Breonna Taylor: grand juror speaks out, saying homicide charges weren't offered
A grand juror in the Breonna Taylor case has spoken out, challenging statements made by the Kentucky attorney general and saying that the jury was not offered homicide charges to consider against officers involved in Taylor’s killing.
The anonymous grand juror’s comments on Tuesday came after a Louisville judge cleared the way for the the panel’s members to talk publicly about the secretive proceedings. The juror filed suit to speak publicly after Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, announced last month that no officers would be directly charged in the March shooting death of Taylor during a botched narcotics raid. The grand jury charged one officer with endangering her neighbors.
In a written statement, the grand juror, who was not identified, said that only wanton endangerment charges were offered to them to consider against one officer. The grand jury asked questions about bringing other charges against the officers, “and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn’t feel they could make them stick”, the grand juror said.
Cameron had opposed allowing grand jurors to speak about the proceedings, but said Tuesday that he would not appeal the judge’s ruling.
Grand juries are typically secret meetings, though earlier this month the audio recordings of the proceedings in the Taylor case were released publicly.
Cameron announced the results of the grand jury investigation in a widely viewed news conference on 23 September. At that announcement, he said prosecutors “walked the grand jury through every homicide offense”.
He also said “the grand jury agreed” that the officers who shot Taylor were justified in returning fire after they were shot at by Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend. Walker’s lone gunshot struck one of the officers in the leg.
The anonymous grand juror challenged Cameron’s comments, saying the panel “didn’t agree that certain actions were justified”, and grand jurors “did not have homicide charges explained to them”.
“The grand jury never heard anything about those laws. Self defense or justification was never explained either,” the statement continued.
The grand juror’s attorney, Kevin Glowgower, said his client’s chief complaint was the way in which the results were “portrayed to the public as to who made what decisions and who agreed with what decisions”.
The grand juror had no further plans to speak about the proceedings on Tuesday beyond the statement, Glowgower said.
Cameron has acknowledged his prosecutors did not introduce any homicide charges against two officers who shot Taylor, and said it was because they were justified in returning fire after Walker shot at them.
Cameron said Tuesday that it was his decision “to ask for an indictment that could be proven under Kentucky law”.
“Indictments obtained in the absence of sufficient proof under the law do not stand up and are not fundamentally fair to any one,” Cameron said in a statement released Tuesday night.
Taylor, a Black emergency medical technician, was shot multiple times after being roused from sleep by white officers executing a narcotics warrant.
The warrant was approved as part of a narcotics investigation. No drugs were found at her home. The case has fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
On Wednesday, a Louisville police officer who shot Taylor after he was hit in the leg by her boyfriend’s gunshot gave his first media interviews.
Sgt Jonathan Mattingly, 44, said Taylor “didn’t do anything to deserve a death sentence” in interviews with ABC News and the Louisville Courier Journal.
“You want to do the right thing,” said Mattingly, who said he and another officer, Myles Cosgrove, fired into the apartment’s front entry after Walker shot him in the leg, believing they were intruders.
“You want to be the one who is protecting, not up here looking to do any damage to anybody’s family. That’s not anybody’s desire that I’ve worked with.”
He claimed the protests and media reports that followed the shooting unfairly compared Taylor’s death to the slaying of George Floyd in Minnesota and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. “It’s not a race thing like people wanna try to make it to be. It’s not,” he said. “This is not us going, hunting somebody down. This is not kneeling on a neck. It’s nothing like that.”
Mattingly said he will probably leave the Louisville police department since he has reached the years of service needed for retirement.
The grand jury last month charged a third officer who also fired his gun with endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but none of the three were charged in Taylor’s death.
Campaigners continue to push for prosecutions of the officers for her death.