A federal judge has dismissed felony charges against two former Louisville police officers accused of falsifying police arrest warrants. Breonna Taylor’s They opened the door before shooting her dead.
U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, who fired shots at police on the night of the attack, were the legal cause of her death. Fraudulent warrant.
The federal charges against former Louisville police detective Joshua Jaynes and former sergeant Kyle Meaney were announced by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a high-profile visit to Louisville in 2022. Garland accused Jaynes and Meaney, who were not present at the raid, of forging parts of the warrant and knowingly sending armed officers to Taylor’s apartment, putting her in a dangerous situation.
But in his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Simpson wrote that “there is no direct connection between the warrantless entry and Ms. Taylor’s death.” His ruling effectively reduced the civil rights charges against Jaynes and Meaney, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors.
Photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar, via The Associated Press
The judge declined to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes and another charge against Meaney for allegedly making false statements to investigators.
In March 2020, police with a drug warrant broke down the door to Taylor’s home, where her boyfriend, Kenneth WalkerWalker said he thought an intruder was trying to break in. The officer returned fire, shooting and killing Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, in the hallway.
Judge Simpson concluded that Walker’s “conduct was the proximate or legal cause of Taylor’s death.”
“The indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meaney initiated the sequence of events that led to Taylor’s death, but it also alleges that (Walker) disrupted those events by deciding to fire on the officers,” Simpson wrote.
Walker was initially arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but the charge was later dropped after his lawyers argued he did not know he was firing at officers.
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Email message sent U.S. Department of Justice A question seeking comment was not immediately responded to Friday morning.
The third former officer indicted in the federal warrant case is Kelly Goodlettpleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in 2022 and is expected to testify against Jaynes and Meaney at trial.
Federal prosecutors Jaynes, who prepared the warrant for Taylor’s arrest, claimed to Goodlett a few days before the warrant was executed that he had “confirmed” from a postal inspector that a suspected drug dealer had been receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. But Goodlett knew that was false and told Jaynes the warrant didn’t yet have enough information to link Taylor to criminal activity, prosecutors said. Goodlett added a line saying the suspected drug dealer was using Taylor’s apartment as his current address, according to court records.
Two months later, as Taylor’s shooting made national headlines, Jaynes and Goodlett met in Jaynes’ garage and “got on the same page” after which Jaynes told investigators about the warrant for Taylor’s arrest, according to court records.
The fourth ex-cop, Brett Hankisonwas accused by federal prosecutors in 2022 of firing a gun into a window at Taylor’s home, endangering the lives of Taylor, Walker and several neighbors. His trial last year ended in a hung verdict, but Hankison is scheduled to be retried on those charges in October.
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