FILE PHOTO - Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, stands next to a painting of her daughter at a gathering to mark two years since police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor when they entered her home, at Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., March 13, 2022. REUTERS/Jon Cherry
Aug 23 (Reuters) - A former Louisville detective pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday to helping falsify a search warrant that led to the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose death fueled a wave of protests over police violence against people of color.
The former officer, Kelly Goodlett, entered her plea before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings in a federal court in Louisville, Kentucky, court records showed.
Goodlett pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, becoming the first officer to be held criminally responsible for the botched raid. Goodlett was accused of conspiring with another detective to falsify the warrant that led to the raid and covering up the falsification.
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The 35-year-old could face five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release when she is sentenced. A sentencing hearing was tentatively scheduled for Nov. 22, the Courier Journal in Louisville reported.
Goodlett, who appeared with her attorney Brandon Marshall, was ordered to surrender her passport, the newspaper reported.
Prosecutors and her attorney were not immediately available for comment.
Goodlett was one of four former Louisville Metropolitan Police Department detectives charged by the U.S. Justice Department on Aug. 4 for their involvement in the 2020 raid that killed Taylor in her home.
The charges represented the Justice Department's latest attempt to crack down on abuses and racial disparities in policing, following a series of high-profile police killings of Black Americans across the country.
The killing of Taylor, along with other 2020 killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, among others, sparked outrage and galvanized protests that peaked in intensity during that summer.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was asleep with her boyfriend on March 13, 2020, when police conducted a no-knock raid and burst into her apartment. Taylor's boyfriend fired once at what he said he believed were intruders. Three police officers responded with 32 shots, six of which struck Taylor, killing her.
Goodlett and a fellow former officer, Joshua Jaynes, met days after the shooting in a garage where they agreed on a false story to cover for the false evidence they had submitted to justify the botched raid, prosecutors say.
Federal prosecutors also charged Jaynes and current Sergeant Kyle Meany with civil rights violations and obstruction of justice for using false information to obtain the search warrant.
A fourth officer, former Detective Brett Hankison, was charged with civil rights violations for allegedly using excessive force.
In March, a jury acquitted Hankison on a charge of wanton endangerment. A grand jury earlier cleared the other two white officers who shot Taylor but charged Hankison for endangering neighbors in the adjacent apartment.
A grand juror on the case later said Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is now running for governor, only presented the wanton endangerment charges against Hankison to the grand jury. read more
Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago Editing by Alistair Bell and Paul Thomasch
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
RyVsWorld on August 23rd, 2022 at 12:10 UTC »
People shouldn’t forget that Kentucky AG cameron declined to hold anyone accountable and decided not to press charges. Basically the DOJ had to do his job for him.
Fucking disgraceful
gphs on August 23rd, 2022 at 12:01 UTC »
While it’s good that the police are going to be held to task for falsifying an affidavit in support of the warrant (which happens with some regularity, though it’s vanishingly rare anyone is disciplined for it), there’s still a big piece to this case that relatively few people acknowledge.
Dan “Accessory After The Fact” Cameron, Kentucky’s Attorney General and gubernatorial hopeful, sandbagged the homicide case at the grand jury and then lied about it to the press. We know that because three of the grand jurors fought his office to get a court order allowing them to speak, contradicting his public claims that they agreed with Cameron that homicide charges were unwarranted. He never presented that possibility to them to consider.
It was a brazen cover up. But since he’s McConnell’s protégé, there will be no consequences for him.
I realize that it’s an unsexy cover up because you have to understand how to leveraged the Kentucky rules of criminal procedure which ordinarily seal grand jury proceedings, and understand the indictment process in Kentucky to see it, but it’s a cover up nonetheless.
Edit: even if you disagree with the conclusion that Breonna Taylor was murdered, that’s fine. The point is not whether a jury would convict someone, the point is that she was never given the same legal process that any other girl shot to death in her bed would have been given. That is indisputable.
Edit 2: My mention that she was “shot to death in her bed” was hyperbole. She was shot to death in her bedroom hallway after getting out of bed. I regret that I did not make it more clear that I was not being literal.
Edit 3: I love that the top comment is about Cameron. May this outlive his political aspirations.
happycadaver on August 23rd, 2022 at 11:29 UTC »
Loved this detail...
"Goodlett and a fellow former officer, Joshua Jaynes, met days after the shooting in a garage where they agreed on a false story to cover for the false evidence they had submitted to justify the botched raid, prosecutors say."
Although nothing can replace her life hopefully Breonna's family gets some much needed justice on this.