A federal judge on Monday sentenced an ex-Kentucky police officer to nearly three years in prison for using excessive force during the 2020 deadly raid on Breonna Taylor’s home, declining a justice department recommendation that he be given no prison time.
Brett Hankison, who fired 10 shots during the raid but didn’t hit anyone, was the only officer on the scene charged in the Black woman’s death. He is the first person sentenced to prison in the case that rocked the city of Louisville and spawned weeks of street protests over police brutality five years ago.
Last week, the justice department recommended a one-day jail sentence and supervised release in Hankison’s case. In a sentencing memorandum, assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet K Dhillon and senior counsel Robert J Keenan said Hankison had suffered psychological stress from the legal battle.
The US district judge Rebecca Grady Jennings sentenced Hankison at a hearing Monday afternoon. She said that no prison time “is not appropriate” for Hankison and said she was “startled” that there weren’t more people injured in the raid.
Hankison will serve 33 months in prison as well as three years of supervised probation.
Although Hankison did not hit anyone, he shot into Taylor’s bedroom window, through blinds and a blackout curtain, and a neighboring apartment, where a couple with a five-year-old child lived.
He was found guilty in November 2024 of one count of civil rights abuse and faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
In May, Donald Trump’s justice department canceled work on an agreement to enter into a consent decree with the city of Louisville. The agreement would have given the justice department authority to supervise Louisville’s efforts to overhaul its police training and use-of-force policies.
In September 2020, six months after her death, Taylor’s family received a $12m wrongful death settlement from the city of Louisville. Her family’s civil rights attorney, Ben Crump, told the Associated Press on Monday that he hoped Hankison would get more time but “we are grateful that he is at least going to prison and has to think for those three years about Breonna Taylor and that her life mattered”.
