Officer Convicted For Role In Breonna Taylor Raid Sentenced To 33 Months
The federal judge's decision comes after the Trump administration's Justice Department recommended last week that he face just a single day in prison, leaving Taylor's family 'heartbroken and angry,' their lawyer said ahead of the sentencing. His crime carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Charges against Hankison were brought by former President Joe Biden's Justice Department, and a jury found him guilty in November of depriving the young medical worker of her civil rights through his use of excessive force when he blindly fired 10 shots through Taylor's covered glass door and windows during the raid.
'It is unfathomable that, after finally securing a conviction, the Department of Justice would seek a sentence so drastically below the federal guidelines,' lawyers for Taylor's family said last week.
Several protestors gathered outside the courthouse while awaiting Hankison's sentencing, leading to some arrests. Among the detained was Taylor's aunt, Bianca Austin, WHAS11 News reported.
An investigation determined that Hankison's bullets did not hit anyone, and that the fatal shot was fired by his fellow officer Myles Cosgrove. Unlike with Hankison, a grand jury chose not to indict him, setting off more of the protests that had sprung up in the wake of Taylor's death.
In a 2020 settlement with Taylor's family, The city of Louisville agreed to pay them $12 million and to reform its policing practices.
When Hankison and other plainclothes officers raided Taylor's apartment as part of a drug-dealing investigation into her ex-boyfriend, Taylor's new boyfriend believed them to be home intruders and he fired a shot that hit one of the officers in the leg. The officers fired 32 shots in return, hitting Taylor six times but leaving the boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, unharmed.
There remains some debate over whether the officers announced themselves as police. A New York Times investigation interviewed about a dozen of Taylor's neighbors about what happened, and only one of them recalled officers shouting 'Police!' a single time.
Following the charges against Hankison, a woman filed a lawsuit against him accusing him of weaponizing his police status to prey on and later sexually assault her in 2018. The lawsuit included several more testimonials from women who claimed Hankison would target young women in bars, escort them home as an officer then pressure them into sex or sexually assault them.
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