Trial begins for officer in fatal raid of Taylor home
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The only criminal trial to arise from the botched police raid that killed Breonna Taylor has begun, with hundreds of potential jurors gathering Friday at a courthouse in what activists see as a chance for some measure of justice. Individual questioning of jurors is scheduled to start this week.
The former Louisville officer facing trial, Brett Hankison, was not charged in Taylor’s death but is standing trial on three lower-level felony charges for allegedly firing his service weapon wildly into the apartments of Taylor’s neighbors during the raid on March 13, 2020.
Whatever the verdict, the trial could disappoint protesters who took to the streets of Louisville for months as part of racial injustice demonstrations that exploded across the country that year.
No officers were charged for the shooting death of the 26-year-old Black woman and many see that as a tragedy, said Shameka Parrish-Wright, 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 Parrish-Wright, who is running for Louisville mayor. “We were asking for all those officers to be fired, arrested and prosecuted.”
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 25-yearold Black man, and last spring white former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin got 22 years in prison for killing George Floyd.
Taylor’s death has spurred major changes. Louisville banned the use of 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 federal investigation looking into possible racial biases within the department. The city also paid $12 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Taylor’s mother. 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 Hankison was forced out. And Jonathan Mattingly, who was wounded in the leg by a bullet fired by Taylor’s boyfriend, retired last June.
The Louisville officers were serving a no-knock warrant at Taylor’s home as part of a series of raids that night targeting a drug dealer and former boyfriend of Taylor’s. But he wasn’t with Taylor that night, and police found no drugs or cash in her twobedroom apartment. The warrant police used to enter her home was later found to be flawed.
During the raid, Hankison fired 10 shots through Taylor’s patio door, according to an FBI report. Three of the shots went through a wall that connected to a neighbor’s apartment. If convicted, Hankison faces one to five years in prison for each of the wanton endangerment counts.