Guess it may not have been a ‘good shoot’ afterall.
AG Merrick Garland announced on Thursday the DoJ “has filed charges against four former and current Louisville police officers in connection with the death of Breonna Taylor. The charges include civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction offenses.”
“The federal charges announced today allege that members of a Police Investigations Unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home and that this act violated federal civil rights laws, and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death,” Garland said in a news conference.
The officers and charges against them include:
- Officer Joshua Jaynes
- Former Louisville detective Kelly Goodlet
- Officer Kyle Meany
- Former Louisville Metro Police officer Brett Hankison
The complaint alleges the officers “violated Taylor’s 4th Amendment rights when they sought a warrant to search Taylor’s home while knowing they lacked probable cause, and that they knew their affidavit supporting the contained false and misleading information and omitted other material information, resulting in her death. Goodlett and Jaynes have been charged with conspiracy for allegedly falsifying the affidavit for a search warrant, according to the justice department.
Prosecutors allege that Jaynes and Goodlett met in a garage after Taylor’s death ‘where they agreed to tell investigators’ looking into the botched raid ‘a false story.'”
The DoJ charged Hankinson “in a two-count indictment for deprivation of rights under color of law, both of which are civil rights offenses.”
