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Brett Hankison, one of three Kentucky police officers involved in the botched raid that led to Breonna Taylor’s death, was found not guilty of endangering Taylor’s neighbors as he shot wildly into her home during the 2020 incident.
The ruling is another hurdle in the pursuit of justice for Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman whose death, along with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, spurred months of antiracist protests during the summer of 2020.
Prosecutors filed wanton endangerment charges against Hankison in 2020 after conservative state Attorney General Daniel Cameron convened a grand jury but didn’t give it the option to consider whether any of the officers involved should be charged with murdering Taylor.
The jury was asked to consider whether Hankison acted recklessly when he fired into Taylor’s home. The three former Louisville police officers — Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove — have said they were executing a drug bust when they burst into Taylor’s home to conduct a “no-knock” raid. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, has said he was startled by the break-in and used a pistol he legally owned to fire a warning to scare off possible intruders. Officers then opened fire, with Cosgrove fatally shooting Taylor. No drugs were recovered from Taylor's apartment that night.
Some of the shots Hankison fired into Taylor’s home hit houses nearby and almost injured several of Taylor’s neighbors. One of the neighbors, Cody Etherton, whose back door was shattered by gunfire, testified that the deadly raid was “reckless” and “unorganized.”
“To me, a professional, well-trained officer, they should have had the floor plans," he said. "They should have had the blueprints. They didn’t even know whose back door that was. They didn’t even know who lived there. So to me, that kind of upset me. It was just reckless to me.”
But the jury didn’t think Hankison committed any crime. Its ruling aligned with his claim, made during the trial, that he’d done "absolutely" nothing wrong.
Hankison’s having to face only wanton endangerment charges was widely seen as a denial of Taylor’s humanity. The three charges each carried a potential five-year sentence. Cameron’s refusal to let a grand jury consider murder charges effectively guaranteed none of the officers would face any repercussions for their role in her death.
Thursday’s verdict helped Hankison elude greater accountability for his role in a highly visible act of police brutality and all but ensured that the widespread movement to remember Breonna Taylor’s name and seek justice for her killing will continue.