanios, “Give me that bear s**t,” according to the plea.

    Khater took a white can of bear spray from Tanios’s backpack, walked up to the line of officers and, as rioters started pulling on the bike rack barrier separating them and the police, Khater sprayed multiple officers – including Sicknick – who had to retreat from the line.

    One of those officers, Caroline Edwards, gave a witness impact statement before DC District Judge Thomas Hogan during the sentencing hearing.

    “I felt like the absolute worst kind of officer, someone who didn’t help – couldn’t help – their friend,” she said of not being able to help Sicknick after being sprayed herself seconds later by Khater. “Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see his face, white as a sheet.”

    Hogan called Khater’s actions that day “inexcusable,” adding that “three officers (who) were doing their duty … are suddenly sprayed directly in the face.”

    “I’m not going to give a lecture on the riot,” Hogan said, adding that “every time you see the video you’re shocked over again” and that “something has come out of this country that is very, very serious.”

    After recovering from the bear spray attack, Sicknick continued to help protect the Capitol that day, according to court documents, remaining on duty until late into the evening.

    “Just before approximately 10:00 p.m., Officer Sicknick began slurring his speech while talking to fellow officers,” court documents state. “He slumped backwards and lost consciousness, and emergency medical technicians were summoned for assistance. He was transported to the George Washington University Hospital where he remained on life support for nearly 24 hours and was pronounced dead at 8:51 p.m. the following day.”

    President Joe Biden awards the Presidential Citizens Medal to US Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, whose mother Gladys Sicknick accepts on his behalf.

    Khater’s defense attorney said that Hogan should not sentence his client for the death of Sicknick, which the attorney noted was determined to be of natural causes. The judge agreed, noting he “can’t sentence Mr. Khater (for) causing officer Sicknick’s death.”

    Calling his client “sheepish” and “sweet and gentle,” Khater’s attorney said his actions that day amounted to seconds of “emotionally charged conduct” from a man who suffered from anxiety.

    In his statement to the judge, Khater began by highlighting how long he had already served behind bars and how it had “taken a huge toll” on him. “I wish I could take it all back,” he said. “It’s not who I am.”

    Hogan pressed Khater on why he did not expressly apologize to the officers in the courtroom and Sicknick’s family. “Somewhere along the lines we lost the sense of responsibility,” the judge said.

    “It’s the elephant in the room,” Khater said, adding that “there’s a civil thing going on” – in reference to a civil lawsuit from Sicknick’s estate – and that his lawyer had warned him about what to say in court Friday.

    “You should be afraid,” Hogan said of the lawsuit.

    Sicknick’s partner, Sandra Garza, had asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence for both men.

    “I realize it will not bring back Brian, nor give him peace in his last moments on earth, but it will give some sense of justice in my universe,” Garza wrote to the judge.

    “The only thing that surpasses my anger is my sadness,” Sicknick’s brother, Kenneth, wrote in his statement to the judge. “Sadness that the only time I can communicate with Brian is to speak into the nothingness and hope that he is listening.”

    Kenneth continued, “Brian was never one for the spotlight. He preferred to go about his business, not bringing attention to himself. My family and I quietly smile at each other when we attend an event honoring and remembering Brian and the weather turns bad. We know it’s Brian telling us that it is OK, he is OK, please don’t make a big deal about me, take care of the others that need it. That’s what he would have done.”

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Court releases video of attack on Paul Pelosi | CNN Politics

    Court releases video of attack on Paul Pelosi | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The San Francisco Superior Court on Friday released video and audio recorded during last year’s attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, including police body-cam footage depicting the moment of the attack and the alleged assailant’s police interview where he admitted he wanted to hold the then-House speaker hostage.

    The video and audio files were released after a California court ruled the district attorney’s office must make the materials public.

    One of the videos shows body-cam footage from officers who arrived at Pelosi’s home on October 28, 2022, when he was attacked. The footage shows the chaos of the moment in which alleged assailant David DePape attacked.

    In the video, which includes graphic and violent content, Paul Pelosi and DePape both appear to have a hand on the hammer and DePape is holding Pelosi’s arm when the officers opened the door.

    “Drop the hammer,” the officer says.

    “Uh, nope,” DePape responds.

    DePape then grabbed the hammer out of Pelosi’s hand, lunged toward him while striking him in the head. The officers rushed into the home, subduing DePape and handcuffing him.

    Court releases video of attack on Paul Pelosi

    In addition to the body-cam footage, the files include audio from a police interview with DePape, the 911 call Paul Pelosi made while DePape was in the home and surveillance video showing DePape breaking into the home.

    The files were exhibits in a preliminary court hearing. The court’s decision mandating the public release of the materials came following a motion by a coalition of news organizations, including CNN, arguing that the circumstances involving the residence of the then-speaker of the House demanded transparency.

    Lawyers for DePape argued against the public release of the audio and footage, writing it would “irreparably damage” his right to a fair trial. DePape has pleaded not guilty to a litany of state and federal crimes related to the attack, including assault and attempted murder.

    Speaking briefly to reporters Friday afternoon, Nancy Pelosi said she had “absolutely no intention of seeing the deadly assault on my husband’s life.” She said that Paul Pelosi is “making progress, but it will take more time” and that she would not be making additional public comments about the case.

    In the audio recording of a San Francisco police officer’s interview of DePape following his October arrest, DePape admitted to attacking Paul Pelosi and described his plans to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage when he broke into the couple’s San Francisco home.

    “Yeah, I mean, I’m not trying to, like, get away with this, so, you know, I know exactly what I did,” DePape said toward the beginning of the 17-minute audio clip.

    “Well, I was going to basically hold her hostage, and I was going to talk to her,” DePape said of Nancy Pelosi. “If she told the truth, I’d let her go scot-free. If she f**king lied, I was going to break her kneecaps.”

    In the interview, DePape embraced conspiracy theories about Democrats and Pelosi, complaining about a Democratic “crime spree” and baselessly claiming that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had spied on former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

    “They are the criminals,” DePape said.

    The officer walked DePape through his break-in of the Pelosi house and his encounter with Paul Pelosi. When he was asked why he didn’t leave after Paul Pelosi called the police, DePape compared himself to the Founding Fathers’ fighting the British.

    “When I left my house, I left to go fight tyranny. I did not leave to go surrender,” he said.

    DePape explained why he attacked Paul Pelosi after the police arrived, when they both were holding onto a hammer. “He thinks that I’ll just surrender, and it’s like, I didn’t come there to surrender,” DePape said. “And I told him that I would go through him. And so I basically yank it away from him and hit him.”

    In the 911 call audio, Pelosi seemed to be subtly attempting to tell the dispatcher he was in danger while DePape was listening in. CNN has previously reported Pelosi made the call when he went into his bathroom, where his cell phone was charging.

    “There’s a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back, Nancy Pelosi. He’s just waiting for her to come back, but she’s not going to be here for days, so I guess we’ll have to wait,” Pelosi said to the dispatcher.

    “He thinks everything’s good. I’ve got a problem, but he thinks everything’s good,” Pelosi said at another point in the 2-minute, 56-second recording.

    The dispatcher asked Pelosi if he knew who the man was, and Pelosi said he did not. “He’s telling me to put the phone down and just do what he says,” Pelosi said.

    “Who is David?” the dispatcher asked.

    “I don’t know,” Pelosi said.

    DePape then spoke up on the call. “I’m a friend of theirs,” he said.

    “He says he’s a friend. But as I said …” Pelosi said.

    “But you don’t know who he is?” the dispatcher responded.

    “No ma’am,” Pelosi said.

    In the surveillance footage, DePape is seen breaking into the Pelosi home. The scene was captured by a US Capitol Police security camera installed at Pelosi’s San Francisco residence.

    The attack on Paul Pelosi was a factor in Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step back from House Democratic leadership, she has said previously.

    nancy pelosi anderson cooper intvu solo 1107

    Exclusive: Pelosi recounts moment she learned that her husband was attacked

    Court documents revealed DePape allegedly woke Paul Pelosi shortly after 2 a.m., carrying a large hammer and several white zip ties, and demanded: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” He then threatened to tie up Paul Pelosi and prevented him from escaping via elevator, according to the documents. DePape later allegedly told him, “I can take you out.”

    Following the attack, Paul Pelosi underwent surgery “to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi said her husband’s recovery was “one day at a time.” She said she didn’t know if she would see the video when it was released.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • A brutal beating. Cries for his mom. 23-minute delay in aid. Here are the key takeaways from the Tyre Nichols police videos | CNN

    A brutal beating. Cries for his mom. 23-minute delay in aid. Here are the key takeaways from the Tyre Nichols police videos | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    The newly released videos of Tyre Nichols’ police beating captured the brutality that his family and authorities had already foreshadowed: He was punched and kicked while being restrained. He pleaded to go home and repeatedly yelled for his mom.

    And after the beating, while Nichols lay slumped and motionless against a car, officers walking around on scene ignored the 29-year-old.

    The videos consist of three shorter body camera clips and one roughly 31-minute video taken from a utility pole camera, which appears to capture most of the violence that unfolded just steps from Nichols’ home.

    The videos show portions of both the initial traffic stop on the night of January 7, 2023, and a second altercation just minutes later, after Nichols fled the first location on foot. Nichols required hospitalization after the encounter and died on January 10.

    “What you’re seeing is a fairly significant number of officers who are failing at arrest and control tactics and making up for it with brutality,” CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller said.

    Law enforcement analysts who viewed the clips were troubled by a range of actions – and inactions – during the encounter, from the beating by a group of officers to the length of time it took for someone to render aid to a motionless Nichols.

    The videos leave many questions unanswered, including the reason for the stop, which the officers do not explain in the clips. Memphis police had initially said Nichols was pulled over for suspected reckless driving, but police chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told CNN Friday authorities have not been able to “substantiate that” claim.

    The clips also do not answer why authorities used such force on Nichols, who did not appear to fight back, and why they felt compelled to confront him twice.

    But the videos shed light on just how violent the fatal confrontation was. Here are some key takeaways.

    Videos from the encounters capture multiple officers threatening Nichols with violence while he appears to comply with their commands or is on the ground already.

    A body camera video that captures the initial encounter between Nichols and police shows the officer getting out of his car on the scene with his gun drawn and captures an officer yelling for Nichols to “Get the fuck out of the car.”

    Nichols is heard saying, “I didn’t do anything,” and later, as he gets on the ground, “All right, I’m on the ground.”

    An officer yells at him, “Bitch, put your hands behind your back before I… I’m going to knock your ass the fuck out.”

    Nichols says, “I’m just trying to go home.”

    While officers yell commands, Nichols repeatedly responds that he is on the ground and is heard saying he didn’t do anything, before running away as an officer deploys his Taser.

    At the second encounter, where the beating occurs, a body camera captures an officer yelling at Nichols, “I’m going to baton the fuck out of you,” while Nichols is on the ground and not fighting back. An officer is also heard asking “Do you want to be sprayed again,” while Nichols is on the ground and yelling for his mom.

    The video taken from a remotely controlled camera on a neighborhood utility pole shows Memphis officers continuously hitting Nichols at least nine times, without visible provocation.

    “The pole cam video is the one that really justifies the charges,” said former Philadelphia police commissioner Charles Ramsey, a CNN law enforcement analyst. “Nobody trains for that. These guys are acting so far outside of bounds that … you really can’t explain it. … One officer kicked him so hard and so much that he’s limping around.”

    In the pole video, an officer is seen shoving Nichols on the pavement with what appears to be his leg or knee. Nichols is then pulled up by his shoulders and kicked in the face twice, then again later is hit in the back with what appears to be a nightstick. Seconds later, he’s hit again.

    Once he’s pulled to his feet, officers are seen hitting Nichols in the face multiple times while other officers are restraining his hands behind his body. Nichols is seen falling to his knees – and less than a minute later, an officer appears to kick him.

    In this still from video released by the City of Memphis, officers from the Memphis Police Department beat Tyre Nichols on a street corner.

    When officers let go of Nichols, he rolls on his back and is then dragged along the pavement and propped up in a sitting position against the side of a car, where he remains largely ignored by the officers on scene.

    According to one of the body camera videos released, while Nichols is slumped next to the car unattended, officers appear to say at least two officers pepper sprayed him and another tased Nichols.

    “No one is doing anything to help him. It goes back to the failure to act, the failure to care and the overall obliviousness of the officers that are just standing around,” said former New York police Lt. Darrin Porcher.

    Paramedics appear to show up on scene about 10 minutes into the video.

    Roughly 23 minutes pass from the time Nichols appeared to be subdued after the beating before a stretcher arrives on scene.

    “It’s horrific to watch,” said CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “There’s all sorts of different injuries he may have suffered. So many of the injuries to the head, you saw kicks to the head, you saw these blows to the head, punches to the head, that’s obviously very concerning.”

    What could happen in situations like that, Gupta added, is that the brain could begin to swell and there could be internal bleeding.

    “That’s why this timing is so critical because if the brain is swelling – he still seemed like he was talking at some point but he was obviously getting worse – the brain starts to swell when you’re not getting enough oxygenated blood to the brain anymore and that’s what causes the big problem and what can lead to death.”

    “He’s just laying there, obviously in critical condition at this point.”

    And paramedics aren’t particularly equipped to help someone with those kinds of internal injuries, said Dr. Kendall Von Crowns, chief medical examiner in Tarrant County, Texas. The focus should have been on getting Nichols to the hospital for emergency surgery or a transfusion as soon as possible.

    “We’re talking minutes,” he said. “He really needs to be treated right away.”

    In this still from video released by the City of Memphis, Tyre Nichols lies on the ground after being beaten by Memphis Police officers.

    Besides the excessive violence, what troubled Porcher was that “no officer was willing to intervene and say stop,” he told CNN Friday night.

    “There’s a point where you have to intercede and say either ‘Stop’ or physically step between the officer that’s assaulting the person and that actual individual. And that didn’t happen,” Porcher said.

    According to Memphis Police Department policies, officers have a duty to intervene.

    “Any member who directly observes another member engaged in dangerous or criminal conduct or abuse of a subject shall take reasonable action to intervene,” according to a policy page of the department.

    In this still from video released by the City of Memphis, officers appear to spray Tyre Nichols with pepper spray.

    Five Memphis officers were fired earlier this month for violating police policies and were each charged with second-degree murder, among other charges.

    Two fire department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were relieved of duty “while an internal investigation is being conducted,” department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

    After the video release, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. said he launched an internal investigation into the conduct of two deputies “who appeared on the scene following the physical confrontation.” Both deputies “have been relieved of duty” pending the investigation’s outcome, the sheriff said.

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  • Memphis releases video showing police stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

    Memphis releases video showing police stop that led to Tyre Nichols’ death | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The city of Memphis has released police body camera and surveillance video showing the January 7 traffic stop and violent police confrontation that led to the death of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

    CNN is reviewing the video.

    The video clips released by the city include three police body cams and an overhead angle from a pole-based police camera, city officials have said.

    Five Memphis officers were fired this month and then charged Thursday over Nichols’ death, which happened days after the traffic stop police initially said was on suspicion of reckless driving. Nichols was Black, as are the five officers.

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care have been relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    Live updates: Memphis to release Tyre Nichols arrest videos

    Earlier Friday, Memphis’ police chief said the video would show “acts that defy humanity,”

    “You’re going to see a disregard for life, duty of care that we’re all sworn to and a level of physical interaction that is above and beyond what is required in law enforcement,” Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis told Don Lemon of the video.

    Ahead of the video release, officials were urging any demonstrations Friday to be civil.

    “Individuals watching will feel what the family felt,” Davis said. “And if you don’t, then you’re not a human being. … There will be a measure of sadness, as well.”

    Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, told CNN on Friday, “It’s still like a nightmare right now.”

    “I’m still trying to understand all of this and trying to wrap my head around all of this,” Wells said. “I don’t have my baby. I’ll never have my baby again.”

    In describing what she heard in the video, Davis said she heard Nichols “call out for his mother, for his mom.”

    Video: Lawyer shares Nichols called out for his mom 3 times

    “Just the disregard for humanity … That’s what really pulls at your heartstrings and makes you wonder: Why was a sense of care and concern for this individual just absent from the situation by all who went to the scene?”

    Police nationwide have been under scrutiny for how they treat Black people, particularly since the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the mass protest movement known as Black Lives Matter. Davis likened the video to the 1991 Los Angeles police beating that sparked outrage across the country.

    “I was in law enforcement during the Rodney King incident, and it’s very much aligned with that same type of behavior,” she said.

    In Nichols’ case, the encounter began with a traffic stop police initially said was on suspicion of reckless driving. An initial altercation happened between Nichols and several officers, and pepper spray was used, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Thursday.

    Nichols then fled on foot, and a second altercation happened – and that’s when Nichols suffered his serious injuries, Mulroy said. Nichols required hospitalization after the arrest and died on January 10.

    Davis said police have not been able to find anything that substantiated the probable cause for reckless driving by Nichols before his fatal encounter with police.

    The department will release the video of the incident in four parts on YouTube, Davis said.

    “The video is broken into four different, sort of fragmented pieces,” that are all relative to the incident, Davis said. The department plans “to post it on a YouTube link so that it can be accessible to just about anybody who wants to access that video,” she said. The video will show the initial stop and also body-worn camera of individual officers she noted.

    Nichols died three days after his arrest.

    Police officials in a number of major cities nationwide have said they are monitoring for any possible public outcry this weekend over what will be seen in the video footage.

    Nichols’ mother is asking for supporters to be peaceful during demonstrations, saying at a vigil in Memphis on Thursday she wants “each and every one of you to protest in peace.”

    “I don’t want us burning up our cities, tearing up the streets, because that’s not what my son stood for,” Wells said. “And if you guys are here for me and Tyre, then you will protest peacefully.”

    Memphis police officers arrived at Wells’ home between 8 and 9 p.m. on January 7 to tell her Nichols had been arrested, she told CNN.

    Officers told her that her son was arrested for a DUI, pepper sprayed and tased, she said. Because of that, he was going to the hospital and would later be taken to booking at the police station, she said.

    “They then asked me (if) was he on any type of drugs or anything of that nature because they were saying it was so difficult to put the handcuffs on him and he had this amount of energy, superhuman energy,” Wells said. “What they were describing was not my son, so I was very confused.”

    Wells said officers told her Nichols was “nearby” but would not tell her exactly where. They also told her she could not go to the hospital, she said.

    tyre nichols mother

    ‘Beat him to a pulp’: Mom shares immediate reaction when arriving at hospital

    However, at about 4 a.m., she said, she received a call from a doctor asking her to see Nichols.

    “The doctor proceeded to tell me that my son had went into cardiac arrest and that his kidneys were failing,” she said, adding it didn’t “sound consistent” with what police had described as Nichols being tased and pepper-sprayed.

    ben crump tyre nichols

    Crump: Nichols video will ‘remind you of Rodney King’

    “When my husband and I got to the hospital and I saw my son, he was already gone,” Wells said. “They had beat him to a pulp.”

    Wells described the horrific injuries her son had when she saw him in the hospital.

    Read stepfather’s description of video: ‘No one rendered aid to him’

    “He had bruises all over him. His head was swollen like a watermelon. His neck was busting because of the swelling. They broke his neck. My son’s nose look like a S,” she said. “They actually just beat the crap out of him. And so when I saw that, I knew my son was gone, the end. Even if he did live, he would have been a vegetable.”

    A Memphis church is scheduled to hold Nichols’ funeral Wednesday.

    Ben Crump and RowVaughn Wells at a news conference Friday in Memphis.

    The five Memphis Police Department officers identified – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – were fired January 20 for violating police policies including on use of excessive force, police said.

    They were then charged this week. Each has been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney, said.

    Martin and Haley were released from jail on a $350,000 bond, according to Shelby County Jail records, while Smith, Bean and Mills Jr. have been released after each posting a $250,000 bond.

    The five former officers are scheduled for arraignment on February 17.

    Two fire department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were relieved of duty “while an internal investigation is being conducted,” department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

    The US Department of Justice has said it is conducting a federal civil rights investigation of Nichols’ death.

    Crump, in a news conference Friday in Memphis, called Memphis’ rapid criminal charges – compared to other cities and states that have waited months or years in similar cases – a “blueprint” moving forward.

    “We have a precedent that has been set here in Memphis, and we intend to hold this blueprint for all America from this day forward,” Crump said.

    He called for Tennessee to enact what he called “Tyre’s Law”: A proposed measure which would require police officers to intervene when they see crimes being committed, including by fellow officers.

    Blake Ballin, an attorney for Mills Jr., one of the officers, said he doesn’t believe his client “is capable of” the accusations, and his client is “remorseful” to be “connected to the death” of Nichols.

    Ballin told CNN he has not yet seen the video, but has spoken to people who have. He urged those who watch the video to “treat each of these officers as individuals.”

    “The levels of culpability amongst these five officers are different, and I expect that you’re going to see in this video that my client Desmond Mills is not, in fact, guilty of the crimes he’s been charged with,” Ballin said.

    Police departments in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, Milwaukee, Seattle, Denver, Dallas, New York and Atlanta told CNN they are either monitoring the events in Memphis closely or already have plans in place in case of large-scale protests or unrest.

    bennie cobb valencia pkg

    Friend of charged officer describes conversation they had about Nichols’ death

    Memphis will continue to work with community leaders and organizers ahead of the video release, in hopes of quelling any potentially dangerous protests, City Council Vice Chair JB Smiley Jr. said.

    “You will see protests, but it will be peaceful because the Memphis Police Department, the sheriff’s department, the district attorney and the Memphis City Council, along with the city administration, has took all the necessary steps to quell any potential of rioting in our city,” Smiley said.

    Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, seen here at press conference Thursday, called the video

    President Joe Biden is echoing Nichols’ family’s call for peaceful protests, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on “CNN This Morning.”

    “We certainly don’t want to see anyone else hurt by this terrible, terrible tragedy, and we’ll stay in close touch with the local and state authorities,” Kirby said.

    The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday it is coordinating with partners across the United States ahead of the expected release of the video.

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  • Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

    Prosecutors in Alex Murdaugh murder trial play recording of his first interview after bodies of his son and wife were found | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    On the third day of the murder trial of disgraced South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh, prosecutors showed the court video of Murdaugh’s first interview with authorities after his wife and son were found killed.

    In the interview, which had not been released publicly previously, Murdaugh described arriving at the scene where he could see the two bodies and told investigator he could see things were “bad” when he first pulled up to the home.

    Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime related to the deaths of his wife, Margaret, and son, Paul, who was 22 at the time of the June 7, 2021 crime. Opening statements for Murdaugh’s murder trial began earlier this week and is now in recess for the weekend, with the prosecution’s ninth witness still on the stand.

    In the interview played in court on Friday, Murdaugh told investigators he had left home that night to go check on his mother, who is a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient.

    Murdaugh said that after arriving and seeing the bodies, he tried to turn his son’s body over and then went over to his wife. He told investigators he touched both of them to try and take their pulse, adding he “tried to do it as limited as possible,” according to the video recording.

    He said there was blood around his son’s body but that he didn’t see anything else around other than Paul’s cellphone. Murdaugh broke down several times during the interview.

    Murdaugh said he called 911 and later his brothers and a good friend.

    Colleton County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Office Det. Laura Rutland, who was among the officers who interviewed Murdaugh hours after the bodies were found, testified on Friday she did not see footprints or knee prints in the blood near Paul’s body.

    She also testified that she had seen Murdaugh’s hands and shirt that night and he was “clean,” telling the court she did not see any blood on him.

    In the video recording played in court, Murdaugh was asked by another law enforcement officer if there had been any problems and Murdaugh responded,”Nothing that I know of,” but added there had been negative publicity following a boat accident that Paul, his son, was involved in.

    At the time of his death, Paul Murdaugh was facing charges of boating under the influence, causing great bodily harm and causing death in connection to a 2019 boat crash that claimed the life of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, court records show.

    Alex Murdaugh said in the recording there had been some “vile stuff’ online directed at his son and that Paul had been “punched and hit and just attacked a lot,” but acknowledge he had not witnessed those incidents.

    Murdaugh then went on to allude about a man he recently had hired who Murdaugh said had allegedly shared a “freaky” story with Paul about getting drafted on an undercover team to “kill radical Black Panthers.”

    “I really do not think that in all honesty that it’s him, but I think you oughta check it out,” Murdaugh continued, according to the recording.

    Murdaugh also told investigators he owned about 20 or 25 guns.

    During cross examination, defense attorney Jim Griffin questioned Rutland about how another agent collected the clothing that Murdaugh was wearing that night and asked her if she had followed proper protocol, seeming to question the integrity of the investigation.

    Griffin also asked Rutland about notes in her report that night which said Murdaugh’s wife appeared to have strands of brown hair in her hands and fingers and that Paul appeared to have scratches on his face. Rutland told the court she noted what she observed.

    The prosecution also called as their eighth witness another agent, who testified she collected samples from the two bodies and a ninth witness, also an agent, who is expected to resume testimony on Monday morning.

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  • Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

    Peter Navarro contempt of Congress trial will be delayed for months, judge says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge on Friday delayed the contempt of Congress trial for former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro, likely for months, to allow for additional pre-trial debate over the role executive privilege could play when the case goes to a jury.

    Over the course of a nearly two-hour hearing Friday, US District Judge Amit Mehta grilled Justice Department prosecutors on the position the department has taken, in previous internal Office of Legal Counsel opinions, that close aides to a president can be immune from congressional subpoenas.

    The trial had been scheduled to begin on Monday.

    Mehta had opened the door to the possibility that Navarro could present evidence at trial – potentially taking the stand – that he had been told by Trump that the former president was invoking executive privilege over his testimony to the House January 6 Committee.

    So far, Navarro has presented no evidence that Trump made a such an invocation when he was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the now defunct House January 6 select committee.

    Federal prosecutors bristled at the idea that Navarro should still be allowed to present such evidence, arguing that it doesn’t exist in the first place and that if it did, it would not be up to the jury to decide whether such invocation would have shielded Navarro from the subpoenas.

    Mehta ultimately decided that the issue raised legal questions that needed to be decided before trial, so he postponed its Monday start date.

    The judge did not schedule a new date for the trial, and instead set a briefing schedule on the privilege questions that will extend through the end of March.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • A timeline of the investigations into Tyre Nichols’ death after a traffic stop and arrest by Memphis police | CNN

    A timeline of the investigations into Tyre Nichols’ death after a traffic stop and arrest by Memphis police | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Nearly three weeks after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee, resulted in a violent arrest and subsequent death of a driver, police are expected to release footage of the incident to the public.

    Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after the arrest on January 7 and died three days later from injuries sustained, according to police. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department, who are also Black, were fired and face criminal charges.

    The family of Nichols and attorneys have met with police and city officials to view the traffic stop’s video recordings, which have been described as a vicious, prolonged beating that lasted for minutes after officers chased down a fleeing Nichols.

    Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis decried the officers’ conduct, adding additional officers continue to be investigated.

    “This is not just a professional failing,” Davis said. “This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane. And in the vein of transparency, when the video is released in the coming days, you will see this for yourselves.”

    After charges were announced Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said of the accelerated investigation, “We have worked to get a resolution to these matters in record time because we take them extremely seriously.”

    Here’s what we know about the timeline of the incident, investigations from authorities and reaction from Nichols’ family:

    On January 7 at approximately 8:30 p.m., officers pulled over a vehicle for suspected reckless driving, according to a statement from Memphis police.

    “A confrontation occurred” between officers and the vehicle’s driver – later identified as Nichols – who then fled on foot, according to Memphis police. Officers apprehended him and “another confrontation occurred,” resulting in Nichols’ arrest, police said.

    An ambulance was called to the scene of the arrest after Nichols complained of shortness of breath, police said, and he was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition.

    On January 10, three days after the stop, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Nichols had died due to injuries sustained in the “use-of-force incident with officers,” according to a statement.

    Following the traffic stop, the officers involved were relieved of duty – a standard departmental procedure while an investigation into their use of force began, Memphis police said. The TBI and the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office were also enlisted to investigate.

    Preliminary findings indicated the serious nature of the officers’ conduct during the stop, police said.

    “After reviewing various sources of information involving this incident, I have found that it is necessary to take immediate and appropriate action,” Chief Davis said in a statement released January 15. “Today, the department is serving notice to the officers involved of the impending administrative actions.”

    The department needed to follow a required procedural process before disciplining or terminating government civil servant employees, the statement added.

    In the days after Nichols’ death, his family’s attorney Ben Crump repeatedly voiced their desire for the release of body camera and surveillance footage of the traffic stop.

    “This kind of in-custody death destroys community trust if agencies are not swiftly transparent,” Crump said in a statement.

    On January 18, the Department of Justice said a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

    “Last week, Tyre Nichols tragically died, a few days after he was involved in an incident where Memphis Police Department officers used force during his arrest,” Kevin G. Ritz, US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said in a statement.

    Acknowledging the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s ongoing efforts, the US Attorney’s office “in coordination with the FBI Memphis Field Office and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, has opened a civil rights investigation,” Ritz said, declining to provide further details.

    After its internal investigation, Memphis police identified and fired five officers involved in the traffic stop due to their violation of multiple department policies.

    Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith were terminated for failing in their “excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” the department said in a statement.

    “The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work our officers perform, with integrity every day,” Davis said.

    A statement from the Memphis Police Association, the union representing the officers, declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying that the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it.”

    Nichols family attorneys Crump and Antonio Romanucci called the firing of the five officers “the first step towards achieving justice for Tyre and his family.”

    Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were also fired, department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

    After meeting with officials to watch the unreleased police video of the arrest, Nichols’ family and their attorneys described their horror at what they saw.

    “He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

    “What I saw on the video today was horrific,” Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said Monday. “No father, mother should have to witness what I saw today.”

    Crump described the video as “appalling,” “deplorable” and “heinous.” He said RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, was unable to get through viewing the first minute of the footage after hearing Nichols ask, “What did I do?” At the end of the footage, Nichols can be heard calling for his mother three times, the attorney said.

    According to preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for his family, Nichols suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” CNN has requested a copy of the autopsy, which Crump said will be available when the full report is ready.

    Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told CNN on Tuesday his office was ensuring all necessary interviews with those involved had been conducted before the footage’s release.

    “A lot of the people’s questions about what exactly happened will, of course, be answered once people see the video,” Mulroy said, noting he believes the city will release enough footage to show the “entirety of the incident, from the very beginning to the very end.”

    Civil rights attorney Ben Crump speaks at a news conference with the family of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, as RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre, right, and Tyre's stepfather Rodney Wells, along with attorney Tony Romanucci, left, also stand with Crump, in Memphis, Tenn., Monday, Jan. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

    Tyre Nichols’ family speaks out after seeing police footage of police beating

    A grand jury indicted the five officers fired by Memphis police on several charges, according to the county’s district attorney.

    Martin III, Smith, Bean, Haley and Mills, Jr. were each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

    “While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Mulroy said during a news conference.

    All five former officers reported to Shelby County Jail on Thursday, with four bonding out by early Friday morning, jail records showed.

    ben crump tyre nichols

    Crump: Nichols video will ‘remind you of Rodney King’

    Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled RowVaughn Wells’ first name.

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