Crime News

Jury questioning to begin in case related to Breonna Taylor

FILE – Tamika Palmer, center, the mother of Breonna Taylor, leads a march through the streets of downtown Louisville on the one year anniversary of Taylor’s death on March 13, 2021, in Louisville, Ky. Questioning of potential jurors begins Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, for the trial of a former Kentucky police officer involved in a botched raid that killed Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical technician. Brett Hankison is standing trial on three counts of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing wildly into Taylor’s neighbors’ apartments in March 2020. No drugs were found during the raid, and the warrant was later found to be flawed. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley, File)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Questioning of potential jurors begins Tuesday for the trial of a former Kentucky police officer involved in a botched raid that killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville emergency medical technician.

Brett Hankison has pleaded not guilty to three counts of wanton endangerment for allegedly firing wildly into the apartments of Taylor’s neighbors during the March 2020 raid. Taylor, a Black woman, was shot multiple times. No drugs were found, and the warrant was later found to be flawed.

No officers were charged for causing Taylor’s death, despite protests nationwide, with many demonstrators demanding that the officers involved stand trial for murder. That set the outcome apart from two other killings of Black people at the hands of white people in 2020 that put race relations in the national spotlight: the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police, and the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased by three men while running through a Georgia neighborhood.

Arbery’s pursuers were sentenced to life in prison for murder last month, and their federal hate crimes trial is set to begin next week. Former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years for murder and manslaughter, and his fellow officers are now being tried in state court.

In the Taylor case, Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General, Daniel Cameron determined that the officers fired into the woman’s apartment in self-defense after her boyfriend shot at them first as they broke into her apartment. Cameron, who is Black, acknowledged that Taylor’s death was heartbreaking, but he did not give a grand jury the option of charging anyone with killing her.

Hankison, who faces one to five years in prison on each of the wanton endangerment counts, is the only officer facing any criminal charges from the raid.

The process, which began last Friday, is expected to take weeks. Potential jurors will be asked questions to determine if they can serve as fair and impartial jurors. The pool of Jefferson County residents will be whittled down to 12 jurors, plus alternates.

Jefferson Circuit Judge Ann Bailey Smith denied a request by Hankison’s attorney to move the trial out of Louisville, where he argued that publicity surrounding the case would make it hard to seat an impartial jury.


Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/death-of-george-floyd-ahmaud-arbery-shootings-breonna-taylor-louisville-5c6654ae98ee0be8ca4ed0b0adb489b0

Click to comment

You May Also Like

Business News

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A fight between two groups turned deadly in Florida when a shooting in a Tampa street during Halloween festivities resulted...

Accidents

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a driver who was sitting in his car turned himself in Friday morning and...

Crime News

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio authorities on Friday released bodycam video showing a police officer fatally shooting Ta’Kiya Young in her car in what her family...

Business News

Before the fatal shootings of three Black residents in Jacksonville, Florida, over the weekend, the gunman, a young white man with swastikas painted on his rifle, pulled...

Copyright © 2023 Newsworthy News | Global | Political | Local | All News | Website By: Top Search SEO

Exit mobile version