Ex-Louisville officer who fired shots in Breonna Taylor raid prepares for third trial | Richmond Free Press

A former Louisville police officer accused of acting recklessly when he shot at Breonna Taylor’s window on the night of the fatal police raid in 2020 is going on trial for the third time.

Federal prosecutors will try again to convict Brett Hankison of civil rights violations after their first attempt a year ago ended in a mistrial because of a deadlocked jury. Hankison was also acquitted of wanton endangerment charges for firing 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment during a state trial in 2022.

Jury selection began Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Louisville. In last year’s trial, the trial lasted almost three days.

Hankison is the only officer to face a jury trial in Taylor’s death. That sparked months of street protests over the fatal shooting of the 26-year-old Black woman by white officers and brought national attention to incidents of police brutality in the summer of 2020.

Although he was not among the officers who shot Taylor, federal prosecutors believe Hankison’s actions put Taylor, her boyfriend and their neighbors in danger.

On the night of the raid, Louisville officers went to Taylor’s home to serve a drug warrant that was later found to be flawed. Taylor’s boyfriend, believing an intruder was rushing in, fired a single shot, striking one of the officers, and the officers returned fire, hitting Taylor multiple times in her hallway.

As those shots were fired, Hankison, who was behind a group of officers at the door, ran to the side of the apartment and fired into Taylor’s window. He later said he thought he saw a figure with a rifle and heard assault rifle bullets being fired.

“I had to respond,” Hankison testified in the federal trial last year. “I had no choice.”

Some of the shots went through Taylor’s apartment and into another unit where a couple and a child lived. These neighbors have testified against Hankison at previous trials.

Police searched Taylor’s apartment for drugs and cash, but found neither.

When testimony in the Hankison trial ended last year, the 12-member jury struggled for days to reach a consensus. The jury ultimately told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings that they were deadlocked and unable to reach a decision.

The judge said that at times “lofty voices” could be heard from the jury room during deliberations and court security officers had to visit the room. Jennings said the jury had “a difference of opinion that they cannot overcome.”

Hankison was one of four officers charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. The two charges against him carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Taylor “should be alive today” when he announced the federal indictment in August 2022.

But those allegations have so far resulted in only one conviction – a plea deal by a former Louisville officer who was not at the raid and served as a cooperative witness – while two officers have been charged with civil rights crimes after they were accused of using information contained in the search warrant Faking entering Taylor’s apartment was evicted by a judge last month.

In that ruling, a federal judge in Louisville wrote that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who fired a shot at police, were the legal cause of her death, not a bad warrant.

The ruling reduced civil rights violation charges against former officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors. They still face other, less serious federal charges, and prosecutors have since indicted Jaynes and Meany on additional charges.