A police officer was charged with violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights in the US state of Kentucky and given a 33-month sentence.
Officer Brett Hankison’s sentencing was announced on Monday in a court in Louisville, repudiating the prosecution’s request for a one-day sentence.
At a hearing on Monday afternoon, US District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings delivered the sentence to Hankison. She claimed Hankison should not be sentenced to prison and that she was “startled” that more people had not been hurt in the raid.
According to faulty evidence that her apartment was the subject of a drug operation, Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was fatal in her apartment on March 13, 2020 when police issued a so-called no-knock warrant to try to storm her home.
Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend, fired one shot at the suspected intruders because they suspected there was something wrong with their home. A pregnant woman, her partner, and her five-year-old son were all put at risk by approximately 22 shots fired by police, some of which entered a neighbor’s apartment.
In violation of Taylor’s civil rights, a federal jury in November of 2024 found Hankson guilty of using excessive force.
However, Department of Justice attorneys requested Hankison receive a one-day sentence plus three years of supervised release last week, arguing that a lengthy sentence would be “unjust.” Even though he fired 10 shots into the apartment without hitting her, Chantison still fired 10 more.
Death served as a springboard for racial justice calls.
Racial justice protests were staged in the United States because of how police departments treat people of color, in addition to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis as a result of Taylor’s death.
The Justice Department charged the officers responsible for Taylor and Floyd’s deaths with criminal civil rights violations while the former president Joe Biden was in office.
Following the unsuccessful first prosecution attempt, Hankison was found guilty by a federal jury in November 2024 of one count of violating Taylor’s civil rights.
In 2022, he was also found innocent of state charges.
Hankison’s sentencing memo for the Justice Department downplayed his role in Taylor’s home, claiming that he “did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise liable for her death.” The memo was notable because none of the career prosecutors who had tried the case, who were not political appointees, signed it. Harmeet Dhillon, a political appointee by Trump to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Robert Keenan, her attorney, submitted it on July 16.
In Los Angeles, Keenan previously worked as a federal prosecutor, where he argued that Trevor Kirk, a local deputy sheriff who was found guilty of violating the civil rights, should receive a guilty verdict and be spared jail time.
According to media reports and a person with knowledge of the situation, several prosecutors in the case resigned in protest of the attempts to overthrow the felony conviction.
The Trump administration’s latest attempt to halt the department’s efforts to improve police accountability is the department’s sentencing recommendation in the Hankison case. Dhillon rejected the Civil Rights Division’s earlier findings regarding widespread civil rights abuses against people of color and earlier this year, rescinded plans to settle with the Louisville Police Department.
The department’s recommendation for Hankison’s sentencing was criticized by Taylor’s family and called for the judge to “deliver true justice” for her.
Four people were detained on Monday in front of the Louisville Metro Police Department, according to the report, who were “creating confrontation, kicking vehicles, or otherwise creating an unsafe environment.” The charges that those detained would face were not provided by the authorities.
According to a police statement, “We understand that this case caused pain and distrust in our department and the community.” The First Amendment is a topic that we genuinely value. However, what we witnessed today in the street in front of the courthouse was neither acceptable nor legal.
Source: Aljazeera
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