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Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Why do US prosecutors want a one-day sentence for Breonna Taylor shooting?
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a shortened prison sentence of just one day for an ex-police officer convicted of using excessive force during a raid in Louisville, Kentucky that led to the death of Breonna Taylor, an African-American medical worker, in March 2020. Brett Hankison was convicted in November last year of blindly firing several shots during a failed drug raid, which resulted in Taylor's death. Although his shots were not the ones which hit Taylor, prosecutors argued his actions were a violation of Taylor's rights and others present at the scene. After it spent several years pursuing a conviction under the previous administration, the DOJ's recommendation on Thursday represents a 180-degree turn, which has caused anger in the Black community. Hankison's sentencing will take place on Monday, when a federal judge will decide his term at a hearing. Here's what we know about the case: What happened to Breonna Taylor? Taylor, an emergency medical technician, was shot dead during a raid by police from the Louisville Metro Police Department in her apartment in the early hours of March 13, 2020. Seven plain-clothed officers executed a 'no-knock' search warrant. Three officers broke down the door to her two-bedroom apartment, where Taylor was in bed with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. Walker, who possessed a licensed firearm, fired one shot. He later told police he thought the men were intruders. One officer, Jonathan Mattingly, was struck and wounded in the thigh. Mattingly and his colleague, Miles Cosgrove, directly returned fire into the apartment. Cosgrove delivered the fatal shot that killed Taylor. She was shot six times and died in the hallway. Hankison ran to the side of the building and fired 10 shots into the apartment through a window and sliding door covered with blinds. Some of the bullets hit an occupied apartment adjacent to Taylor's. A report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determined that the police fired 32 shots in total. Jamarcus Glover, Taylor's ex-boyfriend, had been the original target of the search, as authorities believed he hid narcotics at Taylor's apartment. He was arrested at a separate location in Louisville that night, before Taylor's killing. It is unclear if the same team of officers arrested Glover. Taylor's murder, and an initial absence of charges against the police officers involved, triggered mass, months-long protests across the country. No officers faced direct charges over Taylor's death. Only Hankison faced charges for firing blindly. Taylor's case and the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, fuelled a national reckoning on racism and police brutality as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Taylor's family received a $12m settlement from the city of Louisville in September 2020. The city also banned no-knock raids with the introduction of the 'Breonna Law'. Why are prosecutors recommending a one-day sentence? Prosecutors under the Trump administration are recommending that Hankison serve no further jail term for the case, and that he should instead be sentenced to time already served plus three years of supervised probation. Hankison served one day in jail after he was arrested in 2023 for his first court appearance. At the time, federal prosecutors under the Biden administration sought a conviction against him that could have amounted to a maximum life sentence. In November 2024, a federal jury found Hankison guilty of using excessive force and depriving Taylor of her civil rights. However, in a memo on Thursday, the DOJ said there 'is no need for a prison sentence to protect the public' from Hankison. The memo added that although Hankison's response in the 'fraught circumstances was unreasonable' in hindsight, 'that unreasonable response did not kill or wound Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, her neighbours, defendant's fellow officers, or anyone else'. What happened to the other officers? Hankison is the only one of the three officers at the scene to face charges. He was fired from the police force in June 2020, and Cosgrove was fired in 2021, after local investigations determined they had violated standard practice by shooting blindly. Mattingly retired in April 2021. Another ex-officer who was not at the scene pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Taylor's civil rights by falsely stating on the search warrant that Taylor received packages for Glover. Two other former officers pleaded not guilty to similar charges. If the court heeds the DOJ's advice, none of the officers involved in the case would have faced jail time. It is not certain that the court will agree to the recommendation. How have Taylor's family responded? Ben Crump, the civil rights lawyer who helped Taylor's family secure the $12m settlement against Louisville, said in a statement on the social media site X that the DOJ's recommendation was an 'insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and a blatant betrayal of the jury's decision'. 'This sets a dangerous precedent,' Crump wrote on Thursday. 'When a police officer is found guilty of violating someone's constitutional rights, there must be real accountability and justice. Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity.' What was the verdict in Hankison's trial? The DOJ, under a different leadership, charged Hankison in 2022 on one count of violating the civil rights of Taylor and her boyfriend, Walker, as well as Taylor's neighbours, when he blindly fired into her home. The state of Kentucky arraigned Hankison on similar charges but cleared him of wrongdoing in March 2022. However, after four days of deliberation, a federal jury declared a mistrial in November 2023, as jurors were unable to reach a joint decision. Witnesses gave conflicting testimonies, including about whether the police officers had announced themselves at the scene of the shooting. Walker, for one, testified that the officers did not identify themselves before breaking in. Other police officers, including Cosgrove, also testified that Hankison had violated standard practice when he shot into Taylor's apartment blindly, and without identifying a target. Hankison, who took the stand, defended his 'helplessness' at the scene, saying he believed his team was being attacked. The officer claimed he saw Walker's figure illuminated by the muzzle flash from his weapon and said he thought the gun was an AR-15 rifle, which prompted him to go to the other side of the apartment and open fire. Do police officers receive light sentences for killing or assaulting Black people in the US? Many activists and rights groups believe the US law enforcement and justice systems allow officers, especially white officers involved in the wrongful deaths and assault of Black people, to get away with overly lenient punishment, compared with civilians. Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on George Floyd for nine minutes until he died in May 2020, was seen as an exception when he was sentenced to 22 years in jail. Some other cases which have drawn criticism for light sentences for police officers, however, include the following: Police officer Kimberly Potter shot dead Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, in April 2021. Potter, who shot Wright at close range in the chest, later said she had meant to use her service Taser rather than her gun. Wright died at the scene. Potter was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter and received a sentence of just two years, serving 16 months. The city of Brooklyn Center paid a settlement of $3.25m to Wright's family for his wrongful death. Following public outrage and protests over Wright's death, the police department changed its policies about arresting people for misdemeanour offences. Wright's death also led to changes in police Taser procedures in Minnesota and other states. Elijah Jovan McClain, 23, was arrested by police officers in Aurora, Colorado, while walking home from a convenience store on August 24, 2019. The police officers were responding to a call from a person concerned about an unarmed man wearing a ski mask and 'looking sketchy'. McClain was handcuffed while one of the officers applied a chokehold. When paramedics arrived, they injected McClain with 500mg of ketamine to sedate him. He suffered cardiac arrest and died in hospital six days later. Three police officers and two paramedics were charged with his death. Two officers were acquitted of all charges. Both paramedics and one of the officers were convicted of negligent homicide. One of the paramedics was also found guilty of second-degree assault and sentenced to five years in prison and three years' probation. Chicago ex-officer Jason Van Dyke was sentenced to just seven years in 2019 on charges of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery over the October 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old African American. Initial police reports claimed officers had responded to alerts of a teenager behaving erratically, and that McDonald had slashed the tyres of a truck with a knife and lunged at officers. Van Dyke fired 16 shots at McDonald as he walked away from police, according to dashcam footage released a year later. The officer was released early in 2022 for good behaviour. In 2019, the Chicago Police Board fired four officers for allegedly covering up the shooting. The nine-member board found the officers had exaggerated the threat posed by the teenager. Former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years for murder after she killed her 26-year-old African-American neighbour and accountant, Botham Jean, in Dallas in September 2018. The sentence was far less than the 28 years prosecutors had sought. Guyger claimed she had entered Jean's apartment, which was directly below hers, by mistake, and thought he was an intruder. Mark Bessner was sentenced to five-to-15 years for involuntary manslaughter after he fired his Taser at African-American teenager Damon Grimes during a police car chase in Detroit in August 2017. Grimes crashed and died from his injuries. Los Angeles Officers Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind, Theodore Briseno and Stacey Koon were charged with excessive force but later acquitted after severely assaulting Rodney King, an African American, in March 1991. King was pulled over on suspicion of intoxicated driving but was severely assaulted, resulting in scores of fractures and brain damage. A court's decision to acquit the officers led to widespread riots in the city, during which 63 people died. Officers FH Pascal, WF Stevenson, and PL Whalen were sentenced to 20 years on manslaughter charges for the March 1938 death of Berry Lawson, a 27-year-old African American, but were pardoned within a year. Lawson was sleeping in the lobby of the Seattle hotel where he worked when he was arrested for loitering. The officers claimed Lawson was intoxicated and had fallen down a set of stairs during the arrest; however, evidence later emerged that they had beaten Lawson to death and arranged a fake witness to testify that Lawson had fallen.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Insulting jail sentence DoJ wants for cop involved in botched Breonna Taylor raid
The U.S. Department of Justice has recommended a shockingly light sentence for Brett Hankison, who was convicted last year of violating Breonna Taylor 's civil rights during a botched police raid. Despite Hankison's conviction carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division submitted a sentencing memorandum late Wednesday requesting that the former Louisville Police officer, serve only one day. Hankinson's lenient sentence however would amount to time already served since he was booked and made his initial court appearance. The controversial filing attempted to minimize Hankison's role in the 2020 killing of Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman fatally shot in her home during a no-knock raid. 'He did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death,' the DOJ's memo stated. During the raid, Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a legally owned firearm at officers he believed were intruders. Police responded by firing 22 shots into the apartment. Although none of Hankison's bullets hit Taylor or anyone else, they pierced the walls into a neighboring apartment where a couple and their five-year-old child lived. Hankison was found guilty in November 2024 of violating Taylor's civil rights by recklessly firing blindly into her window, which was obscured by blackout curtains and blinds. A previous trial in 2023 ended in a mistrial, and Hankison was later acquitted of charges related to endangering the neighbors. The officer who fired the shots that killed Taylor, Myles Cosgrove, never faced criminal charges for his role in the raid. However, the Louisville Metro Police Department fired him in 2021. Now, the DOJ's sentencing memo, authored by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon and senior counsel Robert J. Keenan, argued that Hankison's lack of a prior criminal record and the psychological stress he endured from the trials merited leniency. The memo stated that 'there is no need for a prison sentence to protect the public from the defendant or to provide 'just' punishment or deterrence.' The memorandum also noted that Hankison's conviction would likely prevent him from ever working in law enforcement or legally owning a firearm again. Hankison (pictured) was found guilty in November 2024 of violating Taylor's civil rights by recklessly firing blindly into her window The recommendation has prompted sharp criticism, especially from attorneys representing Taylor's family, who blasted the proposal as disgracefully inadequate. 'This sets a dangerous precedent. When a police officer is found guilty of violating someone's constitutional rights, there must be real accountability and justice. Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity,' attorneys Ben Crump, Lonita Baker, and Sam Aguiar said in a joint statement, Reuters reported. They urged the presiding judge to reject the DOJ's recommendation and 'do what the DOJ has refused to do' by upholding the law and ensuring real justice. Hankison was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in June 2020, as public outrage over Taylor's death grew. Her killing, along with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, helped fuel a nationwide movement demanding racial justice and police reform. The DOJ, under President Joe Biden, had previously brought civil rights charges against officers involved in both Taylor's and Floyd's deaths. However, recent changes within the DOJ's Civil Rights Division have raised concern. Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump-appointed official who now leads the division, recently shut down efforts to pursue court-approved settlements with the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments and rescinded earlier findings of systemic civil rights abuses. Notably, the sentencing recommendation for Hankison was not signed by any of the career prosecutors who tried the case. It was instead submitted by Dhillon and Keenan. Keenan, who previously argued in another case that a deputy sheriff should avoid prison time despite a felony civil rights conviction, has faced criticism in the past for downplaying excessive force. Hankison is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday and if the judge adopts the DOJ's request, he will serve no additional jail time.
CBS News
2 days ago
- Politics
- CBS News
Brett Hankison, officer in raid that killed Breonna Taylor, should get 1-day prison sentence, DOJ says
The Department of Justice asked in a sentencing memo that Brett Hankison — a former Kentucky police officer who was convicted in connection with a raid that resulted in Breonna Taylor's death — serve one day in prison. Hankison was convicted in 2024 of using excessive force during a botched 2020 drug raid that left Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, dead. The then-Louisville police officer 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 was shot in her hallway by two other officers after her boyfriend fired from inside the apartment, striking an officer in the leg. Police did not find any narcotics at the apartment — and afterward Taylor's death became a rallying cry for racial justice across the country. Hankison was cleared of a federal charge of using excessive force on Taylor's neighbors, and during a 2022 state trial, he was acquitted of all charges after a jury deliberated for three hours. His first federal civil rights trial in 2023 ended in a mistrial. A federal judge will decide Hankison's sentence, which could amount to several years, at a hearing set for Monday. The government requested in the sentencing memo released Wednesday that Hankison receive a sentence of time served, which would be one day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. President Trump's appointee to run the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, Harmeet Dhillon, and a senior non-career official in the division signed the memo, seemingly instead of attorneys or staff who usually handle sentencing filings. The memo said multiple prosecutions against Hankison were sought, while only one portion succeeded in securing a conviction. While the DOJ respects the jury's decision, the memo said, it "will almost certainly ensure that defendant Hankison never serves as a law enforcement officer again and will also likely ensure that he never legally possesses a firearm again." A lengthy sentence would "simply be unjust" under the circumstances in the government's view, the memo said. Attorneys for Taylor's family, including civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, decried the DOJ's request. "This recommendation is an insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and a blatant betrayal of the jury's decision," their statement said. "Every American who believes in equal justice under the law should be outraged. It is unfathomable that, after finally securing a conviction, the Department of Justice would seek a sentence so drastically below the federal guidelines." The lawyers said it would set "a dangerous precedent." "When a police officer is found guilty of violating someone's constitutional rights, there must be real accountability and justice," they wrote. "Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity."The Associated Press contributed to this report.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Justice Dept. Asked for 1-Day Sentence for Louisville Officer
The leader of the Justice Department's civil rights unit asked a federal judge in Kentucky to sentence the former Louisville police officer who was convicted in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor to one day in jail. It was a significant reversal for a unit that spent years investigating and prosecuting the case in an effort to address racial disparities in policing. The officer, Brett Hankison, who was found guilty last year of violating Taylor's civil rights for firing several nonfatal shots through her window, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. The judge will consider the government's request at a sentencing scheduled for next week. The official who submitted the request, Harmeet Dhillon, is a longtime Republican leader who was appointed to the role by President Trump. She suggested in her filing that the Biden administration's prosecution of the former officer was excessive. In other Trump administration news: The president was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common vein condition, after he sought medical care for swelling in his legs. Read the letter from Trump's doctor. Current and former staff members said there was a pervasive fear inside inspectors general offices after Trump fired several watchdogs. Congress is set to claw back billions for aid and public media The House is planning to vote before the end of the week to approve a White House request to claw back $9 billion in congressionally approved spending. Early this morning, the Senate's Republican majority narrowly approved the bill over the objections of two members of the party who said it abdicated the legislative branch's power of the purse. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
US Justice Dept seeks one-day sentence for officer in Breonna Taylor killing
A photo of Breonna Taylor is seen among other photos of women who have lost their lives as a result of violence during the 2nd annual Defend Black Women March in Black Lives Matter Plaza on July 30, 2022 in Washington, DC. Photo: AFP / Getty Images / Leigh Vogel The US Justice Department has asked for a one-day prison sentence for a former policeman convicted of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose 2020 killing sparked protests for police reform and racial justice . Brett Hankison, who was convicted by a federal jury in Kentucky in November of one count of abusing Taylor's civil rights, is to be sentenced on Monday and faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. But the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, in an unusual intervention, asked the judge on Wednesday to sentence Hankison to time served - the day he spent in jail at the time of his arrest - and three years of supervised release. "The government respects the jury's verdict, which will almost certainly ensure that defendant Hankison never serves as a law enforcement officer again," said Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed to the position by President Donald Trump. "But adding on top of those consequences a sentence within the lengthy guidelines range... would, in the government's view, simply be unjust," Dhillon said. "Hankison did not shoot Ms Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death," she said. "Hankison did not wound her or anyone else at the scene that day, although he did discharge his duty weapon ten times blindly into Ms Taylor's home." Lawyers for the Taylor family condemned the government's sentencing recommendation as "an insult to the life of Breonna Taylor ". "Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity," they said in a statement. Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her Louisville apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020, when they heard a noise at the door. Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding a police officer. Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock search warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor. The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality. In May, the Justice Department announced it was dropping lawsuits filed by the administration of former president Joe Biden against police forces in Louisville and Minneapolis that accused them of using excessive force and racial discrimination. -AFP
