Federal Jury Finds Ex-Officer Brett Hankison Guilty of Violating Breonna Taylor’s Rights

The former detective fired 10 shots through Ms. Taylor’s apartment in a raid in 2020 that set off a wave of protests across the country.

The former police detective who fired 10 shots through Breonna Taylor’s apartment in a deadly raid in Louisville, Ky., in 2020 was found guilty on Friday night of violating her civil rights by using excessive force.

But the federal jury earlier in the evening cleared the former officer, Brett Hankison, of violating the rights of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the botched operation that set off a wave of protests across the country. But his shots did not kill Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Two other officers, also white, fired the fatal shots, but neither was charged.

After the verdict, Mr. Hankison silently walked out of the federal courthouse and stepped into a waiting S.U.V. He declined to answer a reporter’s questions. Mr. Hankison’s lawyers could not immediately be reached.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.

It is not the first time that Mr. Hankison has faced a jury in the case. Last year, a judge declared a mistrial after jurors failed to come to a unanimous verdict on federal civil rights charges. He was previously acquitted of similar state charges.

Prosecutors argued in the first federal trial that Mr. Hankison did not have legal justification to use deadly force when he fired through a window and sliding glass door covered by blinds, ultimately hitting a neighboring apartment. He testified that he had been frightened and believed that someone in Ms. Taylor’s home was still shooting at his colleagues.

Officers were seeking evidence that Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend was selling drugs when they barged through her door on March 13, 2020. They were met by gunfire from her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who later said he believed the officers were intruders. Mr. Walker fired a bullet that hit an officer in the leg.

Two officers, Myles Cosgrove and Jonathan Mattingly, immediately returned fire and shot Ms. Taylor. But they were never charged; prosecutors argued that they had been justified in their actions.

The warrant to raid the apartment was based on shoddy surveillance. Three officers were charged by federal prosecutors with knowingly including false information in an affidavit to get a judge to approve the raid. One of them, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty in 2022. The case against the two other officers, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, is still open.

The killing brought national attention to “no-knock” warrants, which allow the police to burst into homes without warning. A judge initially signed off on such a warrant for Ms. Taylor’s apartment, but the officers were later instructed to announce themselves. Whether they actually did has long been in dispute.

The Louisville Metro Police Department faced intense scrutiny after Ms. Taylor’s death, and activists protested in the city for months. The police chief was fired in 2020 amid the demonstrations, and a report by the Justice Department last year found that the department had shown a pattern of discriminating against Black people.

On Friday, Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, celebrated the verdict against Mr. Hankison and noted that it had been more than 1,000 days since her daughter’s death.

“It took a lot of patience,” she said outside the courthouse. “It was hard. The jurors took their time to really understand that Breonna deserved justice.”

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