A jury on Friday found former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison guilty of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights during a fatal, botched police raid in a retrial of the federal case against him .
The guilty verdict came hours after the jury acquitted Hankison of a second count of violating the civil rights of three of Taylor’s neighbors, who lived in an adjacent apartment that was also hit by gunfire during the raid. After the partial verdict was delivered, the jurors, deadlocked on the charge specifically related to Taylor, were instructed by the judge to continue their deliberations.
The jury returned a guilty verdict on that charge shortly before 9:30 p.m., according to Louisville ABC affiliate WHAS.
Taylor’s family and friends hugged and applauded each other after leaving court Friday evening.
Speaking to reporters after the verdict, Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, thanked prosecutors and jurors. “They stayed the course,” Palmer said of prosecutors, who retried the case after Hankison’s first federal trial ended in a mistrial last year when the jury could not reach a unanimous decision after several days of deliberations.
As deliberations stretched this time late into Friday evening, Palmer said she began to feel defeated. “The later it happened, the harder it became, and I’m just happy to be on the other side,” she said.
“Now I just want people to keep saying Breonna Taylor’s name,” her mother said.
Taylor was fatally shot during the March 2020 raid. The three officers fired dozens of shots after her boyfriend fired at them, hitting one of the officers.
Hankison fired 10 shots through Taylor’s sliding glass door and window, which were covered by blinds and curtains, prosecutors said. Several bullets entered Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment, where three people were located at the time. None of the 10 shots hit anyone.
Prosecutors argued that Hankison’s use of force was unjustified, put people in danger and violated the civil rights of Taylor and his three neighbors. The indictment alleged that Hankison deprived Taylor of the right to be free from unreasonable seizures and deprived his neighbors of the right to be safe from deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
Several witnesses, including Louisville’s current police chief, testified during the trial that the former officer violated Louisville police policy requiring officers to identify a target before shooting, according to the Associated Press .
The defense argued during the trial that Hankison participated in a poorly planned raid and fired his gun after believing someone was advancing on the other officers, the AP reported.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
In this March 2, 2022, file photo, former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison examines a document as he answers questions from prosecutors in Louisville, Kentucky.
Timothy D. Easley, Pool via AP, FILE
The plainclothes officers were executing an arrest warrant looking for Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who they believed was dealing drugs, when they broke down the door to her apartment. He was not at the residence, but her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought someone had broken into the house and fired a shot from a handgun, hitting one of the officers on the leg. The three officers returned fire, firing 32 bullets into the apartment.
The original indictment claimed that Hankison also violated Walker’s civil rights, although Walker was removed from the charge at the start of the retrial.
The retrial marked Hankison’s third trial, following a mistrial as well as a state trial in 2022, during which he was acquitted of several charges of wanton endangerment.
As in his previous trials, Hankison took the stand during the retrial, becoming emotional at times during the two days of testimony, according to WHAS, the ABC affiliate in Louisville that is covering the case from the courtroom.
Hankison told jurors he was “trying to stay alive, [and] I’m trying to keep my partners alive,” according to WHAS.
Hankison insisted that “the only person my bullet could have hit was the shooter,” saying there was “no risk” of hitting anyone outside of the threat, according to WHAS.
In this September 24, 2020, file photo, a photo of Breonna Taylor is seen inside a broken picture frame at a makeshift memorial for her in Louisville, Kentucky.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, FILE
He said that night was the first time he had fired his weapon in nearly 20 years on the police force, according to the AP.
Hankison was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department for violating department procedure when he fired “wantonly and indiscriminately” into the apartment.
The two other officers involved in the raid have not been charged. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron called Taylor’s death a “tragedy” but said both officers were justified in their use of force after coming under fire from Walker.
