The U.S. attorney's office announced that federal prosecutors will not be filing criminal charges against the three former Tacoma police officers involved in the March 2020 death of Manuel Ellis.
A statement issued Thursday by acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller stated that a team of experienced federal prosecutors conducted an independent and comprehensive review" of the transcripts and evidence produced in a state criminal trial for the officers and concluded that federal criminal civil rights charges could not be filed.
"After a careful and thorough review, the Department of Justice has closed its inquiry," the statement said.
Ellis, 33, died March 3, 2020, after repeatedly telling Tacoma police officers that he couldn’t breathe as they pinned him to the ground, took turns kneeling on him as he lay prone, struck him in the head, hobbled his legs with a cord and placed a mesh spit hood over his face. The officers — Christopher Burbank, Matthew Collins and Timothy Rankine — faced trial for his death, including charges of manslaughter and murder. All three were acquitted in December 2023.
Following the trial, all three officers resigned from the Tacoma Police Department, each receiving a $500,000 severance payout, according to records. Last month, the city of Tacoma settled a civil rights lawsuit filed by Ellis' family for $6 million.
Pierce County in 2022 paid Ellis’ family $4 million to resolve a lawsuit over its personnel’s involvement in restraining Ellis and its flawed initial investigation that then-Gov. Jay Inslee ordered redone by the Washington State Patrol.
All three officers remain under investigation by the Criminal Justice Training Commission — which trains, sets standards and certifies Washington law enforcement officers — to determine whether their certifications to be a peace officer will be revoked.
A telephone message seeking comment from Ellis' attorney, James Bible, was not immediately returned Friday.
Criminal civil rights charges differ from civil lawsuits and are difficult to prosecute. They require the government to prove that the officers, acting "under color of law" — the authority granted to them as police officers — deprived Ellis of a protected civil right, and did so willfully and intentionally.
In the history of the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle, prosecutors have brought only a single criminal civil rights case against a law enforcement officer.
That case, tried in 2008, resulted in an acquittal of ex-King County sheriff’s Deputy Brian Bonnar, who was accused of violating the civil rights of a woman during a violent arrest following a car chase in October 2005.
In Eastern Washington, former Spokane police Officer Karl Thompson was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2012 for violating the civil rights of Otto Zehm, a 36-year-old unarmed, developmentally disabled man who died after being beaten, shocked with a Taser and hog-tied during a shoplifting investigation in 2005. Thompson claimed he felt threatened by a bottle of soda Zehm was carrying. Zehm's last words were, "All I wanted was a Snickers.
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