A US jury has cleared three police officers of all criminal charges in the death of a black man who was shocked, beaten and restrained face-down on the street as he pleaded for breath.
Two of the officers – Matthew Collins (40) and Christopher Burbank (38) – had been charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, while Timothy Rankine (34) was charged with manslaughter.
Their lawyers argued that Manuel Ellis died from a lethal amount of methamphetamine that was in his system as well as a pre-existing heart condition, not from the officers’ actions during his arrest in Washington state.
The jury found the three officers not guilty on all counts.
There was a gasp from the gallery when the first not guilty verdict was read. Rankine sat forward in his seat and wiped his eyes, while Collins hugged his lawyer.
Matthew Ericksen, a lawyer representing the Ellis family, said it was hard to convey how devastating the verdict was for the family and community.
“The biggest reason why I personally think this jury found reasonable doubt is because the defence was essentially allowed to put Manny Ellis on trial,” Mr Ericksen said. “The defence attorneys were allowed to dredge up Manny’s past and repeat to the jury again and again Manny’s prior arrests in 2015 and 2019. That unfairly prejudiced jurors against Manny.”
Mr Ellis was walking home with doughnuts from a shop in Tacoma late on March 3rd, 2020, when he passed a police car stopped at a red light, with Collins and Burbank inside.
The officers claimed they saw Mr Ellis try to open the door of a passing car and he became aggressive when they tried to question him about it. Giving evidence, Collins said that Mr Ellis demonstrated “superhuman strength” by lifting him off the ground and throwing him through the air.
But three witnesses who gave evidence said they saw no such thing, reporting that they did not see Mr Ellis try to strike or do anything that would provoke the officers. After what appeared to be a brief conversation between Mr Ellis and the officers, who are both white, Burbank, in the passenger seat, threw open his door, knocking Mr Ellis down, they said.
The witnesses – one of whom yelled for the officers to stop attacking Mr Ellis – and a doorbell surveillance camera captured video of parts of the encounter. The video showed Mr Ellis with his hands up in a surrender position as Burbank shot a Taser at his chest and Collins wrapped an arm around his neck from behind.
Among the many other officers who responded was Rankine, who arrived after Mr Ellis was already handcuffed face-down and knelt on his upper back.
Video captured Mr Ellis addressing the officers as “sir” while telling them he could not breathe. One officer is heard responding: “Shut the (expletive) up, man.”
“When I saw Manuel not doing anything, and him get attacked like that, it wasn’t right,” witness Sara McDowell (26) said at the trial. “I’d never seen police do anything like that. It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It was scary. It wasn’t OK.”
Rankine also gave evidence, calling Mr Ellis’s death a tragedy. He was pressing his knees into Mr Ellis’s back when he pleaded for breath.
“The only response at that point that I could think of is, ‘If you can talk to me, you can still breathe,’” Rankine said.
The Seattle Times quoted Collins’ lawyer, Casey Arbenz, as saying the verdict was “a huge sigh of relief” and reflected that the jurors were willing to look beyond the video.
The officers “should never have been charged,” Mr Arbenz said.
Mr Ellis’s death coincided with the first US outbreak of Covid-19 at a nursing home in nearby Kirkland and did not garner the attention that the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis did nearly three months later.
The trial, which lasted more than two months, was the first under a five-year-old state law designed to make it easier to prosecute police accused of wrongfully using deadly force.
A crowd that included family members of Mr Ellis gathered near a mural of him in Tacoma on Thursday night. “No justice, no peace,” they chanted. Around 100 people attended an evening vigil at the mural.
Washington attorney general Bob Ferguson, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statement that he was grateful for the jury, the court and his legal team “for their extraordinary hard work and dedication”.
“I know the Ellis family is hurting, and my heart goes out to them,” he said.
The Ellis family immediately left the courtroom and planned to speak at a news conference later. The Washington Coalition for Police Accountability said in a statement that “the not guilty verdict is further proof the system is broken, failing the very people it should be serving”.
