Once again, the case of Breonna Taylor has proven that the American legal system is set up in a way that protects police officers far more than it holds them accountable.
Source: The Washington Post / Getty
According to WDRB, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Simpson ruled Thursday that the second Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot at the cops he thought were intruders trying to break into their apartment, he became responsible for Taylor’s death, not the cops, who fired a garage of bullets in response, killing Taylor and endangering the lives of several other residents in the apartment building.
Even though Walker was cleared of all criminal wrongdoing in firing a single shot at police, and even though the warrant the police officers were executing was obtained through illegal means, Simpson ruled that Walker essentially killed Taylor because the gunshot he fired was the “legal cause of her death.”
From WDRB:
Former Louisville Metro Police Det. Joshua Jaynes and Sgt. Kyle Meany were accused of providing and lying about false information in a search warrant used by police to burst into Taylor’s house, resulting in her death.
But Simpson ruled that the decision by Kenneth Walker, Taylor’s boyfriend, to shoot at police when they burst in the home on March 13, 2020, was the direct cause of her death, not the search warrant.
He dismissed two felony charges against both men that carried a maximum penalty of life in prison. The charges involved using a dangerous weapon to deprive Taylor of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search.
In his ruling, Simpson said the “tragedy of Breonna Taylor’s death and the gravity of her family’s grief are not lost on the court.”
However, in this case, “the alleged facts do not fit the felony offenses as written.”
It would be nice if, at the very least, these judges and other legal officials would stop playing around in Black people’s faces with their standard platitudes about what a “tragedy” Taylor’s killing was, especially if they’re just going to follow up on those fake condolences by saying different variations of: “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Prosecutors had argued that Jaynes and Meany, who were not present during the raid, “drafted and approved what they knew was a false affidavit to support a search warrant for Ms. Taylor’s home,” and that the “false affidavit set in motion events that led to Ms. Taylor’s death when other LMPD officers executed that warrant.”
The two officers are still facing charges. Jaynes is looking at two felony counts alleging a cover-up after Taylor’s death for which he could be sentenced to a total of 40 years. Meany is facing one charge of lying to the FBI, which carries a maximum of five years in prison. But considering the way the legal system in Louisville keeps going out of its way to blame any and everyone for Taylor’s death except the cops who actually caused it, both directly and indirectly, there’s just no reason to hold one’s breath in hopes that any officer will be convicted of anything for which they will serve significant time.
“The family is obviously devastated,” Taylor’s family said in a statement Thursday to WDRB. “Right now, we are just processing as prosecutors flush out next steps. We’ve been told they plan to appeal, and so we will wait for the appeals process to play out.”