Ex-officer gets nearly 3 years in prison in Breonna Taylor raid
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A federal judge on Monday sentenced a former Kentucky police officer to nearly three years in prison for using excessive force during the deadly 2020 Breonna Taylor raid, rebuffing a U.S. Department of Justice recommendation of no prison time for the defendant.
Brett Hankison, who fired 10 shots during the raid but didn’t hit anyone, was the only officer on the scene charged in the Black woman’s death. He is the first person sentenced to prison in the case that rocked the city of Louisville and spawned weeks of street protests over police brutality that year.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, in sentencing Hankison, said no prison time “is not appropriate” and would minimize the jury’s verdict from November. Jennings said she was “startled” there weren’t more people injured in the raid from Hankison’s blind shots.
She sentenced Hankison, 49, to 33 months in prison for the conviction of use of excessive force with three years of supervised probation to follow the prison term. He will not report directly to prison. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons will determine where and when he starts his sentence, Jennings said.
The judge, who presided over two of Hankison’s trials, expressed disappointment with a sentencing recommendation by federal prosecutors last week, saying the Justice Department was treating Hankison’s actions as “an inconsequential crime” and said some of its arguments were “incongruous and inappropriate.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who helped Taylor’s family secure a $12 million wrongful death settlement against the city of Louisville, had called the department’s recommendation “an insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and a blatant betrayal of the jury’s decision.”
Crump was at Monday’s hearing and said he had hoped for a longer sentence but was “grateful that (Hankison) is at least going to prison and has to think for those 3 years about Breonna Taylor and that her life mattered.”
Afterward, before a crowd outside the courthouse, Crump sounded a familiar chant: “Say Her name.” The crowd yelled back: “Breonna Taylor!” And he and other members of Taylor family’s legal team issued a subsequent statement criticizing the Justice Department.
“While today’s sentence is not what we had hoped for — nor does it fully reflect the severity of the harm caused — it is more than what the Department of Justice sought. That, in itself, is a statement,” the statement said.
Hankison’s 10 shots the night of the March 2020 botched drug raid flew through the walls of Taylor’s apartment into a neighboring apartment, narrowly missing a neighboring family.
The 26-year-old’s death, along with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparked racial injustice and police brutality protests nationwide that year.