Jury selection starts in Taylor trial
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The only criminal trial to arise from the botched police raid that left Breonna Taylor dead began on Friday, as hundreds of potential jurors gathered at a Kentucky courthouse in what activists see as a chance for some measure of justice. Individual questioning of jurors is scheduled to start next week.
The former Louisville officer facing trial, Brett Hankison, was not charged in Taylor’s shooting death but is standing trial on three lower-level felony charges for allegedly firing his service weapon wildly into Taylor’s neighbors’ apartments during the March 13, 2020, raid.
Whatever the verdict, the trial could leave a bad taste in the mouth of protesters who took to the streets of Louisville for months chanting, “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” as part of racial injustice demonstrations that exploded across the country that year.
No officers were charged for the death of the 26-yearold Black woman, and many see that as a tragedy, according to Shameka ParrishWright, a local organizer who was arrested at one of the Taylor protests.
“There are definitely people who want to see some form of justice and will take any piece of that,” said Ms. Parrish-Wright, who is running for Louisville mayor. Mr. Hankison’s trial “is a piece of that, but it’s not the original thing we set out for.”
“We were asking for all those officers to be fired, arrested and prosecuted,” she said.
There have been murder convictions in two other cases that fueled the 2020
protests. In November, three white men in Georgia were sent to prison for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25year-old Black man, and last spring white former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin got 22 years in prison for killing George Floyd.
Despite the lack of charges over Taylor’s death, her death has led to major changes. Louisville banned the use of so-called no-knock warrants like the one used in the deadly raid, and the governor signed a law limiting the use of such warrants throughout the state. The Louisville Metro Police Department underwent regime change after the raid, and there is an ongoing, broad federal investigation looking into possible racial biases within the department. The city also paid $12 million to settle Taylor’s mother’s wrongful death lawsuit.
But the two former officers
who fired shots that struck Taylor were not charged. Myles Cosgrove, who state investigators said likely fired the fatal shot, was fired last January, months after Mr. Hankison was forced out. And Jonathan Mattingly, who was wounded in the leg by a bullet fired by Taylor’s boyfriend, retired last June.
Mr. Cosgrove, Mr. Mattingly and other officers who took part in the raid might testify in this trial, according to a motion filed by Mr. Hankison’s defense.
But Mr. Hankison’s trial “is not justice for Breonna,” said Amber Brown, who joined hundreds of days of protests in downtown Louisville on behalf of Taylor.
“Nothing that’s going on in that courtroom has anything really to do with Breonna,” Ms. Brown said. “He’snot being charged with the bullets that went into her body.”
Attorney Ben Crump, a
member of Taylor’s mother’s legal team in the wrongful death lawsuit, said in a statement Friday that “the lack of justice for Breonna Taylor is a blight on our criminal justice system.”
“Hankison is on trial, not for the bullets that struck and killed Breonna, but for the bullets that endangered other residents in the apartment complex,” Mr. Crump said. “These charges of wanton endangerment should be the lowest among many to result from that tragic night, not the highest and sole among them.”
During the raid, Mr. Hankison went to the rear of the apartment and fired 10 shots through Taylor’s patio door, according to an FBI ballistics report. Three of the shots went through a wall that connected to a neighbor’s apartment.
If convicted, Mr. Hankison faces one to five years in prison for each of the counts.