A federal judge has reduced the charges against two former Louisville Metro Police Department officers who were indicted in connection with the death of Breonna Taylor.
Senior Judge Charles Simpson III ordered the reduction in felony charges against former LMPD Sgt. Kyle Meany and former LMPD Detective Joshua Jaynes Thursday.
Meany and Jaynes were indicted in August 2022 in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Kentucky on charges that, while acting under color of law, they deprived Taylor of her Constitutional right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
“The offense involved the use of a dangerous weapon and resulted in Taylor’s death,” the indictment stated.
But Simpson ruled Thursday “that the warrantless entry was not the proximate cause of Taylor’s death and even if it were, K.W.’s decision to open fire is the legal cause of her death, it being a superseding cause.”
K.W. is a reference to Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend.
Walker has said that he thought the police were intruders breaking in when they barged into Taylor’s Springfield Drive apartment unannounced while he and Taylor slept after midnight on March 13, 2020.
Walker fired a shot at police with a legally-owned gun, and one officer was struck in the leg and required emergency surgery. Three officers returned fire, hitting and killing Taylor.
The death of Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, became a galvanizing issue in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, leading to calls for search warrant reform across the nation and months of nightly protest in Louisville.
Simpson’s order means Jaynes and Meany will not face life in prison on that charge. Instead, they now face a misdemeanor, which carries a punishment of up to a year in prison.
“The tragedy of Breonna Taylor’s death and the gravity of her family’s grief are not lost on this Court,” Simpson wrote. “However, ‘the power of punishment is vested in the legislative, not in the judicial department. It is the legislature, not the Court, which is to define a crime, and ordain its punishment.’
“In this case, the alleged facts do not fit the § 242 felony offenses as written. The Execution Team did not use their weapons to subject Taylor to a search, and their return fire was not the proximate cause of Taylor’s death.”
Both officers are still facing other federal charges that could carry sentences of years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines if they are convicted.
Jaynes is charged with conspiracy to falsify records and witness tampering, as well as falsification of records in a federal investigation. He allegedly tried “to cover up the fact that the Springfield Drive warrant affidavit was false” by submitting a false investigative letter, making false statements to investigators and pressuring other officers to give support to false information after the shooting, according to his indictment.
Meany is charged with making a false statement to federal investigators. He allegedly told an FBI agent after the shooting that officers on the LMPD SWAT team had “asked for no-knock authority” when they had not.
Meany had been a LMPD officer since 2013, and Jaynes had worked for the department for 15 years, according to the indictment.
Both have been fired.
Walker posted a statement on his Instagram account Friday saying, “IF THEY WOULD OF JUST KNOCKED ON THE DOOR AND SAID ‘IT’S THE POLICE’, OR JUST SID ANYTHING AT ALL THEN WE WOULD OF JUST OPENED THE DOOR AND SAID ‘HOW CAN WE HELP YOU”.
In 2022, Walker reached a $2 million settlement with the city of Louisville, the Associated Press reported.
Two other police officers were also charged in connection with Taylor’s death.
Former LMPD detective Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy in 2022, admitting that she helped falsify the warrant affidavit to allow officers to search Taylor’s apartment, then made false statements to try to cover it up.
Court records indicate that her sentencing is scheduled for April 29, 2025.
Former LMPD detective Brett Hankison is accused of using unjustified and unreasonable force when he fired into windows and doors covered with blinds and curtains through which he could not see. A mistrial was declared when the jury could not reach a verdict in Hankinson’s case last November. His case is still pending.
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