There’s an important update to report concerning the killing of Breonna Taylor.
Back in August, a federal judge ruled that two former Louisville police officers, Joshua Jaynes, and Kyle Meany, were not responsible for the violent death of Breonna Taylor even though they allegedly falsified information in order to obtain the search warrant of her home. The execution of said warrant directly led to a barrage of bullets being fired into the home, killing Taylor.
Source: Courier Journal / Handout
Instead, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Simpson decided it was Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who caused her death by firing a single shot at officers who he thought were intruders trying to break into their apartment.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice filed new charges against Jaynes and Meany, who are still facing federal charges connected to the botched raid, in an effort to get around Simpon’s ruling, which resulted in the dismissal of the most serious charges against the two ex-officers, according to WDRB.
From WBRD:
The new indictment on Tuesday includes a focus on key information Jaynes and Meany withheld from other officers during the planning and execution of the raid, putting both officers and anyone in Taylor’s home in danger.
In addition, the two presented false information in a search warrant affidavit, presented to Jefferson Circuit Judge Mary Shaw, including that a postal inspector verified that drug suspect Jamarcus Glover, who had dated Taylor, was using Taylor’s home to receive parcels.
In fact, Tony Gooden, a U.S. postal inspector in Louisville, told WDRB News in May 2020 that Louisville police didn’t confer with his office. He said a different law enforcement agency asked his office in January 2020 to investigate whether any potentially suspicious mail was going to the unit. The local office concluded that there wasn’t.
And Jaynes swore that he had observed Glover make “frequent trips” to Taylor’s home, according to the new indictment. But, in fact, Jaynes and Meany had only seen Glover at the home one time, months before the March 13, 2020, raid, prosecutors allege.
A lot of people — specifically those who don’t go out of their way to serve as pseudo-professional bootlickers — would call it police corruption when officers of the law take an “any means necessary” approach to getting a search warrant signed by a judge, even if it means knowingly lying. Those people might also find it odd that a judge would decide Walker’s singular gunshot fired at cops he didn’t know were cops was the “legal cause of her death,” but absolve the officers who lied to obtain the warrant that set the entire event into motion in the first place. Mind you, we have completely gotten away from the notion that the officers who fired massive amounts of bullets into the apartment building, killing Taylor and endangering the lives of several other residents in the apartment building, bear no responsibility at all for the life they took directly.
So, the cops who shot and killed Taylor won’t be held accountable for it, and holding Jaynes and Meany accountable has proven to be an uphill battle — but the Black man who tried to protect his home and his girlfriend was the “legal cause” of Taylor’s death, despite the fact that he was cleared of any wrongdoing very early on in the case. Got it.
In fact, according to the amended indictments, Meany was aware that Taylor had a boyfriend who was staying with her and who legally owned a gun, but he did not include that information in the search warrant application.
“If the judge had been aware that key statements in the affidavit were false and misleading, she would not have approved the warrant for Taylor’s home and there would not have been a search at Taylor’s home,” according to the new indictment.
Taylor would likely still be alive today if not for the alleged actions of these officers. Despite this, Judge Simpson dismissed two felony charges against them — charges that “involved using a dangerous weapon to deprive Taylor of her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search that carried a maximum penalty of life in prison, according to WDRB — that carried a maximum penalty of life in prison. Prosecutors have appealed the judge’s decision to dismiss those charges, but it’s unclear how the new indictment will affect that appeal.
As for Jaynes and Meany, who are currently out on bond, they will have to be arraigned again now that the indictment has been amended. Both men are due back in court on Oct. 18.