WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice is recommending no additional prison time for a former Louisville police officer convicted in connection with the 2020 raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor, NBC reported.
Brett Hankison, a former detective with the Louisville Metro Police Department, was found guilty in November of depriving individuals of their rights under color of law. Prosecutors said Hankison fired 10 rounds through a covered window and sliding glass door into Taylor’s apartment during the narcotics raid. No one was struck by the rounds.
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Hankison did not fire the shots that killed Taylor. Officers who fired those rounds were not charged, as they returned fire after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot at them when police entered the apartment.
In the memo filed on July 16, federal prosecutors requested a sentence of one day. The document, signed by Robert J. Keenan, senior counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, argues that imprisonment is not necessary to protect the public and acknowledges legal uncertainty over whether Hankison’s conduct constitutes a Fourth Amendment violation.
A judge previously ruled that there was sufficient evidence for jurors to believe Taylor was alive when Hankison began shooting.
The memo notes that “multiple prosecutions” of Hankison have taken place and only one of three juries convicted him, and only on one count. He was acquitted on a state charge related to endangering neighbors.
The Justice Department acknowledged the rarity of such a prosecution, writing, “The government is unaware of another prosecution 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.”
Hankison is scheduled to be sentenced on July 21.
