Jury acquits ex-Kentucky officer accused of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights, reports ABC By Reuters
(Reuters) – A former Kentucky police officer was convicted on Friday of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, a black woman whose 2020 police shooting sparked racial justice protests, ABC News reported.
A jury earlier acquitted former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison of violating the rights of Taylor’s neighbors, ABC said.
Hankison faces up to life in prison on the charge.
After-hours calls to the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, federal prosecutors overseeing the case and Hankison’s attorney were not immediately returned.
Taylor’s murder, along with other murders in 2020 — including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia — sparked outrage and protests that intensified across the US and around the world that summer.
Hankison’s first civil rights case ended in a mistrial nearly a year ago.
He was charged with human rights violations for allegedly using excessive force.
Hankison, who is white and prosecutors said he fired 10 rounds that did not hit anyone during a raid on Taylor’s apartment, was released by state court in 2022 in a separate case, where he was accused of endangering Taylor’s neighbors. firing his weapon.
Of the three officers who fired the weapons, only Hankison faced criminal charges. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron did not recommend indictment, and a grand jury did not indict them.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was sleeping with her boyfriend on March 13, 2020, when police raided her home without knocking.
Police wanted to search the home in connection with a drug investigation in which Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who was not living with Taylor at the time, was a suspect.
After the police broke down Taylor’s door, her new boyfriend, fearing a burglary and saying he didn’t hear the police say who they were, fired a single shot that injured the officer. That officer and another shot again. Six shots hit Taylor, and he died.
