U.S. Judge Sentences Former Police Officer to 33 Months in Prison for Role in Breonna Taylor’s Death
(FILE) Protests demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by the police in her own home, 2020. Photo: teleSUR.
July 22, 2025 Hour: 1:17 am
A federal judge in Kentucky (U.S.) sentenced a former police officer to three years in prison on Monday for his involvement in the death of Breonna Taylor, an African American woman who was shot and killed by authorities in her own home in 2020. Five years after Taylor’s death—which sparked a wave of protests across the country—former officer Brett Hankison remains the only police officer to be charged and convicted in connection with the case.
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District Judge Rebecca Grady dismissed last week’s proposal from the Department of Justice (DOJ), which had suggested just a single day in jail for Hankison, citing the “psychological stress” he endured throughout years of legal proceedings.
The ex-officer, set to serve a 33-month prison sentence and one year of parole, fired shots into Taylor’s apartment during the raid that resulted in the 26-year-old woman’s assassination.
The other two former officers involved have not been convicted. One of them, Kelly Goodlett, pleaded guilty to conspiracy for obtaining a fraudulent search warrant, with her trial postponed to February 2026.
In November last year, Hankison was convicted by a Kentucky jury of violating Taylor’s civil rights. The DOJ—then under President Joe Biden’s administration—had concluded that officers in Louisville, where Taylor was killed, used excessive force, including unjustified neck restraints and the unwarranted use of police dogs and Tasers, according to the investigation. The report also charged that Louisville law enforcement carried out search warrants without knocking and engaged in discriminatory practices against Black individuals and people with disabilities.
Taylor died in 2020 during a police drug raid at her home. The officers had a so-called “no-knock” warrant, which allowed them to enter the apartment without identifying themselves. These warrants were banned in Louisville after her death.
Her death on March 13, 2020, occurred months before the killing of George Floyd in May of the same year, which together fueled the largest wave of racial justice protests in the U.S. since the 1960s.
Author: vmmh
Source: EFE