Author: CNN

CNN
 — 

An attorney who said he was Alex Murdaugh’s best friend testified at his murder trial Thursday that Murdaugh admitted he had a drug addiction and had been stealing money from his law firm and clients.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve had a drug problem, I’m addicted to opioids … for something like 20 years,’ ” the friend, Chris Wilson, testified. “He said he had a drug addiction and he admitted that he had been stealing money from his law firm and from clients.”

“I sh– you up,” Murdaugh said, according to Wilson. “I’ve sh– a lot of people up.”

The conversation occurred in September 2021, three months after the deaths of Murdaugh’s wife and son and after Murdaugh’s law firm said it had discovered extensive financial wrongdoing.

Wilson’s testimony comes three weeks into the murder trial for the killings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges.

Murdaugh, 53, called 911 and reported he found his wife and son dead of gunshot wounds outside of their home in Islandton.

Wilson is one of a series of witnesses who have accused Murdaugh of extensive financial wrongdoing at his namesake law firm. Prosecutors have argued Murdaugh killed his wife and son as an attempt to distract attention from his financial crimes and stave off a “day of reckoning.”

Prosecutors also have presented evidence that Murdaugh had opportunity to commit the murders. Audio from a Snapchat video recovered from his son’s phone places Murdaugh at the murder scene, prosecutors contend, contrary to his alibi to investigators that he was not there that night.

However, there is effectively no direct evidence – no witnesses, no murder weapon, no DNA and no ballistics – that link Murdaugh to the murders. Instead, prosecutors have offered circumstantial evidence, such as the gunshot primer residue found on Murdaugh’s clothes and on a blue raincoat, and the financial motive.

The defense has argued this financial evidence is beside the point.

“They’ve got a whole lot more evidence about financial misconduct than they do about evidence of guilt in a murder case. And that’s what this is all about,” defense lawyer Jim Griffin said last week.

In court Thursday, Wilson, an attorney in Bamberg, South Carolina, testified he was one of Murdaugh’s financial victims.

He and Murdaugh had worked on a personal injury case together and won a verdict of $5.5 million, with each attorney earning about $792,000. Murdaugh asked Wilson to write the check to him personally rather than his law firm, and Wilson did as requested.

“I’ve known him for 30-plus years and didn’t have any reason not to trust him,” he said.

Murdaugh later asked Wilson to rewrite the check and make it out to the law firm, he testified. Murdaugh wired him back $600,000 but said he didn’t have the full funds, so Wilson had to spend $192,000 of his own money to cover the difference, he said.

The checks ultimately played a key role in Murdaugh’s law firm’s discovery that he had been misappropriating funds, according to testimony from his coworkers.

Wilson also testified he spoke with Murdaugh on the phone at 9:11 p.m., 9:20 p.m. and 9:53 p.m. on June 7, 2021, around the time of the murders. In the short conversations, nothing sounded out of the ordinary, Wilson said.

Also in court Thursday, Michael “Tony” Satterfield, the son of Murdaugh’s former housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, testified about being defrauded by Murdaugh.

Gloria Satterfield had worked for the Murdaugh family for about 20 years and died in 2018 after a fall at the Murdaugh family’s home.

Murdaugh offered to file a claim against his insurance company to get money for his housekeeper’s sons, Michael Satterfield testified. However, Satterfield did not see any of that money and did not know Murdaugh had collected more than $4 million in settlements, he testified.

Satterfield testified that he learned of the settlement from his family, who heard about it through media reports. He said when he asked Murdaugh about it in June 2021, Murdaugh told him “it was still making progress” and to be ready to settle by the end of the year.

In December 2021, Satterfield and his brother received a settlement of $4.3 million and an apology from Murdaugh in a confession of judgment.

Further, the CEO of a local bank testified for the jury that Murdaugh’s account was overdrafted by about $350,000. As of August 2021, Murdaugh had a total debt to the bank of $4.2 million, according to Palmetto State Bank CEO Jan Malinowski.

All three witnesses previously testified outside of the jury’s presence last week.

Much of the testimony this week has focused on Murdaugh’s financial issues. The judge overseeing the case ruled on Monday to allow such evidence, saying it was “so intimately connected” with the state’s case “that proof of it is essential to complete the story.”

Thursday’s session ended with attorney Mark Tinsley on the stand. He represents the family of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, who was killed in February 2019 when a boat, owned by Murdaugh and allegedly driven by Paul, crashed.

At the time Maggie and Paul were killed, Murdaugh was facing a lawsuit from Beach’s family. A hearing in that civil case was scheduled for June 10, 2021, and had the potential to reveal Murdaugh’s financial problems, prosecutors have said.

But that hearing was delayed after Maggie and Paul were killed.

On Thursday, the prosecution asked Tinsley about how that lawsuit was proceeding. He testified he was seeking $10 million from Murdaugh, but was told Murdaugh was broke and might only be able to come up with $1 million. Tinsley was not cross-examined Thursday and is expected to resume his testimony Friday morning.

Another prosecution witness this week spoke about Murdaugh’s financial dealings. The chief financial officer of his law firm testified she had confronted Murdaugh about missing funds on the morning of June 7, hours before the killings. Afterward, his coworkers offered him sympathy and gave him a reprieve on the financial issues.

“We weren’t going to go in there and harass him about money when we were worried about his mental state and the fact that his family had been killed,” the CFO, Jeanne Seckinger, testified.

Indeed, that “day of reckoning” didn’t come for another three months, when his law firm again confronted him about misappropriated funds, leading to his resignation, a bizarre murder-for-hire and insurance scam plot, a stint in rehab, dozens of financial crimes, his disbarment and, ultimately, the murder charges.

The defense has said the June 10 civil hearing was not a “day of reckoning” but just one in a series of hearings. Murdaugh faces 99 charges for various financial crimes – but those charges will be adjudicated in a separate case and are unrelated to the murders.

CNN
 — 

Hundreds of Quebecers wept openly Thursday as they visited a makeshift memorial stacked with teddy bears, flowers and notes of condolence after the shocking deaths of two children in a day care near Montreal.

Six other children were injured when a city bus in Laval, Quebec, crashed into the day care Wednesday.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, attending a community vigil at a church not far from the day care, spoke of the grief the entire country felt along with the families of the children lost.

“I reflect on the incredible loss the families are feeling right now, on the hundreds of thousands of parents who dropped their kids off at day cares across the country this morning, holding them a little tighter and reflecting on the senselessness of this tragedy,” Trudeau said, surrounded by other mourners in front of the church.

The province’s premier also visited the community to offer aid and condolences Thursday.

“Of course it’s tough, because we’re talking about children and there’s nothing more important than children,” said Premier François Legault, visibly moved as he visited with community members.

His words echoed the grief of many, as family members continue to look for answers as to why the city driver would crash his bus into the front of a day care.

The suspect remains in the hospital under psychiatric evaluation and is expected to appear in court February 17.

Police have removed the bus from the scene and are still investigating the area on the quiet cul-de-sac where the incident occurred.

Quebec prosecutors say 51-year-old Pierre Ny St-Amand faces two counts of first-degree murder and several other charges in connection with the deaths of the children.

First-degree murder charges would indicate prosecutors do not believe this was an accident. However, Laval police said Wednesday they do not know of a possible motive and that the investigation continues.

In Canada’s capital, Ottawa, the lawmaker who represents the Quebec community, Yves Robillard, wept several times as he read a statement in Canada’s parliament.

“This is very sad, my thoughts are with the children, their families and the day care staff,” Robillard said in French. “I am deeply saddened.”

“I want to thank the first responders, firefighters, police officers, paramedics and the community members who were present at the scene,” he said as lawmakers rose to their feet in the chamber.

CNN
 — 

Vanessa Hudgens is officially a fiancée and offered a glimpse of her engagement ring from Major League Baseball outfielder Cole Tucker for the first time on Instagram on Thursday.

News that Hudgens and Tucker were reportedly engaged began circulating last week, but the couple confirmed the news via the joint social media post.

“YES. We couldn’t be happier,” Hudgens wrote alongside a photo of the happy couple in a location that appears to be Paris. A photo of Hudgens’ solitaire diamond ring is showcased in an accompanying photo.

The couple were first linked in November 2020 when Hudgens posted a photo of herself captioned “date night” and was photographed holding hands with Tucker later that night.

During an appearance on “The Drew Barrymore Show” in May 2021, the “High School Musical” actor said she first connected with Tucker when she joined a Zoom meditation group that a friend invited her to participate in.

“We started talking and it’s wild that we found each other over Zoom,” Hudgens said, adding with a laugh that she “fully just slid into his DMs.”

Hudgens and “Elvis” star Austin Butler ended their long-term relationship earlier in 2020 after dating for over eight years.

The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, held talks in Moscow Thursday with the head of Russia’s state nuclear energy company, Rosatom.

“The discussion focused on issues related to ensuring nuclear and physical nuclear safety of the Zaporizhzhia (nuclear power plant),” according to a Rosatom statement.

The head of Rosatom, Alexey Likhachev, “informed the IAEA Director General about the steps that the Russian side is taking in this area, as well as about measures aimed at ensuring comfortable social and living conditions for workers of the plant and members of their families,” according to the statement.

“In addition, issues of current and future cooperation between Russia and the IAEA in other areas were touched upon. The parties confirmed the agreement to continue contacts,” the statement added.

Some context: Zaporizhzhia, with its six reactors, is the largest nuclear power station in Europe.

The IAEA serves as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency and has repeatedly raised concerns about the threat of a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhia plant since Russia invaded Ukraine last year and seized control of the facility.

Grossi has assured Ukraine the IAEA will never recognize Russia as the owner of the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. Grossi also pledged a continuous presence of the IAEA at all of Ukraine’s nuclear plants.

What Ukraine is saying: Shmyhal has demanded control of the Zaporizhzhia facility be returned to Ukrainian authorities, plus a “complete withdrawal” of Russian troops and Rosatom personnel from the plant.

Last fall, as Moscow’s forces were tightening their grip on the facility, Ukraine’s military alleged that plant employees were being subjected to “moral and psychological pressure.” Some had been forced to obtain Russian passports and sign employment contracts with Rosatom, according to Ukraine.

CNN’s Yulia Kesaieva and Lauren Kent contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

Two Indiana men have been arrested for the murder of a 17-year-old girl whose 1975 drowning death remained a cold case until evidence linked the suspects to the victim in a decades-long investigation, police said.

Fred Bandy Jr., 67, of Goshen, and John Wayne Lehman, 67, of Auburn, have each been charged with one count of murder in connection with the death of Laurel Jean Mitchell, the Indiana State Police said in a news release Tuesday.

Mitchell’s parents reported her missing on August 6, 1975, when she didn’t return home after leaving her job at the Epworth Forrest Church camp around 10:00 p.m., police said. The teen’s body was found the next morning in a river in western Noble County, about 17 miles from her home, the ISP said.

Her cause of death was listed as drowning, but an autopsy report “showed signs that she had fought for her life,” leading police to initiate a homicide investigation, according to police.

On Monday, more than 47 years after Mitchell’s death, Bandy Jr. and Lehman were taken into custody “without incident” at their homes by officers with the Indiana State Police and the Noble County Sheriff’s Department, police said.

The two suspects are currently being held without bond at the Noble County Jail, the release said. Both men had an initial court hearing and will be assigned a public defender, James Abbs, the Chief Public Defender of Noble County, told CNN in a statement.

“It was just such a waste,” Mitchell’s sister, Sarah Knisley, told CNN affiliate WPTA. “I just always wondered, you know, how she would have turned out. She missed prom, she missed graduation, she missed getting married and having kids and all that stuff.”

The new developments in the investigation came in the last couple of months after workers with the Indiana State Police laboratory tested evidence to make a correlation between the two suspects and the victim, the release said.

“This case is a culmination of a decades long investigation… and science finally gave us the answers we needed,” Indiana State Police Captain Kevin Smith said in a statement. “Playing a significant role in charges being filed was the Indiana State Police Laboratory Division. We simply could not have solved this case without them.”

Smith also said the public came forward with “valuable information,” over the course of the investigation, which was key to solving the case.

Police said DNA testing of Mitchell’s clothing eventually led officers to arrest the two men, according to CNN affiliate WPTA.

Genetic genealogy, which combines DNA evidence and traditional genealogy to find biological connections among people, has “changed the game” for police investigations in recent years, Smith said during a news conference this week.

The first detectives assigned to the case spent thousands of hours trying to solve Mitchell’s murder, state police said, and the investigation continued over the next five decades while her family waited for answers.

“I hope this brings them at least a little peace at this point,” Smith said of Mitchell’s family. “I cannot imagine having dealt with that for 47 years, wondering what happened.”

CNN Business
 — 

An entire generation of internet users has approached search engines the same way for decades: enter a few words into a search box and wait for a page of relevant results to emerge. But that could change soon.

This week, the companies behind the two biggest US search engines teased radical changes to the way their services operate, powered by new AI technology that allows for more conversational and complex responses. In the process, however, the companies may test both the accuracy of these tools and the willingness of everyday users to embrace and find utility in a very different search experience.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a revamped Bing search engine using the abilities of ChatGPT, the viral AI tool created by OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft recently invested billions of dollars. Bing will not only provide a list of search results, but will also answer questions, chat with users and generate content in response to user queries.

The next day, Google, the dominant player in the market, held an event to detail how it plans to use similar AI technology to allow its search engine to offer more complex and conversational responses to queries, including providing bullet points ticking off the best times of year to see various constellations and also offering pros and cons for buying an electric vehicle. (Chinese tech giant Baidu also said this week that it would be launching its own ChatGPT-style service, though it did not provide details on whether it will appear as a feature in its search engine.)

The updates come as the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which can generate shockingly convincing essays and responses to user prompts, has sparked a wave of interest in AI chatbot tools. Multiple tech giants are now racing to deploy similar tools that could transform the way we draft e-mails, write essays and handle other tasks. But the most immediate impact may be on a foundational element of our internet experience: search.

“Although we are 25 years into search, I dare say that our story has just begun,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, an SVP at Google, at the event Wednesday teasing the new AI features. “We have even more exciting, AI-enabled innovations in the works that will change the way people search, work and play. We’re reinventing what it means to search and the best is yet to come.”

For those who may not be sure what exactly to do with the new tools, the companies offered some examples, ranging from writing a rhyming poem to helping plan an itinerary for a trip.

Lian Jye Su, a research director at tech intelligence firm ABI Research, believes consumers and businesses would be happy to embrace a new way to search as long as “it is intuitive, removes more friction, and offers the path of least resistance — akin to the success of smart home voice assistants, like Alexa and Google Assistant.”

But there is at least one wild card: how much users will be able to trust the AI-powered results.

According to Google, Bard can be used to plan a friend’s baby shower, compare two Oscar-nominated movies or get lunch ideas based on what’s in your fridge. But the tool, which has yet to be released to the public, is already being called out for a factual error it made during a Google demo: it incorrectly stated that the James Webb Telescope took the first pictures of a planet outside of our solar system. A Google spokesperson said the error “highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process.”

Bard and ChatGPT, which was released publicly in late November OpenAI, are built on large language models. These models are trained on vast troves of online data in order to generate compelling responses to user prompts. Experts warn these tools can be unreliable — spreading misinformation, making up responses and giving different answers to the same questions, or presenting sexist and racist biases.

There is clearly strong interest in this type of AI. The public version of ChatGPT attracted a million users in its first five days last fall and is estimated to have hit 100 million users since. But the trust factor may decide whether that interest will stay, according to Jason Wong, an analyst at market research firm Gartner.

“Consumers, and even business users, may have fun exploring the new Bing and Bard interfaces for a while, but as the novelty wears off and similar tools appear, then it really comes down to ease of access and accuracy and trust in the responses that will win out,” he said.

Generative AI systems, which are algorithms that can create new content, are notoriously unreliable. Laura Edelson, a computer scientist and misinformation researcher at New York University, said, “there’s a big difference between an AI sounding authoritative and it actually producing accurate results.”

While general search optimizes for relevance, according to Edelson, large language models try to achieve a particular style in their response without regard to factual accuracy. “One of those styles is, ‘I am a trustworthy, authoritative source,’” she said.

On a very basic level, she said, AI systems analyze which words are next to each other, determine how they get associated and identify the patterns that lead them to appear together. But much of the onus remains on the user to fact check the answers, a process that could prove just as time consuming for people as the current model of scrolling through links on a page — if not more so.

Microsoft and Google executives have acknowledged some of the potential issues with the new AI tools.

“We know we wont be able to answer every question every single time,” said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s vice president and consumer chief marketing officer. “We also know we’ll make our share of mistakes, so we’ve added a quick feedback button at the top of every search, so you can give us feedback and we can learn.”

Raghavan, at Google, also emphasized the importance of feedback from internal and external testing to make sure the tool “meets the high bar, our high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness, before we launch more broadly.”

But even with the concerns, the companies are betting that these tools offer the answer to the future of search.

– CNN’s Clare Duffy, Catherine Thorbecke and Brian Fung contributed to this story.

New York
CNN
 — 

CVS is buying a primary care doctor’s network, moving the pharmacy deeper into providing physician services for patients.

The company announced Wednesday that it plans to pay $10.6 billion to acquire Oak Street Health, a primary care provider mainly for adults on Medicare Advantage. Oak Street has 160 health care clinics in 21 states.

Medicare Advantage, also known as Medicare Part C, is a type of Medicare health plan offered by a private company that contracts with Medicare. It enrolls nearly half of all Medicare beneficiaries.

CVS for years built out retail stores and basic MinuteClinics. It also became a pharmacy benefits’ manager. In 2018, CVS bought Aetna, making it one of the largest health insurers in the country. Although CVS has not been a primary care practice in the past with a network of doctors, the company has said it wants to move into the area.

The company is trying to keep pace with rivals and control costs. In the future, CVS could offer an insurance plan to consumers in Oak Street’s network for lower premiums, said Sean Nicholson, the director of the Sloan Program in Health Administration at Cornell University.

A flurry of deals between health insurers and primary care providers kicked off in recent years. Insurance rivals UnitedHealth Group’s Optum arm and Humana have recently expanded their primary care services.

“In the last three years, health insurers have become increasingly interested in purchasing primary care practices and employing physicians,” Nicholson said.

Traditionally, health insurers have contracted with physicians, not employed them. But insurers believe that if they have a strong physician network, they can better control the cost and quality of medical care, he said.

Additionally, private Medicare plans typically offer higher reimbursement rates from the federal government than traditional Medicare, and CVS wants to capitalize on this, he said. The Biden administration announced a rule last week cracking down on Medicare private plans that have overcharged the federal government.

CVS’ retail rivals have also been moving into primary care.

Walgreens

(WBA) has attached doctors’ offices to hundreds of its stores in a deal with primary care network VillageMD and took a majority stake in the company. Backed by Walgreens

(WBA), VillageMD purchased primary care provider Summit Health for $9 billion earlier this year.

Amazon

(AMZN) said last year that it plans to buy primary care provider One Medical for roughly $4 billion.

London
CNN
 — 

Credit Suisse

(CS) has reported its biggest annual loss since the financial crisis in 2008, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the scandal-plagued Swiss bank as it attempts a turnaround.

The lender on Thursday posted a loss of 1.4 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2022, extending a losing streak that started in 2021 and taking its full-year loss to 7.3 billion Swiss francs ($7.9 billion). In 2008, Credit Suisse made a loss of 8.2 billion Swiss francs ($8.9 billion).

The bank’s shares fell 5% in early trade. The stock has plunged 65% over the past 12 months but is up 12% so far in 2023.

Credit Suisse said in a statement that the fourth-quarter performance was impacted by “the challenging economic and market environment, significant deposit and net asset outflows at the beginning of the quarter and the execution of our strategic actions.” It added that it expected to make another “substantial loss” in 2023.

Customers withdrew 111 billion Swiss francs ($121 billion) in the final three months of 2022, when the bank was hit by social media speculation that it was on the brink of collapse.

The rumors, which sparked a selloff in the shares, followed a series of missteps and compliance failures that have cost the bank dearly.

For example, the collapse of US hedge fund Archegos Capital Management, a client of Credit Suisse, in 2021 cost the bank $5.5 billion. An independent external investigation later found “a failure to effectively manage risk.”

Credit Suisse has since embarked on a major restructuring plan that entails cutting 9,000 full-time jobs, spinning off its investment bank and focusing on wealth management.

In a step towards this, the company announced Thursday the acquisition of M. Klein & Company, an investment banking business.

Credit Suisse CEO Ulrich Körner said the deal “marks another milestone in the carve-out of CS First Boston as a leading independent capital markets and advisory business.”

The bank also announced that it had finalized the first stage of the deal to sell its securitized products group to Apollo Global Management, which is expected to conclude in the first half of this year.

“We have a clear plan to create a new Credit Suisse and intend to continue to deliver on our three-year strategic transformation by reshaping our portfolio, reallocating capital, right-sizing our cost base, and building on our leading franchises.” Körner said in the statement.

— Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

After five Memphis police officers brutally beat Tyre Nichols last month, one officer took two cell phone photos of the visibly injured 29-year-old Black man and texted one image to at least five people, newly revealed internal police department documents show.

Demetrius Haley – one of five officers fired and charged with murder in Nichols’ death – admitted that he texted a photo to five people, including two other Memphis officers, a “female acquaintance” and a civilian employee, according to the documents, published online by CNN affiliate WMC and obtained by CNN. A sixth person was also identified as a recipient of the same photo, the documents state.

Indeed, surveillance video of the beating released to the public shows one of the officers twice held up his cell phone and shined a flashlight on Nichols.

The sharing of the photo was just one allegation among many laid out in the internal documents, which accuse the officers of a slew of misconduct and policy violations before, during and after the interaction with Nichols on January 7.

Taken together, the police documents accuse the officers of pulling over Nichols without telling him the reason for the stop, using excessive force, turning off or otherwise obscuring their body-worn cameras, “laughing and bragging” about the beating and then misleading investigators.

Also included in the documents is a sworn affidavit from one of the officers defending his actions – the first time any of the officers involved in the beating have offered their perspective on what happened.

The offenses are laid out in five decertification request letters – one for each officer – sent by the police department last month to a state commission that enforces policing standards. If their decertification is granted, they would be unable to work for other state law enforcement agencies.

Nichols is described in the letters as a nonviolent, unarmed subject who posed no significant threat to the officers. He died three days after the beating.

All five officers – Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Desmond Mills Jr. – were internally charged with violating the department’s policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, excessive or unnecessary force and use of body-worn cameras, the letters show. Some also were charged with additional violations. The charges are not criminal in nature.

The documents say that all five officers declined to make any statements during the administrative hearings. In each case, the president of the police union, Lt. Essica Cage-Rosario, submitted a letter stating investigators had not provided the body-camera footage or other officer statements beforehand.

“These are only a few examples of the GROSS violations of this officer’s right to due process,” Cage-Rosario said, according to the documents.

A sixth police officer also has been fired but not charged. The officers were all members of the specialized SCORPION unit, which has since been disbanded. Further, the Fire Department fired two EMTs and a lieutenant for their inadequate response to the incident.

Seven more officers are expected to face administrative discipline related to the case, the Memphis city attorney announced Tuesday.

The Memphis City Council also approved several public safety reforms in a meeting Tuesday night, the first hearing since the video of Nichols’ beating was released. The council votes happened as Nichols’ family entered the House of Representatives chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, as invited guests of first lady Jill Biden to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Biden addressed the need for police accountability in his speech.

Nichols’ parents spoke to CNN on Wednesday morning, thanking Biden for acknowledging him and urging Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to address police reform.

“My son didn’t die for nothing,” RowVaughn Wells told CNN’s Don Lemon on CNN This Morning. “There has to be some greater good … some good will come of this.”

Video contradicts initial police report in Tyre Nichols arrest

The documents added further details to the entirety of the police interaction with Nichols, only some of which is captured on surveillance and body camera footage.

The interaction began with a traffic stop for alleged “reckless driving,” police initially said.

However, the internal police documents say Haley exited his unmarked vehicle and “forced (Nichols) out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over (his) head.” Haley “never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest,” the documents state.

In the following moments, Haley pepper-sprayed Nichols directly in the eyes and kicked him on the ground, the documents say.

After Nichols fled the scene, the officers caught up to him at a second location near his family home and punched and beat him as he lay restrained on the ground, the video shows.

At one point, Haley was “on an active cell phone call where the person overheard the police encounter,” the documents state.

The documents lay out numerous uses of excessive force against Nichols committed by each officer and say several of the men failed to intervene or report the violent actions of their fellow officers.

At one point, Smith and Bean held Nichols by the arms while other officers pepper-sprayed and “excessively struck” him with a baton, the department says. Smith and Bean also admitted to punching Nichols several times as they tried to handcuff him, the letters say.

After the beating, the officers can be heard on body-worn camera “making multiple unprofessional comments, laughing and bragging about (their) involvement,” the documents say.

The officers also failed to immediately provide aid in the critical moments after the beating and did not immediately help when medical personnel requested to remove Nichols’ handcuffs, the documents say. The documents also note Smith is a certified EMT.

Their conversation and inaction after the beating was witnessed by a civilian who took photos and cell phone video, the documents state.

Mills knew Nichols had been “pepper sprayed, tased, struck with an ASP baton, punched, and kicked” but didn’t provide him aid, according to the documents. Instead, he admitted in his report he walked away to decontaminate himself from the chemical irritant spray, his letter says.

About 23 minutes passed between the time Nichols appeared to be subdued and a stretcher arriving on scene, video shows.

An autopsy commissioned by Nichols’ family preliminarily found he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” The full report from the family’s autopsy has yet to be released. Officials have also not released Nichols’ autopsy.

After Nichols’ arrest, the officers’ statements and reports contradicted one another and omitted or distorted key details about their violence toward Nichols, according to the letters.

Their accounts were “not consistent with each other and are not consistent with the publicly known injuries and death of Mr. Nichols,” the documents say.

When speaking to Nichols’ mother after the arrest, Mills and his supervisor “refused to provide an accurate account of her son’s encounter with police or his condition,” his letter says.

Martin made “deceitful” statements in his incident summary, in which he claimed Nichols tried to grab his holstered gun as officers forced him to the ground, his letter says. Video evidence, however, “does not corroborate” his statements, it says, adding Martin never disclosed that he punched and kicked Nichols several times. Instead, it says, he said he administered “body blows.”

Haley also said in a statement and in body camera footage that he heard an officer tell Nichols, “Let my gun go!” But the claim was “deemed untruthful” after a review of video evidence, the documents say.

Both Haley and Martin were internally charged with violating the department policy against providing “knowingly incorrect, false, or deceitful” information, the documents show.

All five of the officers either never turned on their body-worn cameras or only recorded snippets of their encounter with Nichols, which is a violation of the department’s policies, the letters say.

Both Bean and Mills were initially recording their encounter with Nichols but removed their cameras while the scene was still active, their letters state.

Bean took the camera off his vest and left it on the trunk of a car before walking away to “have a conversation with other officers about the incident,” the letter says. Mills took his vest off entirely, leaving it on another car with the camera still attached, his letter says.

Martin and Haley, the first officers on the scene who dragged Nichols out of his car, didn’t turn their cameras on before the confrontation, according to their statements of charges. Smith also hadn’t activated his camera when he first arrived at the scene, his letter says.

The documents do not clarify whether Haley, Martin or Smith turned on their cameras the second time they encountered Nichols, who was confronted by officers again after he fled on foot. Martin’s letter says he “at some point” took his camera off and put it in his car.

In a sworn affidavit submitted during his disciplinary hearing, Smith explained that he called for medical help, followed his training and even tried to assist Nichols at one point.

He said that he called for medical help even before he arrived on the scene of the second encounter.

“Even though no one else requested medical assistance, because of the reported taser and chemical spray, I immediately made a radio call and indicated that medical should be sent to the area where the suspect was last seen to possibly render medical aid if the suspect was taken into custody,” he said.

CNN could not independently confirm that Smith made that call.

After arriving at the scene, according to the affidavit, Smith said he tried to help another officer take Nichols into custody but that Nichols “was violent and would not comply.”

“It is my contention that I personally utilized the training and defensive tactics” he learned as a Memphis police officer, he said. However, according to the investigative hearing summary filed by the city, Smith admitted to investigators that he hit Nichols, “with a closed first two to three times in the face.”

Bodycam and surveillance videos from the incidents show that Nichols did not appear to be violent, and instead captured multiple officers threatening Nichols with violence while he appeared to comply with their commands or was already on the ground. Smith’s bodycam footage was not among those released by the city of Memphis.

Smith suggested that at one point he attempted to help Nichols.

“I informed my fellow officers to assist me in sitting the suspect against my squad car in order for the suspect to breath [sic] better,” the affidavit reads.

In the document, Smith did not deny failing to turn on his camera soon enough and said, “I did not intentionally fail to activate my body worn camera, but the safety of the other officers and myself was paramount,” he said.

Despite his defense, Memphis police fired Smith after finding he violated policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, duty to intervene and excessive/unnecessary force, the documents state.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of CNN’s coverage of Black History Month and its ongoing commitment to honoring unsung heroes.

CNN
 — 

As a kid, Clarice Phelps often turned to one image for inspiration.

While other seventh graders hung ’90s pop band and movie posters on their walls, Phelps put up a poster of Mae Jemison, the first Black female astronaut to launch into space.

“Mae started it all for me,” said Phelps, who in learning about Jemison realized she – a Black girl from Nashville’s Edgehill public housing – could reach for big dreams, too.

Because of her race, her gender or her family’s income, Phelps would face bias at almost every step, she said, on her way to helping make a discovery that would change how scientists chart the building blocks of the universe.

As the first Black woman to break such scientific ground, Phelps now feels a responsibility to guide kids like the one she once was, she said – even if others’ doubts about her sometimes still echo in her mind.

An “unlikely scientist,” Phelps had few scientific influences beyond a stack of home encyclopedias and “Beakman’s World” on TV, she’s said. And growing up poor with three sisters and a single mom, advanced – and expensive – schooling didn’t seem likely.

But Phelps was a smart kid with a passion for learning, she said. She was also highly determined.

Once, after a childhood music teacher sneered at her pawn shop-bought violin, Phelps devoted hours of practice to earn first chair in the orchestra, she said in a 2019 TEDx Talk. “I poured my heart and soul into that violin because I saw it as an extension of who I wanted to be,” she said.

“I took everything in my life like that violin,” she said, refusing to let others’ assumptions limit what she might achieve.

Phelps later was selected into a magnet school, where she met two teachers who, she said, were “instrumental” in nurturing her passion for science. That love for experimentation and discovery prompted her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Tennessee State University and later enlist in the US Navy’s Nuclear Power School.

Their stories aren’t widely told, but these Black women and men helped shape history

When Phelps turned her sights to radiochemistry – the study of radioactive substances – racial bias and sexism tried to get in her way, she said. While women make up half the US workforce, only 27% work in science, technology, engineering and math, often dubbed STEM, US 2019 census data shows; of those, only 2% are Black women, according to 2015 National Science Foundation stats.

“For the first 18 years of my career, I was the only Black woman in my field. When I was in the Navy, I was the only Black girl in my division. Afterwards in my lab, I was the only Black woman in the whole facility – and initially they thought I was the janitor,” she told CNN, recalling requests to grab the trash.

“It’s isolating,” said Phelps, who after also served as an engineering laboratory technician aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. “You feel like you have to represent your entire race and descend the racial stereotypes … especially in nuclear and radiochemistry.”

Then in 2010, Phelps joined an international mission to do something else unprecedented: Create Element 117.

For years, there had been a single square in the seventh row of the periodic table of elements that scientists struggled to fill. No element with the precise chemical and physical properties to fit that spot in the familiar chart ever had been found or synthesized.

It would have to have 117 protons in its core. And like other so-called “superheavy elements” that don’t exist in nature, it would have to be created in a lab.

Work like this, Phelps explained, aims eventually to find a superheavy element stable enough to provide “new avenues for fuel and energy sources” and offer insight into the beginnings of the universe and the matter that existed during the Big Bang.

As part of the discovery team, Phelps purified the element berkelium to create a film – a painstaking, monthslong process. Then, collaborators in Germany and Russia “relentlessly bombarded” it for months with calcium.

The experiment produced six unique atoms, each with the required 117 protons. It was declared a success in 2012, and four years later, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry – the world authority on chemistry – officially recognized Element 117 as part of the periodic table, along with three other new elements.

Since Phelps’ team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other institutions in Tennessee laid the groundwork for discovery, Element 117 was officially named “tennessine” (Ts). It’s the second-heaviest known element on Earth, and though its use is limited to research, scientists believe it is a critical stepping stone toward the creation of future superheavy elements.

“We can’t imagine where tennessine could take us,” said author of “Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table” Kit Chapman, noting human-generated elements are used “in smoke detectors, to treat cancers, even to power rovers on Mars.”

With the discovery, the girl with the Jemison poster on her wall had “claimed a seat at the periodic table,” Phelps said in her TEDx Talk.

But despite the feat, Phelps again found herself fighting for recognition.

When her lab celebrated tennessine, Phelps was left off the gala’s guest list; when her supervisor got her in, no place card bore her name, she said. Even the plaque listing scientists involved in the discovery omitted her.

“They had left me off this whole thing,” Phelps said. “I felt embarrassed because everyone is wandering around this luncheon, and I literally didn’t have a seat at the table. I went outside, and I was crying.”

Phelps later was told her name had been cut off by mistake following a spreadsheets’ line break, she said.

Phelps’ “name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected,” the institution told CNN. The lab “is incredibly proud of Clarice Phelps – a US Navy veteran, a prolific scientist, an active member of the East Tennessee community.

“As the first Black woman to be involved in the discovery of an element, she is an inspiration for the next generation of women and people of color in STEM,” it said.

At the time, though, the incident – like the doubting orchestra teacher – served again to harden Phelps’ resolve.

After winning the monthslong battle to get the plaque recommissioned with her name on it, Phelps started talking with reporters about the significance of tennessine and her role on the team. And she was acknowledged by Chapman, a science historian, and British physicist Jess Wade, who has written over a thousand Wikipedia biographies about women and minority scientists, as the first Black woman involved in the discovery of a new element.

Phelps, now a mom of three, said she wants to be a visible role model, like Jemison: “I want to be that person for that little girl who’s looking for somebody that looks like them, doing things that people say they can’t do.”

Still, though, she battles imposter syndrome – the result of years of professional micro- and macro-aggressions – and tries to fight it by remembering: “I did that work,” she said.

“My hands were in the glove box handling that material,” said Phelps, who’s working to finish her PhD in nuclear engineering. “I didn’t do that by myself, there was a team, but I know what I did, and no one can take that from me.”

That’s the lesson she tries to impart as a board member and vice president of Yo-STEM, a non-profit that aims to bring STEM education to underserved communities like the one she grew up in.

“No one can take away what you know,” she said: “your experience and knowledge and your self-worth.”