TACOMA, Wash. — The state was the first to give a closing argument in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged in the death of Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man who died in police custody in March of 2020. Two defense attorneys followed with closing arguments on Tuesday afternoon.
Making their final case to the jury, Special Prosecutor Patty Eakes noted inconsistencies in the officers’ statements about the night Ellis died, saying they intended to justify their use of excessive force against a man who had done nothing wrong.
Officers Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins are charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter in Ellis’ death. Officer Timothy Rankine is charged with first-degree manslaughter.
State delivers closing arguments
Eakes began delivering the state’s closing argument on Monday afternoon. She quoted Ellis’ sister, Monet Carter-Mixon, saying that Ellis was “her person,” and she trusted him with her children.
In the morning session on Tuesday, Eakes cross-referenced Officer Burbank and Collins’ statements with video taken by eyewitnesses, singling out moments where the officers alleged Ellis was particularly violent or aggressive, and asserting in front of the jury that the objective evidence did not support that story.
Burbank recalled Ellis striking wildly at himself and Officer Collins, saying Ellis attempted to stand up with Officer Collins hanging on his back between the first and second Taser applications, and that the two of them fell between two and five feet to the ground when the Taser was activated. Video taken of the fight and lined up with the timeline of the second Taser application showed that Ellis was actually on the ground when the Taser was fired, and that Ellis had put his hands up in a surrender position multiple times during the period of time where Burbank alleged he was swinging at Collins.
In regard to Collins, Eakes said his version of events was directly contradicted by eyewitness statements. Collins said Ellis was in the intersection of South 96th Street and Ainsworth Avenue South when he and Burbank stopped at a red light. He alleged that Ellis was trying to enter a car that was making a left turn.
Eyewitnesses say they saw Ellis calmly walking down the street before the confrontation with the officers. They say he was beckoned to the passenger side of the patrol car before he was door-checked and fell to the ground while trying to walk away.
Eakes asked the jury to consider whether Collins' story that Ellis picked him up off his feet and threw him on his back into the street was believable, noting that Collins has extensive grappling experience and weighed over 200 pounds.
The state returned to the accounts of eyewitnesses to the scene, reminding the jury that none of them, even witnesses called by the defense, saw Ellis fighting or punching the officers.
Eakes turned to pictures taken of the officers in the hours after Ellis’ death, which show scrapes on Collins’ knees and elbows, and no identifiable injuries on Burbank.
“Is that consistent with them being in the fight of their life, with the guy who wouldn’t quit?” Eakes asked the jury.
She compared those pictures with photos of the injuries Ellis sustained during the confrontation, scrapes to both sides of his face, to his hands, inside of his mouth, to his lower legs, Taser probe marks in his chest and injuries to his head and forehead.
“If Mr. Ellis had superhuman strength, and he was attacking the officers and winning the battle, would he look like that?” Eakes asked.
Eakes then summarized the evidence against all three officers for the first-degree manslaughter conviction. She cited Ellis’ attempts to tell officers he couldn’t breathe, eight of which were caught on recordings, and one moment where it appeared Collins told him to “Shut the f*** up” in response. She also noted that Rankine admitted to hearing Ellis say he couldn’t breathe, but left him hogtied with his weight applied to Ellis’ back, and did not check in with him further.
She again cited the consensus among the state’s medical experts that it was a lack of oxygen catalyzed by the restraint methods that were used against him by police that caused Ellis’ heart to fail, not the other way around, which is inconsistent with the defense’s theories that either a meth overdose or an enlarged heart is the true cause of Ellis’ death.
In her final appeal to the jury, Eakes turned toward the defense’s tactic of drudging up Ellis’ previous interactions with law enforcement, his struggle with his mental health and his years-long battle with addiction in front of the jury as part of their efforts to plead the officers’ case.
“They want to make this about the trial of Manny Ellis,” Eakes said. “That he did this to himself, by his meth use, and his resisting to the assault and restraint by the officers.”
“The defense has wanted to put Mr. Ellis’ flaws out front and center,” she continued. “And it is true, that he was a flawed human being. He struggled to have a job, he struggled with drugs, he struggled with his mental health. But as I said to you at the start, people loved him. He was a son, he was a brother, and he was a human who deserved the same dignity that we all do.”
Defense tries, again, to dismiss the case
On Tuesday morning, the defense began by raising objections to portions of Special Prosecutor Patty Eakes' closing argument which she presented in front of the jury on Monday afternoon, once again leveling accusations of prosecutorial misconduct at the state.
Attorney for Officer Collins, Jared Ausserer, accused Eakes of omitting slides of her PowerPoint presentation which she supplied to defense teams ahead of the beginning of her opening statement on Monday. Eakes countered that she was presenting an exhibit which had already been admitted into evidence, and the exhibit itself was not part of the PowerPoint presentation.
Eakes highlighted part of a transcript suggesting that the beginning of the confrontation between the officers and Ellis was witnessed by other people at the intersection of South 96th Street and Ainsworth Avenue South on the night of Ellis’ death. The defense maintains there were parts of the interaction between the officers and Ellis that eyewitnesses were not present for, and that was not captured on video.
Ausserer argued that Eakes’ use of the exhibit was misleading and the evidence did not suggest what she was trying to convince the jury of. Eakes had said that the first mic click that went out over police dispatch on the night of the confrontation occurred closely to the time that Sara McDowell, an eyewitness, began filming. That’s according to a timeline which was compiled by a forensic video expert Grant Fredericks. Ausserer argued that the timeline compiled by Fredericks was not exhaustive and omitted mic clicks that occurred before McDowell’s video. Eakes countered that that was not true.
The judge agreed with Ausserer that Eakes’ highlighting of a section of the transcript amounted to her editing the exhibit, and directed her to present exhibits in their entirety going forward.
The matter of whether there was a mic click before McDowell started filming was not settled before the judge moved on to address another objection.
Attorney for officer Timothy Rankine, Mark Conrad, objected to Eakes assertion that the officers treated Ellis like an animal on the night he died. He brought up a proposed motion put forward by the state last summer asking that the defense refrain from using references to or describing Ellis as “animalistic,” saying it played into harmful racial stereotypes and could inflame implicit biases in those unfamiliar with the way the term is weaponized against Black people, and Black men in particular. The state submitted that motion with the intention of omitting a section of Collins’ statement to a Pierce County Sheriff’s detective, where he said Ellis was growling and making “animal noises” during the confrontation.
The judge denied that particular motion when it was put forth by the state over the summer. However, he agreed with Conrad that Eakes' use of the term in reference to the officers was inappropriate. Conrad argued that Eakes was projecting prejudicial intentions onto the defendants, and argued it was particularly inflammatory when used against his client who is Asian.
“You’re really pushing the boundaries on this – not just in this one occasion, in the totality of the state’s approach in this case,” Judge Bryan Chushcoff said to Eakes. “You’re pushing the boundaries. Don’t push it any farther. Please.”
Attorneys for Burbank, Collins present closing statements
On Tuesday afternoon, defense attorneys for officers Burbank and Collins presented their closing statements.
Attorney Wayne Fricke, representing Burbank, argued that the state relied “on a scatter-shot approach” when it came to charging the officers, noting the predicated felonies of unlawful imprisonment and assault, and did not prove any charges.
Fricke questioned why the state did not call Rankine’s partner, officer Masyih Ford, to testify because “he has some of the most relevant information as to what happened to Mr. Ellis when he was finally secured at the scene,” Fricke said. “He was hands-on.”
Fricke argued that when Ellis began resisting arrest, the officers had the right to use every means within their power to make an arrest, he said. Fricke said Ellis was violent, unpredictable and paranoid when he was high. And that is the Ellis that officers encountered.
"This is a situation where he created his own death," Fricke said. "It was his behavior that forced officers to use force against him."
He reminded jurors of the Tacoma Police Department’s use of force policy, citing the officers’ actions fell within the policy guidelines.
”They don’t know, at that point, that he’s under the influence of methamphetamine, they don’t know of his medical situation,” Fricke said. “All's they know is their being attacked by a guy, out in the streets, in a dangerous part of town and they’re acting accordingly.”
He also argued that eyewitness Sara McDowell was not accurate in her retelling of the events while officers were restraining Ellis.
“If there was nothing to arrest him for, why is she saying, ‘Just arrest him, just arrest him,’?” Fricke asked. He argued that McDowell knew something happened between Ellis and the officers before she started recording, but the phone with that information cannot be accessed and is locked due to multiple password attempts.
Fricke argued that none of the eyewitnesses saw how the confrontation began, nor do they know how Ellis ended up on the ground. All of Burbank’s statements about his interaction with Ellis are supported by evidence, Fricke argued.
“This situation here is tragic … but this is a hindsight case, it’s an unjust case if there’s ever been an unjust case. Sometimes things happen … sometimes a person just dies under unfortunate circumstances, and I think that’s the case here,” Fricke said in closing. “Nobody wanted him to die, no one sought to have him die.”
“But,” Fricke said, “we don’t compound that tragedy by convicting innocent people of these charges.”
Attorney for Officer Collins, Jared Ausserer started his closing statements on Tuesday afternoon.
He argued that the "tragedy of [Ellis'] death doesn't make officer Collins' actions criminal." He said the state based their entire case off of three civilian eyewitnesses, who had inconsistencies in their testimonies, and they did not call any law enforcement officials who were on scene the night of Ellis death.
Ausserer argued the state withheld particular information, such as Ellis' treatment records and data from a machine used by firefighters when treating Ellis at the scene.
The state did not share evidence of the powered sugar prints on the police vehicle, which Ellis had purchased at the store before the confrontation, nor the photo showing a cut on his left knuckle which is consistent with striking the police vehicle window, Ausserer said.
In front of the jury, he also measured the hobble used to restrain Ellis, which measured at 37 inches, not 29 inches as the state had previously said. He also tried to disprove the idea that Collins told Ellis to “Shut the f*** up” in response to Ellis saying "I can't breathe." Ausserer said the audio record created by an expert shows 14 seconds pass between Ellis' statement and Collins' statement.
The jury was shown a video from 2019 when Ellis was reportedly high on meth and had attempted to rob an A&W store. In the video, he is lying on the ground as deputies yell at him to stay on the ground then jumps up tries to run as deputies tase him. Combined with showing statements Ellis made to mental health counselors, Ausserer argued Ellis had a history of meth-induced psychosis and had said he was anxious around police. Ausserer said Ellis' screams in the 2019 arrest video were similar to those heard in the 2020 video before his death.
Ausserer said the state worked to mislead jurors on McDowell's testimony, stating that she did not see how the confrontation started. He pointed out past social media posts where McDowell claimed she would be "lying" on the stands in trial; McDowell claims the post was a typo and she meant to write is was "dying to shut you all down."
Ausserer's closing statement continues Wednesday morning.
Background on the case
On March 3, 2020, Ellis was walking home when he stopped to speak with Tacoma Police Officers Burbank and Collins, who were in their patrol car, according to probable cause documents.
Witnesses said Ellis turned to walk away, but the officers got out of their car and knocked Ellis to his knees. All witnesses told investigators they did not see Ellis strike the officers.
Other responding officers told investigators that Burbank and Collins reported Ellis was “goin’ after a car” in the intersection and punched the patrol car's windows.
Witness video shows officers repeatedly hitting Ellis. Collins put Ellis into a neck restraint, and Burbank tasered Ellis’ chest, according to prosecutors.
Home security camera footage captured Ellis saying, “Can’t breathe, sir. Can’t breathe."
Rankine, who was the first backup officer to arrive, applied pressure to Ellis' back and held him in place while Ellis was "hogtied" with a hobble, according to documents.
When the fire department arrived, Ellis was “unconscious and unresponsive,” according to documents.
The Pierce County Medical Examiner ruled Ellis' death a homicide. According to the autopsy report, Ellis also had a fatal amount of methamphetamine in his system.
KING 5 will stream gavel-to-gavel coverage of the trial from opening to closing statements. Follow live coverage and watch videos on demand on king5.com, KING 5+ and the KING 5 YouTube channel.