Four current and former Louisville police officers have been charged federally by the Justice Department in connection with the killing of Breonna Taylor in 2020. Taylor was shot and killed by police during a raid on her apartment while she slept.
Numerous civil rights violations, conspiracy, use of force offenses, and obstruction are among the accusations leveled against the defendants Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany, Kelly Goodlett, and Brett Hankison. The allegations of forgery in the affidavit used to obtain the “no-knock” search warrant that allowed the early-morning raid on Taylor’s flat, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland, are the basis for the civil rights charges brought against three of the officers.
“The federal charges announced today allege that members of the place-based investigations unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home, that this act violated federal civil rights laws and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said at the Justice Department.
Taylor was shot on March 13, 2020, when Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers barged into her apartment while she was dozing off with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend mistook the LMPD police for intruders and opened fire as they entered the building. In retaliation, the police fired 22 shots into the apartment, one of which hit Taylor in the chest and killed her.
In the months following Taylor’s passing, the LMPD fired Hankinson and Jaynes, and the department announced Thursday that the police chief had started “termination procedures” for Meany and Goodlett, who are still employed by the department.
Prosecutors said that Goodlett and Jaynes, both detectives, submitted a fraudulent and deceptive search warrant application, especially claiming that a postal inspector had told Goodlett that Taylor’s address was the target of their drug trafficking investigation. Prosecutors claim it was untrue, but Meany, a sergeant and their supervisor, nonetheless gave the warrant application his approval.
“We allege that the defendants knew their actions in falsifying the affidavit could create a dangerous situation, and we allege these unlawful acts resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said, noting that none of the officers who executed the warrant “were not involved in the drafting of the warrant and were unaware of the false and misleading statements it contained.”
According to the attorney general, Jaynes, Goodlett, and Meany “conspired to mislead federal, state, and local officials who were investigating the incident” and “made efforts to cover up their unlawful actions after Ms. Taylor’s murder.”
On the evening of May 17, 2020, Jaynes and Goodlett allegedly got together in Jaynes’ garage after reading media reports that a postal inspector had disputed the details of the search warrant application. According to the charge documents, the two came up with a plan to tell investigators a fake story regarding the affidavit. According to the prosecution, they both provided investigators with similar accounts of how a postal inspector casually said that the target was receiving items at Taylor’s address. They both knew this assertion to be untrue.
Additionally, Meany is charged with lying to investigators on the cops’ surprise entry into Taylor’s house. Meany allegedly told the FBI that his officers carried out the “no-knock” warrant at the SWAT team’s request even though he was aware that the unit had not made such a request.
Hankison was charged with two counts of rights infringement in a second indictment for allegedly firing 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment’s glass door and window after she had already been dead. On state counts of wanton endangerment, Hankison was cleared at his trial earlier this year.
According to a statement from the agency, the charges come more than a year after the Justice Department launched a separate and ongoing civil rights investigation into the routines and practices of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department.
“The charges announced today are criminal against individual officers, while the ongoing pattern or practice investigation is a civil investigation that is examining allegations of systemic violations of the Constitution and federal law by LMPD and Louisville Metro,” the department said. “The civil pattern or practice investigation is being handled independently from the criminal case by a different team of career staff.”