A decide within the US state of Kentucky has sentenced a police officer concerned within the 2020 taking pictures demise of Breonna Taylor to 33 months for violating her civil rights.
The sentencing of officer Brett Hankison was introduced on Monday on the Louisville courtroom and represents a repudiation to prosecutors, who had requested he obtain a one-day sentence.
US District Decide Rebecca Grady Jennings sentenced Hankison at a listening to on Monday afternoon. She mentioned that no jail time “isn’t applicable” for Hankison and that she was “startled” that extra folks had not been injured within the raid.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was killed in her residence within the early hours of March 13, 2020, after police executed a so-called no-knock warrant, making an attempt to storm Taylor’s residence unannounced, based mostly on defective proof that her residence was concerned in a drug operation.
Considering they had been experiencing a house invasion, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired one shot on the suspected intruders. Police responded with roughly 22 pictures, a few of which went right into a neighbour’s residence, endangering a pregnant girl, her companion and five-year-old son.
A federal jury in November 2024 discovered Hankison answerable for utilizing extreme power in violation of Taylor’s civil rights.
However final week, Division of Justice legal professionals requested that Hankison be given a one-day sentence, plus three years of supervised launch, arguing {that a} prolonged sentence could be “unjust”. Hankison shot 10 bullets into the residence, although the pictures he fired didn’t hit her.
Demise was a catalyst for requires racial justice
Taylor’s demise, together with the homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis by the hands of a white police officer, led to racial justice protests throughout the USA over the remedy of individuals of color by police departments.
Throughout former President Joe Biden’s administration, the Justice Division introduced legal civil rights costs in opposition to the officers concerned in each Taylor and Floyd’s deaths.
Hankison was convicted by a federal jury in November 2024 of 1 rely of violating Taylor’s civil rights, after the primary try and prosecute him ended with a mistrial.
He was individually acquitted on state costs in 2022.
The Justice Division’s sentencing memo for Hankison downplayed his position within the raid at Taylor’s house, saying he “didn’t shoot Ms. Taylor and isn’t in any other case answerable for her demise”. The memo was notable as a result of it was not signed by any of the profession prosecutors – those that weren’t political appointees – who had tried the case. It was submitted on July 16 by Harmeet Dhillon, a political appointee by Trump to steer the Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division, and her counsel, Robert Keenan.
Keenan beforehand labored as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, the place he argued {that a} native deputy sheriff convicted of civil rights violations, Trevor Kirk, ought to have his conviction on the felony counts struck and mustn’t serve jail time.
The efforts to strike the felony conviction led a number of prosecutors on the case to resign in protest, in line with media stories and an individual accustomed to the matter.
The division’s sentencing suggestion within the Hankison case marks the most recent effort by the Trump administration to place the brakes on the division’s police accountability work. Earlier this yr, Dhillon nixed plans to enter right into a court-approved settlement with the Louisville Police Division, and rescinded the Civil Rights Division’s prior findings of widespread civil rights abuses in opposition to folks of color.
Attorneys for Taylor’s household known as the division’s sentencing suggestion for Hankison an insult, and urged the decide to “ship true justice” for her.
On Monday, the Louisville Metro Police Division arrested 4 folks in entrance of the courtroom, who it mentioned had been “creating confrontation, kicking automobiles, or in any other case creating an unsafe setting”. Authorities didn’t checklist the costs these arrested would face.
“We perceive this case brought on ache and broken belief between our division and the neighborhood,” a police assertion mentioned. “We notably respect and worth the first Modification. Nevertheless, what we noticed at the moment in entrance of the courthouse on the street was not protected, acceptable or authorized.”
A pre-sentencing report by the US Probation Workplace mentioned that Hankison ought to face 135 to 168 months imprisonment on the extreme power conviction, in line with the sentencing memo. However federal prosecutors mentioned a number of elements, together with that Hankison’s two different trials ended with no convictions, ought to vastly scale back the potential punishment.
