Four police officers charged with crimes against civil rights for the death of Breonna Taylor

No agent has been charged with murder after an erroneous and negligent operation, the victim's lawyers recall

MADRID, 5 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Four serving and retired Louisville Police officers have been charged with civil rights violations and unconstitutional abuse of force in the first federal indictments for the March 2020 death of the health worker. Breonna Taylor in a raid erroneous and, according to the indictment, riddled with undercover police negligence.

So far no officers have been charged with murder in the death of Taylor, who was shot at least five times when plainclothes officers broke into the home she shared with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who mistook the officers for intruders and shot one of them in the leg.

The response to the officers' shots ended the life of the 26-year-old black health worker, in the trigger of new protests against police violence and institutional racism in the United States.

Walker has been cleared of any charges after a court found he acted within reasonable limits in compliance with the state's "Defend Your Place" law, which allows the use of deadly force in burglary cases.

Thus, former Detective Joshua Jaynes, 40, Detective Kelly Goodlett and Sergeant Kyle Meany, 35, have been charged first with submitting a false affidavit to search Taylor's home prior to the raid, and second with conspire together to cover up the falsity of the said statement.

Likewise, former detective Brett Hankison, who opened fire from outside the house without a clear line of fire, has been accused of "using excessive force in an unconstitutional manner by firing his service weapon through opaque material", which also put in danger to the neighbors of the apartment, as explained by the attorney general of the United States, Merrick Garland.

Jaynes, Meany and Goodlett, for their part, "applied for a court order to search the house knowing that they lacked probable cause for the search. The defendants knew that the affidavit in support of that order contained false and misleading information," Garland added. in your statement of objections.

The attorney general specifically referred to Jaynes and Goodlett, whom he accused of lying in justifying the raid on the fact that the target of a drug operation had received packages at Taylor's address.

"Both defendants knew that was not true," Garland said, adding that "the officers who carried out the search warrant did not participate in drafting the warrant and did not know that it contained false information."

However, in January 2021, the Police Department fired Jaynes and his colleague Myles Cosgrove, the latter responsible according to the investigation of the shooting that ended Taylor's life, for abuse of deadly force by discharging 16 shots without activating the camera. body that would have allowed the entire event to be recorded.

According to the Department of Justice, a conviction on the charge of willful violation of a person's rights carries a maximum sentence of life in prison when the violation leads to death. An obstruction conviction carries a maximum sentence of 20 years, and the conspiracy and false statement charges each carry a maximum sentence of five years.

The attorney general has recalled that the charges announced this past Thursday are independent of the investigation that is being carried out on local authorities and the Louisville Police Department, announced on April 26.