The sister of slain Louisville native Breonna Taylor was dismissed from court on Wednesday after wearing a T-shirt calling for the officer’s arrest after Taylor was fatally shot and killed on March 13, 2020.
According to Law&Crime Network, Ju’Niyah Palmer was told that wearing the shirt with “Arrest the Cops Who Killed Breonna Taylor” was inappropriate to wear in front of a jury due to potential bias. Additionally, the judge advised Palmer to change her shirt since parties present in the courtroom cannot wear attire that advocates for a particular outcome in a case.
The grieving sister voiced her frustration with prosecutors who did not charge the officer’s in Taylor’s death.
“I left because I just feel like they’re running around in circles about what really happened instead of actually really presenting why they’re there,” she said.
Here's the shirt #BreonnaTaylor sister was wearing in court this morning. The jury did not see it. The judge asked her to change her shirt. Pic taken by @BuckEsq. @LawCrimeNetwork #BrettHankison pic.twitter.com/vWUWAVDevD
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) February 23, 2022
Though former detective Brett Hankinson, 45, is not on trial for Taylor’s death, he faces wanton endangerment charges after firing more than ten rounds into a neighboring apartment, putting a couple and their child at risk. The Louisville Metro Police Department conducted an internal investigation and concluded that Hankinson, former detective Myles Cosgrove, and police Sgt. Jon Mattingly “should not have fired shots into her apartment in the fatal botched raid,” News Onyx reported.
According to an FBI ballistics report, Cosgrove fired the fatal shot that killed Taylor while Hankinson stood outside the apartment and fired ten rounds through a patio door with blinds drawn.
A police detective testified on Wednesday, stating that the officer’s no-knock warrant was initially a knock-and-announce to search Taylor’s apartment. But, according to legal documents from last spring, Sgt. Andrew Meyer of the police department’s Professional Standards Unit determined that the three officers were not permitted to shoot rounds into the apartment after Taylor’s Boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, hit one of them – mistaking the officers for intruders in the home.
A police sergeant testified that the original no-knock warrant to search Breonna Taylor's apartment was briefed as a knock-and-announce warrant. @LawCrimeNetwork pic.twitter.com/VeF01tmqCH
— Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) February 23, 2022
“They took a total of thirty-two shots when the provided circumstances made it unsafe to take a single shot. This is how the wrong person was shot and killed,” Meyer wrote, according to the report.
In September 2020, Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron announced that the grand jury declined to indict the officers in Taylor’s death. However, three of the jurors in the case who indicted Hankinson said prosecutors only presented wanton endangerment charges and no homicidal evidence on Taylor’s death.
“They never gave us the opportunity to deliberate on anything but the charges for Hankison,” Juror 2 told CBS This Morning’s Gayle King in an interview. “That was it. As a matter of fact, when they announced that those were the only charges, it was an uproar in that room. There were several more charges that could’ve gone forward on all of those officers. Or at least the three shooters.”
On Wednesday, criminal defense attorney Adam Konta told the network that it was “impossible” for the state to prove wrongdoing in Taylor’s death.
“This is always going to be a civil matter for Breonna Taylor’s family,” he said. “Whether we think something wrong happened in that no-knock warrant that night, whether we know something wrong happened, it doesn’t really matter for her family, unfortunately, because I don’t think they have enough to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”
When asked how she thought the prosecution was doing, Palmer responded, “Terrible,” she said. “I don’t feel like they’re doing exactly what they could be doing.”
