71 thoughts on “Indictment For Police Officer Involved in Breonna Taylor Shooting”

  1. As with the George Floyd prosecutions, its not fully enough, but its way more then prior action would suggest.

    Now, lets hope BLM in Louisville can keep the agitators out of its demonstrations tonight, lest Louisville get labeled an anarchist city and loose its Justice Department funding.Report

  3. I find myself idly wondering if they *WANT* riots.

    Surely overreaching on the charges (and then failing to get Murder 1 or whatever) would be better for everybody in the long run than “okay, we agree that *ONE* of the cops shouldn’t have shot into a neighboring apartment.”Report

    1. It’s not up to the prosecutors, it’s up to the grand jury. In Kentucky almost everything is left to a grand jury, although there is a provision for a prosecutor to present “an information”, which is a rather obsolete term referring to an indictment brought by a prosecutor instead of a grand jury. Those are extremely rare here.

      Here at least, a grand jury has almost unlimited investigative powers, if they choose to exercise them, which they rarely do. Once a grand jury is empaneled, they can, in theory, just go off the rails and start investigating the JFK assassination or sasquatch or something. Our prosecutors keep them focused.

      If the grand jury didn’t see how a murder charge was justified under law, they wouldn’t return a murder charge. The prosecutors can’t make a grand jury do anything. If they want to, I think the grand jury can even kick the prosecutor out.Report

      1. I’m told that a prosecutor worth his salt could indict a ham sandwich.

        If true, this is evidence of the prosecutors dragging their feet but acknowledging that, yes, maybe you should keep your bullets to the apartment for which you have a dirty warrant.Report

        1. Well here a prosecutor can’t really indict anyone, except via “an information”. The prosecutor can charge someone, or not charge someone, as can the police. Members of the public have only limited means to get someone charged (basically they have to convince a prosecutor or the police to file charges). That limitation is there so that we don’t have to live in fear of “Karen”.

          The prosecutor has to convince a grand jury that a case is justified, because it’s the grand jury that makes the indictment. The grand jury gets to accept or reject any evidence presented, and they can also call their own witnesses. Some lawyers say they’re actually the most powerful branch of the legal system. There’s no judge telling them what to do, and although the legal professionals can offer them guidance and advice, the grand jury can largely ignore it.

          If the grand jury decides that a murder charge can’t be justified, there’s nothing the prosecutors can do about it.Report

          1. Oh, you’re not familiar with the “ham sandwich” line? It’s been around for a while. Maybe it’s an “East of the Mississippi” thing.

            From what I understand, it makes reference to the fact that Grand Juries are easy to lead around by the nose and if the Prosecutor says something like “if you think that there *MIGHT* have been a crime here, you can send it out as a ‘True Bill’ and that’s not saying that you think he’s guilty, just that you think there should be a trial!”, then the Grand Jury would tend to do just that.

            I mean, he’s the prosecutor, right? You’re just the citizen who couldn’t get out of jury duty.Report

            1. Our grand juries might be a bit more independent than average, or maybe they’re just more crotchety, or maybe the cases that stick out most in lawyer’s minds are the ones where the grand jury told the prosecutor to go f*** himself.

              KY rules of criminal procedure – grand jury

              It starts out with:

              The court shall swear the grand jurors and charge them to inquire into every offense for which any person has been held to answer and for which an indictment or information has not been filed, or other offenses which come to their attention or of which any of them has knowledge.

              That last clause is the open-ended one where one of the grand jurors might pipe up and say “I know darn well he killed Jeffrey Epstein! Let’s look into that!” ^_^

              Anyway, the prosecutor presents his evidence, and the grand jury can ask for just about anything else except testimony from the defendant, as that would potentially violate the 5th Amendment. However, the defense can request to present their side of the case, though the grand jury isn’t obligated to hear it. If they think the prosecutor is dragging his feet, they can go ahead an make their own case and task the prosecutor with writing up their indictment.

              It takes 9 of the 12 grand jurors to return an indictment. If they don’t, the case is over and any bail monies, etc., are returned to the person who’d been accused. So if just four of them don’t think the prosecutor’s charges are justified, that’s it.Report

              1. I know how it works in theory.

                I also know how it works in practice (in theory). Hence the “ham sandwich” observation and the additional observation that the only meat on the deli tray is the “don’t shoot into the wrong apartment” meat.Report

    3. “Surely overreaching on the charges (and then failing to get Murder 1 or whatever) would be better for everybody in the long run”

      Eh. I think that an easy lay-up win is preferable here, because “he went to jail but not for murder” is a less-inspiring rallying cry than “he didn’t get punished at all“…Report

      1. Was the cop who shot through the apartment walls the one who shot Breonna Taylor?

        If not (or if we don’t know), then we could well be in “he didn’t get punished at all” territory. I mean, he didn’t even get indicted.Report

        2. No, he was not the one who shot her. Breonna is not the victim of the wanton endangerment charge. So nobody is going to be punished for her death even if the officer is found guilty on all counts against him.Report

          1. After a few days of the city being on fire, Minneapolis authorities decided to change their minds about charging the cops who were present at George Floyd’s Officer-Involved Anoxia Event.

            Maybe that’ll happen here too.Report

            1. I don’t think they can. Kentucky requires an indictment by a grand jury for crimes like the one’s that were charged. In a slight majority of states, the prosecutor can skip that step, but not here.Report

            1. Well they already are, in as much as the $12 Million settlement comes out of city coffers.

              Others will now be arrested and potentially prosecuted for daring to point out to cops their complicity in all this through protest.Report

        3. “If not (or if we don’t know), then we could well be in “he didn’t get punished at all” territory. I mean, he didn’t even get indicted.”

          I typically argue against incrementalism and pro-forma actions, but I think that in this situation I’d go with changing the story from “nobody got punished” to “somebody got punished”, which is at least movement forward, versus going after The Guys Who Killed Her, who would walk without even a difficult trial…Report

          1. We don’t normally punish people for things which aren’t illegal.

            That leaves outlawing something that happened.

            The firefight started when one of the cops got shot, so do we want to outlaw cops returning fire?

            The awkward part about all this is if it wasn’t a no-knock and if Taylor’s ex really did claim she was holding his stuff, then short of ending the WOD I’m not sure what we want to do.Report

            1. “We don’t normally punish people for things which aren’t illegal.”

              this would be a great argument if shooting randomly through a wall into a maybe-occupied building were legal

              “The awkward part about all this is if it wasn’t a no-knock and if Taylor’s ex really did claim she was holding his stuff, then short of ending the WOD I’m not sure what we want to do.”

              well we could do that thing you just said right there, that would be a good start

              (also we can fire the dudes who did such a shitty job of entering an apartment, and also fire the management team who sent a bunch of barely-trained idiots to make that entry)Report

              1. this would be a great argument if shooting randomly through a wall into a maybe-occupied building were legal

                He was fired some time ago. He’s also been charged.

                And since his sheer incompetence didn’t hurt anyone, that seems to have little or nothing to do with the riots and the emotion in all this. It has nothing to do with Breonna’s death.

                well we could do that thing you just said right there, that would be a good start

                Ending the WOD would reduce the frequency of this sort of thing a LOT.

                However, I expect no one would notice. We’re having riots because the worst local news is now national news. Get rid of 90% of what is happening and there’s still going to be a “worst” thing.

                (also we can fire the dudes who did such a shitty job of entering an apartment, and also fire the management team who sent a bunch of barely-trained idiots to make that entry)

                What seems to have happened is after the knock, they gave time for the BF to get armed.
                So… in theory they shouldn’t have knocked?

                We may be looking at a “high risk” activity.Report

              2. Keep in mind that only one witness claims to have (maybe) heard the police knock and announce, and that was after a couple of rounds of interviews with the police.

                Regarding Walker, he doesn’t have kids, it’s entirely possible his gun is in his nightstand. Not a lot of time needed to get armed if the gun is near at hand (versus having to get it out of a safe). We also don’t know how many times the cops had to kick in the door before they gained entry. TV makes it look all quick and easy, and it is if the door is hollow core and mounted with short screws. If it’s a solid core door with the deadbolt thrown and strong screws or bolts holding the hinges to the frame, even a ram is going to need a couple of hits to get through.Report

  4. The charge against the officer is for shooting into an adjacent apartment. Breonna is not even the victim for that count. Nobody is charged for what happened to her.Report

    1. That’s because what happened to her is probably lawful, despicable and disgraceful as it is. Criminal charges would be just even if they may not stick. But if the result is wide scale prohibition of no-knock raids I think it would be progress, and maybe her death as sensless as it was would not be totally in vain.Report

    2. Why should there be criminal charges for the other officers here? Granting for the sake of argument that the state is 100% at fault here, it seems more like a systemic/policy issue than a criminal issue.

      Here’s my understanding of the facts: There was some evidence that Taylor had been involved in Glover’s drug business (e.g. the recording where he said she was holding $14,000 for him), hence the warrant. They tried to serve the warrant. It was a no-knock warrant, but they chose not to exercise that option, and knocked (this is not in dispute). Whether they explicitly identified themselves as police is in dispute, though at least one neighbor said that they did. It’s possible that there was a miscommunication, and they did announce themselves but Walker didn’t hear clearly. In any case, when they tried to enter, Walker fired at them, at which point they returned fire, killing Taylor.

      Again, I think it’s reasonable to demand systemic reforms here, and the city agreed to some as part of the wrongful death settlement. I don’t know the details, so I can’t say whether they’re good enough, but that’s a separate issue. What’s not clear to me is that it’s reasonable to demand criminal charges for the remaining three officers. What specifically did they do that justifies murder or lesser criminal charges?Report

  5. I really want to know what “evidence shows” that the officers did knock and announce. I suspect the only evidence is the testimony or statements of the officers themselves. Conveniently, no body cameras were used that could prove or refute that, so we just go with their word.
    Oddly, my clients never avoided indictment by saying they didn’t do it.Report

    1. A nearby civilian witness in the apartments confirmed that the officers announced themselves, as did Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend who reportedly stated (later) that he “didn’t believe them” when they knocked and announced. I would bet that the grand jury likely talked to him or his attorney on that point, or used his sworn affidavit or something similar.Report

      1. Seems like they wasted some resources on getting the no-knock warrant and then announcing themselves and knocking first and then having a conversation through the door.

        Next time, just get a regular knocking warrant that has a kick-in-the-door provision at the bottom.Report

        1. The police officers executing the raid weren’t the ones who obtained the warrant. That guy was Joshua Jaynes, who was reassigned later. The officer who was indicted had been brought in just as extra backup.

          Essentially, he’s charged with totally missing Breonna Taylor ten times.Report

          1. I didn’t hear a knock either. Not witnessing something means someone isn’t a witness. Breonna’s boyfriend definitely heard it, which is why he and Breonna were rushing to the door, him with his gun in hand, when the one officer entered. (Duh).Report

              1. Did anyone say they were out in the hall, watching the police, and there was no knock? Did anyone say they were listening with rapt attention, way past midnight, and heard the officers on the landing but didn’t hear them knock or holler anything?

                If you asked such a question in most apartments, of the 11 “witnesses”, most would say they were sound asleep till the gunfire erupted. A few of the rest would be watching late night TV, or watching Youtube videos with their earbuds in, etc. But one witness definitely was listening, and heard the cops knock and announce.

                As did Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend.

                When you include all the officers, that’s pretty much everybody involved. So there’s not even a dispute on that point.

                Those whole “no-knock” outrage was based on the existence of a no-knock warrant on file, not on anything that actually happened during the raid.

                But some people just can’t let go of a narrative, no matter how debunked it is.Report

              2. In the aftermath of the Ferguson shooting, there were 8 witnesses who agreed with the cop’s story (and thus also each other) and another 20 people who claimed to be witnesses and disagreed.

                Those 20 had stories which not only disagreed with the 9 but didn’t agree with each other. It’s unclear whether they’re making stuff up or have convinced themselves of stuff but whatever.

                The Taylor case is also highly emotionally charged and we should expect low value witnesses and even false witnesses to show up.Report

        3. (wiki)

          According to The New York Times, “While the department had gotten court approval for a ‘no-knock’ entry, the orders were changed before the raid to ‘knock and announce,’ meaning that the police had to identify themselves.”[2] According to the police account[3][4] and a witness at the scene, the officers knocked and announced their identity before forcing entry, but the police and the witness differ as to how they announced themselves. (/wiki)

          Within the margin of error, what we have is the cops announce, the boy friend shoots one of them, one of the cops freaks out and sprays wildly… while the other two(*) shoot Breonna 5 times.

          As far as we can tell “sprays wildly” actually hit no one but he endangered random people and that’s what he’s being charged with.

          (*) “Two” may be “one”. Severing an artery is un-fun and I don’t know how functional you’d be after that.Report

          1. Hang on a second here.

            If the order was changed to ‘knock and announce’, then the police are not permitted to break in until they have given the resident sufficient time to actually answer the damn door. You can’t knock, say police, and then proceed to force entry with barely a breath between.Report

            2. Is I understand it, “the order” was changed by one of the policemen conducting the raid. He apparently considered the circumstances and decided to knock first. There probably weren’t any “are not permitted” clauses to his notion.

              The raid on Breonna’s ex-boyfriend, who was the one she was running a drug business with, was conducted as a no-knock raid, and the police arrested everybody and seized illegal guns and lots of drugs without any injuries at all.Report

              1. who was the one she was running a drug business with

                There is zero evidence of that, only officer speculation.

                Here’s a thought. How often do police actually get into gun fights with gang members at drug houses, as a percentage of such raids? IIRC, it’s a very, very small number?

                Why? Because gang members aren’t interested in getting into gun fights with the cops. The most they might try to do is destroy evidence. Gang members are armed to protect themselves from rival drug gangs, not the police. This is why you don’t hear about crazy shootouts with cops at suspected drug houses very often. Also, such places half expect the police to come barging in, so as soon as they know it’s the cops, they surrender.

                But people who have zero reason to think the police are trying to kick in their door (or who missed the police announcing themselves)? Those are the folks who start shooting.

                I mean, it’s an actually fecking pattern. Enough that if the cops start taking fire, perhaps they should find cover and start assessing that perhaps they have made a grave error and start thinking about how to resolve things with less bullets.Report

            3. This sort of thing is why we need bodycams. Without them the margin of error in what we know is too large.

              I could add that same comment as a reply to the one about witnesses.Report

              1. Agreed.

                I’m really thinking we are going to need rules where officer testimony that can not somehow be backed up by bodycam video is going to need to be treated as suspect (honestly, given what we know about eyewitness testimony and memory, all such testimony of high stress, fast moving events should be suspect), and the lack of said video is going to need a real good explanation beyond “I forgot to turn my camera on.”Report

              2. The raid was conducted by plainclothes narcotics officers.

                “Squinty, check to see if he’s wearing a wire!”

                “Nope, he’s clean, except for the usual police body cam strapped on the front of his Nike jacket, but everybody wears those.”

                The problem with such a horribly incorrect narrative (It was not a no-knock raid, the boyfriend fired first, Breonna was standing beside him at the far end of a long hall, not sleeping in bed, etc) is that it motivates people to solve problems that didn’t even occur.

                Nobody even brings up the obvious problem, which is that perhaps you shouldn’t open fire on multiple cops in the middle of the night with your significant other standing right beside you. Whatever happened to the chivalrous ideal of not putting your girl or your kids right in the line of fire?

                One of the reasons the officer didn’t go in with a SWAT team is that it’s extremely rare for officers executing a search warrant (not an arrest warrant of a known dangerous suspect) to encounter almost instantaneous gunfire. The situation should’ve been lower risk than the average domestic disturbance call, and lower than some noise ordinance violations where there’s a bunch of drunk partiers. It should’ve been quick in, quick look around, and quick out.Report

              3. And if the cops had knocked, announced, and given the folks inside a couple of minutes to come to the door and confirm that yes, there are police with badges outside my door, and not some shifty looking thugs posing as cops (and yes, that does happen, and it absolutely is a problem the police need to account for).

                But that doesn’t appear to be what happened. Because they instead showed up after midnight (when folks tend to be asleep, or getting there, because they have work in the morning), did the knock and announce, and then immediately started to batter the door down.

                Put yourself in his shoes. You are in bed, you hear a knock and some yelling (apartment doors often have good acoustic insulation, so you may not be able to make out what is said), and then you hear the sound of someone battering the door down before you’ve even had a chance to reach the bedroom door.

                Your ass would be armed and ready when they came through that door.Report

              4. As for the camera, if they weren’t planning on waiting for anyone to answer the door, why would they care if someone could confirm they were cops? They had a warrant, no one was going to be pretending to be anything else.Report

              5. The moment they identified themselves as police officers, they are no longer Plain Clothes in an undercover sense but are basically uniformed officers in jeans for all practical purposes.

                Also, if you are serving a warrant, and I don’t care if you are a police officer, process server, or anyone else, wear a camera! If for no other reason than what you are doing is a legal action and proof of it often needs to be assured to the courts.Report

              6. I think one of the reasons narcotic officers don’t make themselves obvious is that many drug dealers have camera systems now, and some have lookouts to alert the dealers if police are coming, so they can flush the drugs.

                In any event, we need to get rid of the body cams because they add to police budgets, which need to be cut. We also need to reduce training, which costs money, and not send so much backup, which also costs money.

                Ideally, we should just send one in with an Uzi and let him control a situation in the most cost-effective manner possible, and then not investigate what happened because investigations also cost money.

                Defund the police! Why should modern policing cost more money and yet produce less effective results than Wyatt Earp got?Report

              7. You can see how that creates practical problems though I assume. I mean, is the guy in plain clothes kicking your door in at 1 AM a cop just because he says he is? And is it reasonable to put all of the onus on the home owner (and not the LEOs creating the situation) to get that right?

                Like where I come from doing what these guys do is a real good way to get a face full of shotgun and absolutely 0 sympathy.Report

              8. How does that negate the need for body cams though? And while I agree that the actions, as they were handled, could warrant a shotgun blast to the face, that is why they handle things the way they do, presumably. but I have never been through POST training.

                But nothing in my post was meant to put any onus on the homeowner, and not to even interfere with legitimate police needs. Simply that if you are serving a warrant (and for that matter serving process) you should have a camera on. And to put aside any claims that they were some sort of undercover detectives, because if you are screaming “police” and taking a sledge to door, there is no way that you are undercover, and every team doing this is wearing a bulletproof vest with Police written on it, so that takes away any idea of plain clothes.Report

              9. Got it, sounds like we’re in agreement. I think I’m getting lost in George’s comments on who is arguing what. Which probably means I should pay better attention or slowly walk away.Report

  6. One of the signs that you are living in an authoritarian regime, is when the regime flouts the law brazenly in full view, and demands that people believe and obey absurdities.

    The government in this case is demanding that the citizens believe and obey the law which states that there was no wrongdoing in Taylor’s death.

    My prediction stands, that tomorrow or the next day when the reporters profile the shopkeepers and city officials they will feign bewilderment, as if they can’t possibly understand why people don’t respect the system of laws.Report

      2. Right, because another hallmark of an authoritarian regime is the Wilhoit Principle where they have laws that bind some without protecting, and protect some without binding.Report

        1. I see that phrasing a lot. It’s cute. But is it right, or so cute that people assume it’s right? A neutral party wouldn’t agree with it unless he agreed with a few other statements, and if he agreed with those, it wouldn’t advance the position at all to say it. So why say it?Report

    3. Read my above comments on the powers of a grand jury. One of the ways we are NOT an authoritarian regime is that all the real power is left to randomly selected citizens who are called to grand jury duty.

      The people of my commonwealth decided that we don’t trust the police, we don’t trust lawyers, we don’t trust prosecutors, and we don’t trust elected officials. We wouldn’t give them the power to decide who has to be a defendant in a criminal case, one which could deprive a person of life and liberty. That dangerous power is retained by the people, because we didn’t think anyone else is trustworthy enough wield it.

      Politicians will play their games, driven by vanity and their next election. They go off on some ideological crusade demanding this or that in the name of “justice”. But where the rubber hits the road, it’s up to a room full of citizens, who have no axe to grind, to decide whether this person or that person should stand trial for a particular criminal offense, ignoring the ego-driven politicians and the outrage-driven mobs.

      The question put before the grand jury is really very simple. “Did this person commit a criminal act for which they should be tried?” If the answer is “no”, that’s the end of it, even if politicians and thousands of virtue-signaling protesters scream till they’re blue in the face.Report

      1. The question put before the grand jury is really very simple. “Did this person commit a criminal act for which they should be tried?” If the answer is “no”, that’s the end of it, even if politicians and thousands of virtue-signaling protesters scream till they’re blue in the face.

        Subject to the whims of what the elected prosecutor decides to present. I have never seen Reporting on any grand jury that went rogue and over ran a prosecutor’s presentations.Report

    1. Ugh.

      Based on what we do know — which I’ve culled from my own reporting, reporting from the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal, as well as from conversations with the lawyers for Taylor’s family — the decision to charge Detective Brett Hankison with wanton endangerment was probably correct, as was the decision not to charge the other officers involved in the shooting. If ballistics had conclusively shown that one of the bullets from Hankison’s gun killed Taylor, he could be charged with reckless homicide, but according to Cameron, the bullets that struck Taylor could not be matched to Hankison’s gun.

      This means that it needs to be fixed at a different level than the police one.

      The rest of the column is great, though. He touches on a *LOT* of stuff that ought to be addressed and only the police, the judges, and the government in general can address it.Report

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