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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A federal jury on Friday cleared a former Kentucky police detective of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor’s neighbors by using excessive force during a botched 2020 drug raid that left Taylor dead.
The 12-member jury remained deadlocked on a second charge, which involves Brett Hankison using excessive force on Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was fatally shot by other officers. The jury elected to continue to deliberate on that charge Friday night, but they have indicated to the judge in two separate messages that they are deadlocked on that count.
Hankison, a former Louisville police detective, didn’t react in the courtroom Friday night after the jury returned the partial verdict of not guilty. By that point, the 6 man, 6 woman jury had been deliberating for about 20 hours over three days.
Hankison fired 10 shots into Taylor’s glass door and windows during the raid, but didn’t hit anyone. Some shots flew into a next-door neighbor’s adjoining apartment.
Taylor’s death, along with the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparked racial injustice protests nationwide.
A separate jury deadlocked on both charges last year, while in 2022, a jury acquitted Hankison on state charges of wanton endangerment. A conviction on the federal charges carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
This jury sent a note on Thursday to U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings asking whether they needed to know if Taylor was alive as Hankison fired his shots.
That was a point of contention during closing arguments, when Hankison’s attorney Don Malarcik told the jury that prosecutors must “prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Taylor was alive” when Hankison fired.
After the jury sent the question, Jennings urged them to keep deliberating.
Hankison, 48, argued throughout the trial that he was acting to protect his fellow officers after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired on them when they broke down Taylor’s door with a battering ram. Walker shot and wounded one of the officers.
Hankison testified that when Walker fired, he moved away, rounded the corner of the apartment unit and fired into Taylor’s glass door and a window.
Meanwhile, officers at the door returned Walker’s fire, hitting and killing Taylor, who was in a hallway.
Hankison’s lawyers argued during closing statements Wednesday that Hankison was acting properly “in a very tense, very chaotic environment” that lasted about 12 seconds. They emphasized that Hankison’s shots didn’t hit anyone.
Hankison was one of four officers charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 with violating Taylor’s civil rights. Thus far, those charges have yielded just one conviction: a plea deal from a former officer who was not at the raid and became a cooperating witness in another case.
Malarcik, Hankison’s attorney, spoke at length during closing arguments about the role of Taylor’s boyfriend, who fired the shot that hit former Sgt. John Mattingly at the door. He said Walker never tried to come to the door or turn the lights on as police were knocking and instead armed himself and hid in the dark.
“Brett Hankison was 12 inches away from being shot by Kenneth Walker,” Malarcik said.
Prosecutors said Hankison acted recklessly, firing 10 shots into doors and a window where he couldn’t see a target.
They said in closing arguments that Hankison “violated one of the most fundamental rules of deadly force: If they cannot see the person they’re shooting at, they cannot pull the trigger.”
Neither of the officers who shot Taylor — Mattingly and former Detective Myles Cosgrove — were charged in Taylor’s death. Federal and state prosecutors have said those officers were justified in returning fire, since Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them first.
