A court ruling in favor of the former officers charged in the death of Breonna Taylor marked a victory as an attorney recognized: “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
Nearly four-and-a-half years after former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany executed a warrant that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor, their ongoing legal battle took a turn away from culpability as they no longer faced felony charges.
A Thursday ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Charles Simpson determined that the decision of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, to open fire when the officers entered the home, striking one officer in the leg and prompting the fatal return fire, was ultimately “the legal cause of Taylor’s death.”
“The Court finds that the warrantless entry was not the actual cause of Taylor’s death,” wrote Simpson in the documents that further stated, “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, [Kenneth Walker’s] decision to open fire is the legal cause of her death, it being a superseding cause.”
The judge determined, “There is no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death.”
As a result, their felony charges were reduced to misdemeanors as Simpson stated, “While the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that (Walker) disrupted those events when he decided to open fire.”
Of note, neither Meany nor Jaynes were present for the raid that triggered the narrative that Taylor had been killed by police while asleep in her bed.
“We are very pleased with the ruling from Judge Simpson. It takes off the table the most serious charge,” said Jaynes’s attorney Thomas Clay. “We’re not out of the woods yet. If it comes down to going to trial, I am looking forward to trying this case so the truth will come out.”
As noted by the Associated Press, Simpson declined a dismissal of the conspiracy charge against Jaynes and a charge of making false statements to investigators against Meany that had been brought by the Justice Department in 2022 when the men were accused of fabricating an affidavit to obtain the warrant against Walker.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges when he visited Louisville and the DOJ stated in an email to the AP that it “is reviewing the judge’s decision and assessing next steps.”
That same year, former officer Kelly Goodlett pled guilty to a conspiracy charge and was expected to testify at the trials of Meany and Jaynes.
In their statement to the AP, Taylor’s family expressed, “Obviously we are devastated at the moment by the judge’s ruling with which we disagree and are just trying to process everything.”
“The only thing we can do at this point is continue to be patient…we will continue to fight until we get full justice for Breonna Taylor,” they added.
Meanwhile, as prosecutors prepared to retry a fourth former officer, Brett Hankison, after a hung jury in 2023, Simpson’s determination that pointed to culpability of Walker’s actions came nearly two years after the City of Louisville had reached a settlement with him, agreeing to pay him $2 million over federal and state lawsuits that he had brought.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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