Last week, the months of calls, cries and protests that have been calling for justice for Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police officers as she slept in her own apartment, were finally answered with a resounding “no”. After six months of silence and inaction by the Louisville Police Department, the FBI, and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the decision to not bring charges against any officers for Breonna Taylor’s death was not surprising to any family members or activists. It was, however, infuriating and sparked what will surely be weeks more of protests that lead to further arrests and police violence in a year that has been characterized by this routine.
Depending on who you ask, the lack of charges against any officers for Breonna Taylor’s death is unsuprising because of the facts of the case, or despite them. Officers executed a no-knock warrant on her apartment in the middle of the night. After forcing their way into the apartment, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opened fire on who he thought were intruders. Whether the police announced themselves is disputed, with all but one of fourteen witnesses saying they did not hear police announce themselves, while officers claim they did. However, once Walker fired a single shot on officers, they opened fire into the apartment, killing Breonna Taylor. No drugs were found in the apartment, and Walker was arrested for armed assault of law enforcement. The only charge to come out of the grand jury is against a single officer, Brett Hankinson, for wanton endangerment because of the bullets he fired through the wall into a neighbor’s apartment.
All other circumstances of the case, from police’s unannounced entry, to falsified evidence in order to get a warrant, cease to matter once the police have an excuse to open fire. It is a feature of qualified immunity that protects police from any consequences of their violence, including death of innocent bystanders, as long as they can prove reasonable fear for their lives. Facts aside, much of the Black community is credulous at the lack of charges because they have been here before. From Philando Castille to Trayvon Martin, they have seen Black people guilty of nothing at all being killed, and their murderers walking free.
The charges, or lack thereof, came down from a Kentucky Grand Jury. By assigning the high profile case to a grand jury, Attorney General Daniel Cameron hoped to deflect blame and cast an air of objectivity round the ruling. However, to assume grand juries will be impartial and accurate is to ignore the function and history of grand juries.
The Political Tampering of Grand Juries
Grand juries, a feature unique to the American justice system, are made up of twenty-three jurors who have the power to investigate, subpoena witnesses, request evidence and bring charges. The purpose of a grand jury bringing charges rather than prosecutors, is to allow lay citizens weigh evidence of crimes and protect against unfounded prosecutions. It is clear why prosecutors might argue that a grand jury is protecting officers from the court of public opinion, and basing charges on facts of the case.
However, legal scholars have long questioned the effectiveness and purpose of grand juries. In a Cornell Law Review article, legal professor Andrew Leipold argues that grand juries fail to remove bias from the process, and are just as likely to protect guilty suspects as they are the unfairly accused. This shielding of the guilty comes from the power of jury nullification, where a jury can determine from the evidence that the accused is guilty, but by the circumstances of the crime decide they should not be held accountable. Leipold points out that “a refusal to indict may also be based on prejudice against the crime victim, bias in favor of the target, or other illegitimate reasons.” Here we see how jury nullification can be a tool to obstruct justice in high profile cases such as Breonna Taylor’s, and how grand juries have “the power to frustrate the presumptive will of the electorate to enforce the criminal law when the evidence shows that a crime has occurred.” The will of the electorate here being to prosecute police officers for killing Black people on the job, which is frustrated by the grand juries ability to bypass evidence and protect police.
That assessment also tracks with the history of grand jury trials, especially when it comes to police killings. The federal grand jury that was called to review charges against Chicago Police officers and State Attorney Ed Hanrahan for executed an illegal raid on Black Panther residence and executed Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton in 1969 also played the role of protected police officers in the face of overwhelming evidence. The police raid in that case hold eerie similarities with the one on Breonna Taylor’s residence, in that the raid was conducted on legally dubious grounds, officer’s allegedly “returned fire” by wantonly firing almost a hundred bullets in response to a single shot fired by the homeowners, and both Taylor and Hampton were murdered in their sleep. In the Hampton grand jury, jurors found that police acted irresponsibly, obstructed justice and offered false accounts, but refused to indict any officers for the death of Hampton and the other casualties of the Black Panthers. That case did involve conspiracy to assassinate Hampton and cover it up by the FBI, but in both cases the jurors justified police actions and malpractice because they were police, and their victims were armed and Black.
In practice, grand juries act more like extensions of Attorney General or District Attorneys. They hear only the evidence brought to them by the state, and so rely on state prosecutors to bring any and all evidence that would come up in a criminal trial. Their standard of evidence is also much lower than the typical jury. Rather than the standard of “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” grand juries can bring criminal charges based on “probably cause” to believe criminal acts. Essentially, grand juries can bring charges if the minimum standard of evidence suggests a crime may have occurred. In this way, prosecutors have tremendous leeway with grand juries, as they can present as much or as little evidence as they want in order to get certain charges.
Hearings Made Public
The public and activists in Kentucky have long been skeptical of Attorney General Cameron’s ability or willingness to prosecute the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death. In addition to the month’s long delay in seeking a grand jury trial, the Attorney General spoke at the Republican National Convention in support of President Trump’s pro-police, law and order messaging.
In fact, after the decision passed down from the grand jury, facts about the hearing came to light that suggest Attorney General Daniel Cameron never intended to bring serious charges against officers. Throughout protests Cameron promised to seek justice according to the law. After the Grand Jury charges, he told the public that he was bound by the law and grand jury that kept him from bringing criminal charges against officers for Taylor’s death. But since the charges were announced one grand juror has come forward, claiming that the attorney general never allowed them to consider any charges more serious than wanton endangerment.
In response to the claim and overwhelming pressure by the public, Daniel Cameron has released the hours of recording of grand jury proceedings. The traditional secrecy of grand jury proceedings is another way in which they are typically used to protect publicly elected prosecutors from accountability. Once that secrecy is removed, we see how Daniel Cameron, acting as special prosecutor, never put forward any serious charges against the officers and left out specific evidence of malpractice.
The selective presentation of evidence in this case likely played a key role in avoiding charges against officers. Where officers say they did knock an announce themselves, thirteen out of fourteen witnesses claimed they never heard officers announce themselves. However the newly released recordings of the grand jury testimony showed that Cameron didn’t introduce any of those witness testimonies. Grand jurors only heard the testimony of officers claiming they knocked and announced themselves repeatedly.
Lies and Cover-ups
Then there is also the multitudes of evidence of malpractice and procedural violations by officers, both leading up to and after the raid. Attorney General Cameron may have left these facts out, finding them irrelevant to the shooting. But if they were considered, they certainly suggest officers executed the raid illegally and made efforts afterwards to cover it up.
For instance, it seems Cameron did not present evidence from an internal investigation that showed officers lied in order to get a warrant for the raid. Officers told a judge they suspected Taylor of receiving suspicious packages at her address for Jamarcus Glover, who was not at the apartment at the time of the raid. However, a report for the LMPD public integrity unit shows that the postal inspectors told officers multiple times that Taylor had received no suspicious packages at her residence. The false pretense for the raid that found no drugs but resulted in Taylor’s death came from officers lying about the information they received from postal inspectors.
Then there is the suspicious activity of the raiders after the raid. Although there is no released body cam footage of the raid, another violation of department policy, body cam footage of the post-raid investigation has recently been released. It shows officer Brett Hankinson lingering around the crime scene, asking about shell casings and speaking to other officers. This is a direct violation of department policy, which requires officers involved in a shooting to be escorting away from the crime scene by LMPD officers and immediately questioned and offered counseling. At one point SWAT officers are heard telling Louisville PD to get Hankinson off the premises and telling the officer to “back out”.
All of this malpractice and suspicious activity by officers is on top of a criminally false and sparse police report that listed Taylor’s injuries as none, and the claims that police failed to provide Taylor with any medical attention after they shot her. These many issues with the investigation leading up to and following Taylor’s killing are indicative of procedural malpractice that is apparently common enough within the police department to be overlooked. As a special prosecutor for the case, Daniel Cameron had wide discrepancy to bring any of this evidence to the grand jury, and seek other charges such as perjury or obstruction of justice. Instead he presented a narrow view of how police say the executed the raid and protected themselves, and thereby justified a Black woman’s’ murder during a raid that never should have happened.
The fact is that the lies and rule violations shown by police at every step of the Taylor case are commonplace in police departments across the country. Officers regularly lie on police reports, only to be proven if there is video evidence or a thorough investigation such as in the case with George Floyd. The testimony of officers and lack of charges pursued by Attorney General Daniel Cameron show these practices are regularly covered up, and police are protected by the blue wall of silence that extends to the entire criminal justice system. In this case, and many others, the grand jury just acts as another extension of protection for corrupt law enforcement.
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