WASHINGTON — The Justice Division is in search of no jail time for a former officer who blindly shot into Breonna Taylor’s dwelling throughout a botched 2020 raid that sparked a federal inquiry into policing in Louisville, Kentucky.
Brett Hankison, a former Louisville Metro Police Division detective whose photographs didn’t strike Taylor, was convicted of deprivation of rights underneath coloration of legislation in November. Federal prosecutors stated he fired 10 photographs by a window and a sliding glass door that have been coated with blinds and curtains. A number of bullets traveled by the wall and into an residence subsequent door however didn’t hit anybody.
The officers who fired the photographs that killed Taylor weren’t charged, as they have been returning fireplace when Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired photographs because the police breached the residence.
In a sentencing memo filed Thursday, the Justice Division wrote that “affordable minds would possibly disagree as as to if defendant Hankison’s conduct constituted a seizure underneath the Fourth Modification within the first place” and that there “is not any want for a jail sentence to guard the general public from defendant.” A choose dominated in February that the proof was enough for a jury to consider that Taylor was nonetheless alive when Hankinson fired the primary 5 bullets by the bed room window.
The sentencing memo seeks at some point of incarceration, which is the size of time that Hankison spent behind bars when he was initially booked on costs. No profession line prosecutors from the Justice Division signed off on the sentencing memo. The memo is as a substitute signed by Trump administration official Robert J. Keenan, senior counsel for the Civil Rights Division, who was concerned within the Justice Division’s effort to undo a jury verdict that discovered a former Los Angeles County deputy responsible of a felony cost in an extreme drive case.
The Justice Division’s Civil Rights Division has seen a large overhaul since Trump took workplace in January, the place coverage and personnel adjustments have led to a mass exodus.
The Justice Division “is unaware of one other prosecution through which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of one other individual underneath the Fourth Modification for returning fireplace and never injuring anybody,” in accordance with the memo.
The memo states that “two federal trials have been in the end needed to acquire a unanimous verdict of guilt” and that, even then, “the jury convicted on just one depend,” though the weather of the cost and underlying conduct have been basically the identical.
Hankison was acquitted on a state cost.
“Right here, a number of prosecutions towards defendant Hankison have been introduced, and solely one in all three juries — the final one — discovered him responsible on these details, after which solely on one cost,” the memo states. “The federal government respects the jury’s verdict, which is able to virtually definitely be certain that defendant Hankison by no means serves as a legislation enforcement officer once more and also will seemingly be certain that he by no means legally possesses a firearm once more.”
Hankison is scheduled to be sentenced on July 21.
