According to NBC News affiliate WMC, a jury returned its verdicts Thursday in the federal trial of three former Memphis police officers accused in the fatal beating of Tire Nichols.

Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith and Taddarius Bean are accused of using excessive force to deprive Nichols of his rights, obstructing justice through witness tampering and other crimes. They pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Two other former officers, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., pleaded guilty to the same charge.

Prosecutors accused the former officers of brutally beating Nichols, 29, after a traffic stop on Jan. 7, 2023, even though body camera videos of the attack showed Nichols posed no threat to the officers.

“They stood next to his dying body and laughed,” one of the prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Rogers, told jurors during opening arguments. Then they “tacitly agreed to lie about it to cover it up.”

A defense attorney for Bean said the officers were only trying to subdue a suspect who didn’t follow officers’ commands.

Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, but the Memphis police chief said there was no evidence to support the charge.

Mills testified against his former colleagues during the four-week trial and admitted hitting Nichols three times with his baton. The former officer cried as prosecutors showed body camera videos of other officers punching and kicking Nichols.

“I left his child fatherless,” Mills said of Nichols. “I’m sorry.”

Nichols, who had a young son, died in a hospital three days after the beating. An autopsy report listed the cause of death as a blow to the head.

The five officers, who were members of a crime-fighting team called the Scorpion Unit, were fired after Nichols’ death for violating police policy. Their unit was disbanded.

Federal prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert asked the jury on Wednesday to find the defendants guilty on all counts.

She argued that at the heart of the case, the officers acted in concert and intentionally aided and abetted the attack that killed Nichols, NBC affiliate WMC in Memphis reported.

“Five officers beat Tire Nichols. Five officers let him die and five officers covered it up,” she said.

Bean’s attorney, John Keith Perry, said there was reasonable doubt about each of the crimes his client was accused of.

Haley’s attorney, Stephen Leffler, disputed the prosecution’s claim that Nichols never posed a threat to the officers and said it was the punches from Martin, Bean and Smith that killed Nichols, not Haley’s, WMC reported Wednesday.

The officers are also charged with second-degree murder in state court. They pleaded not guilty, although Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas to guilty.