In a harsh rebuke to the Trump administration, which had asked that he serve just one day in prison, a federal judge in Kentucky sentenced a former Louisville police officer who was involved in the deadly raid of Breonna Taylor’s house to almost three years in prison on Monday.
The former cop, Brett Hankison, was found guilty by a federal jury in Kentucky in November of one count of violating Ms. Taylor’s civil rights by firing multiple rounds through her window during a botched narcotics search in 2020. Mr. Hankison, a white cop, was the only one prosecuted for his actions during the failed operation, despite the fact that none of the ten shots he fired struck Ms. Taylor.
In the midst of a wave of similar incidents at the same time, including the death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the 26-year-old Ms. Taylor’s murder in her own house became the focal point of the national outcry against police violence against Black people.
In the hours preceding the sentence, protesters outside the federal courtroom in Louisville were fueled by the lingering resentment over Ms. Taylor’s passing as well as a fresh sense of unfairness sparked by the Trump administration’s unusually low sentencing proposal.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon asked the case’s judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, last week to sentence Mr. Hankison to three years of supervised release and one day in jail, which is effectively the short period of time he had served when he was charged.
The request was meant to convey the department’s intention to refocus the civil rights division to support President Trump’s culture war agenda at the expense of its original goal of combating racial discrimination, as well as to abandon its long-standing efforts to address racial disparities in policing.
The department’s request for an unusual sentence was criticized by Judge Jennings of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. However, she also agreed to 33 months in prison, which is much less than the maximum legal penalty of life in prison.
Usually, professional prosecutors who worked on the case submit proposals for sentencing. Ms. Dhillon, a political appointment and seasoned Republican Party volunteer with strong connections to Mr. Trump, and one of her deputies signed the file last week.
The family’s legal team released a statement shortly after the department made its request public, characterizing Tamika Palmer, Ms. Taylor’s mother, as distraught and irate.
During the raid, two additional white cops fired the deadly shots, but neither was prosecuted.
