In 2020, protesters in Los Angeles march with an effigy of Breonna Taylor during a demonstration held to demand justice for her death after the results of a grand jury indictment of former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison. Today, the Department of Justice filed a memo requesting a sentence of one day in jail for Hankison, who was convicted of violating Taylor’s civil rights. File Photo by Kyle Grillot/EPA
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a memo on Thursday recommending one day in jail for former Louisville, Ky., police detective Brett Hankison, who shot into Breonna Taylor’s apartment 10 times but didn’t injure anyone.
Breonna Taylor, an emergency room technician, was awakened from sleep March 13, 2020, by police with a falsified “no-knock warrant.” Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought the officers were intruders and shot at them. The police opened fire, and another officer shot and killed Taylor. Hankison was outside the apartment and shot into the window 10 times. Hankison was convicted of deprivation of rights under color of law in November. He faces up to life in prison.
Prosecutors wrote in the filing they were unaware of another case “in which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of another person under the Fourth Amendment for returning fire and not injuring anyone.”
A pre-sentence report from the U.S. Probation Office recommended a sentence between 11.25 and 14 years, USA Today reported. The DOJ says that range was incorrectly calculated and “excessive.” It recommends the court “grant a significant downward departure.”
The memo was signed by Robert J. Keenum, senior counsel for the DOJ’s civil rights division, and Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department. Neither was involved with the case.
The memo prompted a strong response.
“The fact that Donald Trump’s DOJ thinks Breonna Taylor’s life is worth just a one-day jail sentence is morally reprehensible and deeply insulting. This is a dark day for our entire city,” Rep. Morgan McGarvey, D-Ky., said in a statement. McGarvey represents Louisville.
Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the police did knock and announce themselves. But Taylor’s neighbors and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said they heard no knock or announcement. Walker has since gotten a $2 million settlement against the city.
Hankison is white, and he was the first convicted in the case. The other officers were not convicted. Hankison was previously acquitted on a state charge.
The memo said that Hankison’s suffered enough.
“Here, multiple prosecutions against defendant Hankison were brought, and only one of three juries — the last one — found him guilty on these facts, and then only on one charge,” the memo says. “The government respects the jury’s verdict, which 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.”
But others disagreed with DOJ’s request.
Hankison’s shots “missed a sleeping baby by about two feet,” said former Justice Department Civil Rights Division official Samatha Trepel on LinkedIn. She believes the court will see the request as “transparent, last minute political interference into a case that was tried by non-political, longtime career prosecutors who obtained this conviction in front of an all-white jury of Kentucky citizens before a Trump-appointed judge.”
