The only cop to face charges in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death was found not guilty on Thursday of endangering Taylor’s neighbors, ending the prospect of any officers being held criminally liable by the state for the botched 2020 raid.
Brett Hankison, 45, was sacked by the Louisville Metro Police Department four months after the raid for “blindly firing 10 rounds” into Taylor’s apartment and “endangering the three lives” next door. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and well-regarded emergency room technician, was hit eight times. She died six minutes later.
The jury deliberated for around three hours on Thursday after five days of emotional witness testimony and impassioned closing arguments from both sides.
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Hankison’s body began to shake and his eyes appeared to well up with tears as the verdict was read out, echoing his tearful testimony during the contentious trial. The judge told him he was free to go, and his bail money will be returned.
In a statement provided to The Daily Beast following the verdict, attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Taylor family, said the verdict was “further evidence of the lack of police accountability.”
“The fact that Brett Hankinson was not even charged for Breonna Taylor’s killing and only faced charges for the wanton endangerment of her white neighbors was a slap in the face for Breonna and her family,” he said. “...We demand real police reform, including a federal ban of no-knock warrants and improved training for law enforcement officers. Until we achieve those reforms, we cannot sleep safely in our own homes.”
None of Hankison’s shots hit Taylor, but some of the bullets traveled through the apartment into a neighboring one, with a pregnant woman, a man, and a 5-year-old child inside, leading to charges of wanton endangerment.
In the early morning of March 13, 2020, Hankison was part of a three-man team who executed a so-called no-knock warrant under the assumption Taylor was home alone. Cops believed a suspect in an ongoing narcotics investigation, Jamarcus Glover, was storing narcotics and drug proceeds in Taylor’s apartment. The two had previously dated, though they’d been broken up for some two years by that point and were no longer friends, according to Crump. Glover had already been detained by police at the time of the raid, Taylor’s family said in a wrongful death lawsuit. No drugs were found in her apartment.
During the trial, prosecutors told the jury of eight men and four women that Hankison displayed “extreme indifference to human life” in shooting at Taylor’s apartment.
Assistant Attorney General Barbara Maines Whaley argued that Hankison could easily have killed the other officers, or pregnant neighbor Chelsea Napper, her partner Cody Etherton, and Napper’s son, Zayden, according to the Louisville Courier Journal.
“His wanton conduct could have multiplied one tragic death by three,” Whaley said.
Hankison’s lawyer, Stew Mathews, told a very different tale in court, saying his client was only trying to protect the lives of his fellow cops, likening Hankison to the first responders in New York City who worked selflessly to save those trapped inside the Twin Towers on 9/11.
“They run towards the danger,” Mathews argued. “And that’s what Brett Hankison did here.”
On the stand, an emotional Hankison insisted he was not to blame.
“Is there anything, Brett, that you feel like you did wrong on March 13 at 3003 Springfield Drive?” Hankison’s lawyer asked during his testimony.
“Absolutely not,” Hankison answered, saying he thought his partners’ lives were in danger.
“I knew Sgt. Mattingly was down and I knew they were trying to get to him, and it appeared to me they were being executed with this rifle,” Hankison testified. “I thought I could put rounds through that bedroom window and stop the threat.”
Jonathan Mattingly, a LMPD supervisor on the raid team, had been shot by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who had a permit to legally carry a handgun, according to his family. Thinking he and Taylor were the targets of an attack as police broke down the door, Walker, who was jarred awake by the commotion, called 911 and fired one shot that hit Mattingly in the leg.
Hankison said he backed out of the apartment into a communal breezeway when Mattingly went down, and fired 10 rounds through a glass patio door covered by a curtain. He said he was reacting to muzzle flashes and the sound of gunfire. In fact, what he was hearing was his two fellow officers shooting more than 20 rounds into Taylor’s apartment.
“I kind of felt they were sitting ducks,” Hankison testified.
Neither Taylor nor Walker had a criminal record, and investigators did not discover the rifle Hankison claimed to have seen Walker aiming at them.
According to Hankison’s testimony, he had helped execute some 1,000 search warrants during his 20-year career but the Taylor raid was the first time he ever fired his gun while on duty. He was assisting the two others as a K9 handler, and claimed not to have seen any floor plans or pictures of Taylor’s apartment prior to the raid.
In Hankison’s termination letter, Louisville Metro PD Chief Robert Schroeder called Hankison’s “conduct a shock to the conscience.”“I am alarmed and stunned you used deadly force in this fashion,” he wrote. “Your actions have brought discredit upon yourself and the Department… Your conduct demands your termination.”
The letter also noted that Hankison in 2019 had “previously been disciplined for reckless conduct that injured an innocent person.”Det. Myles Cosgrove, who was determined to have fired the bullet that actually killed Taylor, was fired in January 2021. Mattingly retired a few months later, saying it was in his family’s “best interest.” The officer who wrote out the search warrant used in the raid, Det. Joshua Jaynes, was fired last year for lying on a sworn affidavit, in which he untruthfully claimed that a U.S. Postal Inspection Service agent confirmed to him that Taylor was receiving suspicious packages at her apartment. It later emerged that Jaynes never got verification from a postal inspector but instead had learned of the allegation from Mattingly, who said he had gotten word of it from an officer from another police department.
At the time of Taylor’s death, Hankison was in the midst of battling a federal lawsuit for allegedly planting drugs on innocent citizens. He was also accused of sexual assault by a pair of women who said he touched them inappropriately when they were drunk.
In the aftermath of the deadly raid, Walker was arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer and aggravated assault. Charges were dropped the following month, and the City of Louisville settled with Taylor’s family for $12 million.
No one has been charged directly in Taylor’s death, which came less than a month after 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, who was also Black, was shot and killed by three white men while jogging through a Georgia neighborhood.
“They’re killing our sisters just like they’re killing our brothers, but for whatever reason, we have not given our sisters the same attention that we have given to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Stephon Clark, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald,” Crump, who represents both the Arbery and Taylor families, told The Washington Post after Taylor was killed. “Breonna’s name should be known by everybody in America who said those other names, because she was in her own home, doing absolutely nothing wrong.”
