A former Kentucky police officer has been sentenced to 33 months in prison for his connection to the raid that led to the death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020.
The ex-Louisville officer Brett Hankison was found guilty last year of violating Taylor’s civil rights by using excessive force.
Taylor was shot by police officers after they used a no-knock warrant at her home. The force believed that Taylor’s former boyfriend Kenneth Walker was hiding narcotics at her home.
In the altercation, Walker fired a single shot using a legally owned firearm believing that the police were intruders. Officers returned fire, fatally shooting Taylor.
Taylor’s death has sparked protests across the US over treatment of people of colour by police departments.
Days before the sentencing, President Trump’s Justice Department asked the judge to imprison Hankison for a single day. The recommendation was called an insult by Taylor’s family.
District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings said political factors appeared to have influenced its recommendation for a one-day sentence, adding: “This sentence will not and cannot be measured against Ms Taylor’s life and the incident as a whole.”
Under federal sentencing guidelines, the eventual sentence was still on the lower end of the recommended 33 to 41 months.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, along with other family members, spoke in court to ask Grady Jennings to impose the maximum penalty.
“A piece of me was taken from me that day. You have the power to make today the first day of true accountability,” she said.
Hankison apologised to Taylor’s family and said he would have acted differently if he had known about issues with the search warrant.
He said: “I would never have fired my gun.”
In the memo from Trump’s Justice Department to the judge, it was argued that Hankison did not shoot Taylor “and is not otherwise responsible for her death.”
Notably, the memo was not signed by any of the career prosecutors. It was submitted by Harmeet Dhillon, a political appointee by Trump and her counsel Robert Keenan.
Keenan has worked as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles on a case where he argued that a deputy sheriff convicted of civil rights violations, Trevor Kirk, should have his convictions struck and should not serve prison time.
Dhillon axed plans to enter a court-approved settlement with the Louisville Police Department and rescinded the Civil Rights Division’s findings on widespread civil rights abuse against people of colour.
The Hankison case is the latest of the Trump administration’s efforts to halt the Justice Department’s police accountability initiatives.
It is reported that since Trump’s inauguration, about 70 percent of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department have left.
