A federal judge on Monday rejected an appeal for leniency by the Trump Justice Department and sentenced an ex-police officer to 33 months in prison for violating the civil rights of a Black woman whose 2020 killing fueled widespread protests.
Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police department detective, was convicted by a jury in Kentucky in November of one count of abusing Breonna Taylor’s civil rights for shots fired during a botched police raid on her home.
Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Trump Justice Department’s civil rights division, in an unusual intervention, had asked Judge Rebecca Jennings last week to sentence Hankison to time served — the single day he spent in jail at the time of his arrest.
But Jennings, who was appointed to the bench by Donald Trump during his first term as president, rejected the recommendation and said she was troubled by the prosecutor’s sentencing memorandum and arguments for leniency, the Louisville Courier Journal said.
She sentenced him to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Hankison faced a maximum penalty of life in prison.
The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her Louisville apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.
Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding a police officer.
Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock search warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.
Hankison fired 10 shots during the raid, some into a neighboring apartment, but did not hit anyone. He is the only police officer convicted in connection with the raid.
Dhillon, in her sentencing memorandum to the judge, had argued that a lengthy prison term for Hankison would be “unjust.”
“Hankison did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death,” she said. “Hankison did not wound her or anyone else at the scene that day, although he did discharge his duty weapon ten times blindly into Ms Taylor’s home.”
In May, the Justice Department announced that it was dropping lawsuits filed by the administration of former president Joe Biden against police forces in Louisville and Minneapolis that accused them of using excessive force and racial discrimination.
