A judge in Kentucky has dismissed core charges against two former Louisville police officials involved in the raid that ended in Breonna Taylor's death.
Judge Charles R. Simpson III of western Kentucky's U.S. District Court on Thursday said Taylor's death was triggered by the actions of her boyfriend, who opened fire when police arrived outside her Louisville apartment March 13, 2020.
Regardless of whether former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany wrote and approved a falsified request for a warrant, it was boyfriend Kenneth Walker's gunfire at what he believed were intruders that caused a deadly police response, Simpson said.
Taylor, 26, was killed by officers who returned fire.
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The case was already being upheld by civil rights activists as an example of police allegedly disregarding the life and rights of a Black woman when George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by officers in Minneapolis two months later, which gave Taylor's death renewed attention.
A federal grand jury in 2022 returned indictments against Jaynes, 40, and Meany, 35, charging them with depriving Taylor of her constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures resulting in death.
The mechanism cited in the case was Jaynes' draft of an allegedly false search warrant application, which Meany approved, that stated there was sufficient evidence tying Taylor’s residence to illicit drugs.
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Jaynes was also charged with conspiracy to cover up the search warrant's lack of a foundation by allegedly creating a supporting document after the fact and then lying to investigators; and Meany was charged with lying to federal investigators.
At the time charges were announced, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the charges reflected the main reason the Justice Department exists — to protect Americans' civil rights.
"Those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death," he said in a statement at the time. "Breonna Taylor should be alive today."
In his ruling Thursday, Simpson cited a timeline that relies on what happened at Taylor's residence after the ink on the warrant dried. Jaynes and Meany weren't at the raid, and her death was more directly tied to Walker's decision to open fire, the judge wrote.
"The Court finds that the warrantless entry was not the actual cause of Taylor’s death," he wrote in his decision. "The Court also concludes that the Death-Results charge requires proof of proximate cause and that allegations in this case show that the warrantless entry was not the proximate cause of Taylor’s death and even if it were, K.W.’s decision to open fire is the legal cause of her death, it being a superseding cause."
Simpson’s ruling effectively reduced the felony civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany, which had carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors.
The charges related to covering up the allegedly false search warrant and lying to investigators will remain, according to the decision.
Attorneys for the former police officials and spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News.
The U.S. Justice Department said in an email to the Associated Press that it “is reviewing the judge’s decision and assessing next steps.”
In a statement to the AP, Taylor's family said they will "continue to fight until we get full justice" for Taylor.
“Obviously we are devastated at the moment by the judge’s ruling with which we disagree and are just trying to process everything,” the statement said. It said prosecutors told the family they plan to appeal Simpson’s ruling.
The federal case also included charges against two other former Louisville police officials, Kelly Goodlett, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring to falsify the warrant application; and Brett Hankison, charged with endangering the lives of Taylor, Walker and nearby neighbors with unconstitutionally excessive force when he opened fire during the raid.
Hankinson's 2023 prosecution ended in mistrial when a jury deadlocked on the counts against him. Federal prosecutors said they plan to retry him beginning in October.
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