President Donald Trump’s Justice Division desires the cop convicted of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights to serve simply sooner or later in jail—and suggests he by no means ought to’ve been prosecuted within the first place.
The DOJ made the stunning request late Wednesday evening, asking a choose to condemn Brett Hankison—the one officer convicted thus far on felony fees associated to the lethal 2020 raid on Taylor’s house—to a single day behind bars, which might depend as time served. The division additionally really useful three years of supervised launch and used the memo to argue that Hankison by no means ought to have confronted civil rights fees within the first place.
Former Louisville Police officer Brett Hankison describes what he noticed within the house of Breonna Taylor throughout testimony, on March 2, 2022, in Louisville, Kentucky.
The request wasn’t simply unusually lenient—it was blatantly political. It wasn’t signed by the profession prosecutors who dealt with the case, however by Trump appointee Harmeet Dhillon, who now heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and her senior counsel, Robert Keenan. Neither had a task in prosecuting Hankison.
Hankison, a former Louisville officer, was discovered responsible final yr after firing 10 photographs by a coated window and glass door throughout a botched “no-knock” raid, endangering Taylor and her neighbors. Not one of the bullets hit Taylor, however a number of tore by the house’s partitions and into the unit subsequent door. Taylor was fatally shot by one other officer after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a warning shot with a legally owned firearm.
Taylor’s killing occurred simply weeks earlier than the homicide of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and have become a key second for the Black Lives Matter motion—one in all a number of circumstances that sparked nationwide protests towards police violence. Earlier than Hankison’s conviction, the one individual held criminally accountable within the raid was Kelly Goodlett, a former detective who pleaded responsible to federal fees for serving to falsify the search warrant used to enter Taylor’s house and canopy up her actions after Taylor’s dying.
If Hankison will get a lenient sentence, it may reignite anger amongst activists who say the justice system protects cops from penalties. His federal conviction was the primary time any officer had been held criminally accountable in Taylor’s dying. He faces as much as life in jail, with sentencing scheduled for Monday.
However the DOJ’s new submitting insists Hankison “did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death.” The memo notes that the Justice Division respects the jury’s verdict, however questions whether or not the case ought to’ve gone ahead in any respect, stating: “Counsel is unaware of another prosecution in which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of another person under the Fourth Amendment for returning fire and not injuring anyone.”
Authorized specialists and former DOJ officers have been alarmed. In keeping with The Washington Publish, Samantha Trepel, a former civil rights prosecutor who helped safe convictions towards the officers who violated Floyd’s rights, known as the memo “transparent, last-minute political interference” and “a betrayal of the jury’s verdict.”
The memo, she mentioned, sends a harmful message “that the Justice Department will not hold officers accountable who violate the law.”
Hankison was beforehand acquitted on state fees. His first federal trial resulted in a mistrial in November 2023, however a second jury convicted him final November. Notably, they discovered him not responsible on a separate cost involving Taylor’s neighbors.
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The DOJ memo is simply the newest signal of Trump’s aggressive efforts to dismantle Biden-era reforms meant to carry regulation enforcement accountable. In Might, the division eradicated consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, two cities on the middle of the 2020 protests. Consent decrees are legally binding courtroom agreements meant to implement civil rights reforms in departments discovered to have engaged in unconstitutional practices.
And it suits Trump’s broader sample: from Daniel Penny to Kyle Rittenhouse, he’s repeatedly embraced males who harmed or killed individuals of coloration, then turned them into heroes.
So sure, Trump loves criminals. However solely those who serve his politics.
