Two former Louisville Police officers involved in the Breonna Taylor raid had their felony charges dismissed by a judge this week.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson issued a ruling on the raid that led to Taylor’s death in 2020. In the ruling, Judge Simpson said that Taylor’s cause of death was due to a gunshot fired by her boyfriend at the police and not a bad warrant.
The ruling dismissed felony charges previously announced against Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sergeant Kyle Meany.
In 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced felony charges against Jaynes and Meany while visiting Louisville to discuss the high-profile case. Meany and Jaynes were not present in the raid at Taylor’s residence, but Garland argued that the two former law enforcement officials had placed Taylor in danger by falsifying parts of the warrant used in the incident.
However, in the ruling on Friday, Judge Simpson said that “there is no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death.” The ruling lessened the civil rights violations against the two former officers. The previous charges held a maximum sentence of life in prison, the AP reported.
The judge refused to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes and a separate charge against Meany, who is accused of providing false statements to investigators.
In 2020, officials with the Louisville Police Department executed a raid on Taylor’s residence. When police broke down the door, Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired his gun at police, thinking that an intruder was breaking into the home. In response, police fired a shot back at Walker, and the bullet fatally struck Taylor.
The death of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, prompted widespread backlash against police and questions on how the warrant was carried out.
In his ruling, Judge Simpson wrote that the gunshot fired by Walker “became the proximate, or legal, cause of Taylor’s death.”
“While the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that (Walker) disrupted those events when he decided to open fire” on police officials, the ruling said.
Immediately after the incident, Walker was arrested and faced attempted murder charges for firing a gun at police officers. However, the charge was later dismissed.
In 2022, Kelly Goodlett, a third former Louisville police officer, pled guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the raid and Taylor’s death. Goodlett is likely to testify against both Jaynes and Meany in their respective trials.
Additionally in 2022, former officer Brett Hankison was charged by federal prosecutors in Taylor’s death, but his trial ended in a hung jury last year. Hankison is expected to appear in court again in October for a retrial on the charges.
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