A former police officer indicted by a Kentucky grand jury for his role in the botched, deadly raid on the home of Breonna Taylor will be tried in 2022, nearly six months later than originally planned.
The new Feb. 1 trial date for Brett Hankison was announced Friday Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Ann Bailey Smith, who cited a court slowdown caused by pandemic restrictions. The trial was previously scheduled for Aug. 31.
Smith said there were still many “logistical issues” surrounding jury selection, including whether witnesses would wear masks, thus shielding their facial expressions from the jury, and how the jury could be socially distanced.
Hankison has pleaded not guilty to three counts of wanton endangerment charged against him in a grand jury indictment. He is accused of firing into a neighbor’s apartment as Louisville, Kentucky, police served a search warrant on Taylor’s home in March 2020.
The warrant was part of a drug investigation of Taylor’s former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, who later said she had no involvement in the drug trade.
He told the Courier Journal that Louisville Metro Police acted on erroneous tips to secure the no-knock search warrant on Taylor’s home. He alleged prosecutors offered him a plea deal to falsely claim Taylor was part of an organized crime syndicate.
During the early morning raid, officers opened fire after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a gun toward the door to ward off what he believed was a criminal intruder. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and an emergency room technician, was killed by police gunfire.
Authorities initially charged Walker with attempted murder on a police officer—Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly was struck by gunfire—but later dismissed the case.
Earlier this month, Gov. Andy Beshear signed a partial ban on no-knock warrants of the type used to raid Taylor’s home.
Detective Myles Cosgrove, who fired the shot that killed Taylor, was not charged. Neither was Mattingly.
At the time of the indictment in September, Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said Hankinson had been charged “for bullets that went into other apartments but NOTHING for the murder of Breonna Taylor.”
Hankinson was fired in June. Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes, who is alleged to have lied about Taylor on the application for a warrant, were terminated in January.
The city of Louisville reached a $12 million settlement with Taylor’s family in September.
