DOJ files civil rights charges against four Louisville officers over Breonna Taylor killing

The Justice Department on Thursday charged four Louisville police officers with federal civil rights violations over the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor, alleging they falsified documents in seeking a search warrant of her home.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges at a press conference Thursday, saying the officers knowingly misrepresented that a target of a law enforcement drug investigation had been receiving packages of drugs at Taylor’s home.

“The federal charges announced today allege that members of the Place Based Investigations Unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home, that this act violated federal civil rights laws and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said.

“As outlined in the charging documents, the officers who ultimately carried out the search at Ms. Taylor’s department were not involved in the drafting of the warrant, and were unaware of the false and misleading statements it contained,” the attorney general added.

Current and former Louisville Metropolitan Police officers Joshua Jaynes, Brett Hankison, Kelly Goodlett and Kyle Meany are all charged with violating Taylor’s civil rights. Jaynes, who was fired from the department for allegedly using false information to obtain the search warrant, also faces charges of conspiracy and falsifying records in a federal investigation.

In 2020, a state grand jury indicted Hankinson, one of the police officers who participated in the raid on Taylor’s home, on three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots that penetrated a neighbor’s apartment, but a jury found him not guilty earlier this year.

Hankinson had been the only officer to face charges over the raid prior to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday.

On the night of the raid of Taylor’s home, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, mistook the police officers for intruders and fired a warning shot from a gun he owned legally, hitting one officer in the leg. The officers conducting the search returned a total of 32 shots, one hitting Taylor in the chest and killing her.

Walker was initially charged with assault and attempted murder, but the charges were later dropped.

According to charging documents unsealed Thursday, Louisville police sought and obtained search warrants for five homes as part of a major drug trafficking investigation. Taylor’s apartment was among the five targets, while the other four were all located in Louisville’s West End neighborhood about 10 miles away.

Prosecutors say Goodlett and Jaynes conspired to falsify an affidavit in support of the search warrant for Taylor’s apartment. The affidavit falsely claimed officers had “verified” that a suspect in the drug trafficking investigation had been receiving packages at the apartment, according to the charging papers.

On May 17, 2020 — two months after Taylor was killed — Goodlett and Jaynes allegedly met in a parking garage to hammer out the details of a false narrative to provide in an internal investigation into the killing.

The indictments also accuse Meany, who supervised the investigative unit, of being aware that the warrant relied on false information and lying to the FBI during its investigation.

“We share but we cannot fully imagine the grief felt by Breonna Taylor’s loved ones and all of those affected by the events of March 13, 2020,” Garland said Thursday. “Breonna Taylor should be alive today.”

Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said at Thursday’s press conference that the department is not done scrutinizing Louisville police.

“Independent from these criminal charges, a separate team from the Justice Department’s civil rights division is conducting a civil investigation into whether the Louisville Metro Police Department is engaging in a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct,” Clarke said. “We’re looking at whether the LMPD uses excessive force, improper searches or racially discriminatory policing.”

Updated at 12:45 p.m.