Breonna Taylor's boyfriend blamed for death, some charges against ex-police officer dropped

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky. – Two former Louisville, Kentucky, police officers have been charged by a federal judge with serious crimes in connection with the death of Breonna Taylor. The officers were accused of forging a warrant that led police to Taylor's door before they shot her.

U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that the actions of Taylor's boyfriend, who fired at police the night of the raid, were the legal cause of her death, not an invalid arrest warrant.

The federal charges against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany were announced by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a high-profile visit to Louisville in 2022. Garland accused Jaynes and Meany, who were not present at the raid, of knowingly falsifying part of the warrant and putting Taylor in a dangerous situation by sending armed officers to her apartment.

But Simpson wrote in his ruling Tuesday that “there is no direct connection between the warrantless entry and Taylor's death.” Simpson's ruling effectively reduced the civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany, which would have carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors.

The judge declined to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes and another charge against Meany, who is accused of making false statements to investigators.

Who was Breonna Taylor?

Taylor was a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who lived with her sister in a Louisville apartment. She and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were curled up in their bedroom watching a movie on the evening of March 13 when police showed up at their door with a search warrant for drugs. It was one of five search warrants served that evening as part of a large-scale raid. Minutes later, Taylor was shot and killed. Her death sparked months of protests in Louisville, with celebrities including LeBron James, Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey calling on authorities to criminally charge the police officers involved in the raid.

What led to the death of Breonna Taylor?

When police broke down Taylor's door in March 2020 with a search warrant on drug charges, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot that struck an officer in the leg. Walker said he thought an intruder had broken in. Officers returned fire, striking and killing Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, in her hallway.

Simpson concluded that Walker's “conduct was the proximate or legal cause of Taylor's death.”

“While the prosecution alleges that Jaynes and Meany set in motion a series of events that ended in Taylor's death, it also alleges that (Walker) interfered with those events when he decided to open fire on police,” Simpson wrote.

Walker was initially arrested and charged with attempted murder of a police officer, but those charges were later dropped after his lawyers argued that Walker did not know he was shooting at the officers.

“We are of course devastated at this time by the judge's decision, which we disagree with, and are simply trying to process everything,” Taylor's family wrote in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday, saying prosecutors had told the family they would appeal Simpson's decision.

“The only thing we can do at this point is continue to be patient… we will continue to fight until we get full justice for Breonna Taylor.”

The U.S. Department of Justice said in an email that it is “reviewing the judge's decision and considering next steps.”

A third former officer charged in the federal arrest warrant case, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2022 and is expected to testify at the trials of Jaynes and Meany.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Jaynes, who issued the warrant for Taylor's arrest, told Goodlett days before the warrant was served that he had “confirmed” from a postal inspector that a suspected drug dealer was receiving packages at Taylor's apartment. But Goodlett knew that was false and told Jaynes the warrant did not yet contain enough information linking Taylor to criminal activity, prosecutors said. She added a paragraph saying the suspected drug dealer listed Taylor's apartment as his current address, court records show.

Two months later, as Taylor's shooting made national headlines, Jaynes and Goodlett met in Jaynes' garage to “come to a common ground” before Jaynes spoke to investigators about the warrant for Taylor's arrest, court documents say.

A fourth former officer, Brett Hankison, was also charged by federal prosecutors in 2022 with endangering the lives of Taylor, Walker and several of their neighbors when he shot into Taylor's window. A trial last year ended in a hung jury, but Hankison is scheduled to be tried again on those charges in October.