For 874 days ― nearly 2½ years ― Tamika Palmer has told anyone who would listen that Louisville police never should have been at her daughter Breonna Taylor’s apartment the night they shot her dead in the hallway.
On day 874, she learned the federal government agreed.
“What we’ve been saying was the truth, that they shouldn’t have been there, and that Breonna didn’t deserve that,” Palmer said Thursday, hours after the U.S. Department of Justice announced federal indictments accusing three current or former Louisville police officers of lying to obtain the search warrant that led officers to Taylor’s apartment on March 13, 2020, ― and then trying to cover up those lies.
The Justice Department announced an indictment against a fourth ex-police officer, Brett Hankison, on a federal charge of using “unconstitutionally excessive force” when he blindly fired 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment the night she was killed, with several rounds ending up in a neighbor’s apartment. Hankison was previously acquitted of state charges of wanton endangerment earlier this year for those actions.
“Today’s overdue, but it still hurts,” Palmer said, flanked by family, attorneys and supporters during a press conference Thursday in Jefferson Square, the epicenter for 180-plus days of protests that erupted following Taylor’s killing.
The indictments mark the first time any police officers have been criminally charged in connection with the 26-year-old emergency technician’s death.
In announcing the indictments, Attorney General Merrick Garland said former detective Joshua Jaynes and current officers Sgt. Kyle Meany and Kelly Hanna Goodlett knew they didn’t have probable cause to get a warrant to search Taylor’s apartment that night, and they knew the affidavit supporting that warrant “contained false and misleading information and that it omitted material information.”
“Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” Garland said during the announcement.
Many of the allegations against Jaynes first surfaced when the Louisville police department fired him for lying on the search warrant. But the new indictment also accuses Jaynes and Goodlett of meeting in Jaynes’ garage in May 2020, where they “conspired to knowingly falsify an investigative document” and “conspired to mislead federal, state and local authorities” during the subsequent investigation.
“We weren’t crazy when we said they were conspiring to cover up the murder of this innocent Black woman,” said Ben Crump, a national civil rights attorney and one of the co-counsels who represented Taylor’s family in their successful civil lawsuit against the city and police department.
Hankison, Jaynes and Meany each appeared before Magistrate Judge Regina Edwards Thursday and were granted conditional release. Goodlett, meanwhile, was charged by information ― an indicator she may have agreed to plead guilty.
All except Goodlett face a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. The federal system has no parole.
Louisville police issued a statement saying Chief Erika Shields started termination proceedings against Meany and Goodlett, who is also one of the officers named in an FBI investigation over LMPD staff allegedly throwing drinks at people in the city’s West End.
Attorney Sam Aguiar, one of the Taylor family’s attorneys, said Goodlett’s apparent guilty plea could give the other accused officers “a hard time” mounting a defense.
“I’m confident the feds wouldn’t indict unless they have a strong case,” he said.
Calling the federal indictments “vindication,” Sadiqa Reynolds, president of the Louisville Urban League, said the public needs to continue to demand accountability from city leaders and the police.
“Somebody is dead,” she told the crowd of media and supporters gathered in the square. “It could have been you. It could have been me. And it still can be unless we change the way business is done.”
