Former Louisville, Ky., police officer Brett Hankison was sentenced on Monday to 33 months in prison for violating Breonna Taylor’s rights during the raid in which she was shot and killed. The sentencing came after U.S. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department asked the judge to imprison him for a single day.
Taylor, a Black woman, was shot and killed by Louisville police officers in March 2020 after they used a no-knock warrant at her home. Her boyfriend, believing they were intruders, fired on the officers with a legally owned firearm, prompting them to return fire.
Taylor’s death, along with the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a white police officer, sparked racial justice protests across the U.S. over the treatment of people of colour by police departments.
During former president Joe Biden’s administration, the Justice Department brought criminal civil rights charges against the officers involved in both Taylor and Floyd’s deaths.
Hankison was convicted by a federal jury in November 2024 of one count of violating Taylor’s civil rights, after the first attempt to prosecute him ended with a mistrial.
No officers charged for Taylor’s death
Hankison was separately acquitted on state charges in 2022.
Prosecutors at his previous federal trials aggressively pursued a conviction against Hankison, 49, arguing that he blindly fired 10 shots into Taylor’s windows without identifying a target.
Taylor was shot in her hallway by two other officers after her boyfriend fired from inside the apartment, striking an officer in the leg.
Neither of the other officers was charged in state or federal court after prosecutors deemed they were justified in returning fire into the apartment. Louisville police used a drug warrant to enter the apartment, but found no drugs or cash inside.
Last week, the Justice Department recommended no prison time for Hankison, an abrupt about-face by federal prosecutors that angered critics after the department spent years prosecuting the former detective.
The Justice Department’s sentencing memo for Hankison downplayed his role in the raid at Taylor’s home, saying he “did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death.”
The memo was notable because it was not signed by any of the career prosecutors — those who were not political appointees — who had tried the case. It was submitted on July 16 by Harmeet Dhillon, a political appointee by Trump to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and her counsel, Robert Keenan.
Keenan previously worked as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, where he argued that Trevor Kirk, a local deputy sheriff convicted of civil rights violations, should have his conviction on the felony counts struck and should not serve prison time.
The efforts to strike the felony conviction led several prosecutors on the case to resign in protest, according to media reports and a person familiar with the matter.
Wrongful death settlement
The department’s sentencing recommendation in the Hankison case marks the latest effort by the Trump administration to put the brakes on the department’s police accountability work.
Earlier this year, Dhillon nixed plans to enter into a court-approved settlement with the Louisville Police Department, and rescinded the Civil Rights Division’s prior findings of widespread civil rights abuses against people of colour.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who helped Taylor’s family secure a $12 million US wrongful death settlement against the city of Louisville, had called the Justice Department recommendation “an insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and a blatant betrayal of the jury’s decision.”
In a social media statement, he said that it “sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity.”
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings on Friday denied Hankison’s request for a new trial.
