Former Louisville officer to plead guilty to Breonna Taylor cover-up

[August 23, 2022]  By Brendan O'Brien

(Reuters) - A former Louisville detective is expected to plead guilty on Tuesday to helping to falsify a search warrant that led to the killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose death fueled a wave of protests over police violence against people of color.

The former officer, Kelly Goodlett, is scheduled to appear at 1 p.m. (1700 GMT) before U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings in a federal court in Louisville, Kentucky. She is expected to be arraigned and to enter her plea.

Goodlett was one of four former Louisville Metropolitan Police Department detectives charged by the U.S. Justice Department on Aug. 4 for their involvement in the 2020 raid that killed Taylor in her home.

The charges represented the Justice Department's latest attempt to crack down on abuses and racial disparities in policing, following a series of high-profile police killings of Black Americans across the country.

The killing of Taylor, along with other 2020 killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, among others, sparked outrage and galvanized protests that peaked in intensity during that summer.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was asleep with her boyfriend on March 13, 2020 when police conducted a no-knock raid and burst into her apartment. Taylor's boyfriend fired once at what he said he believed were intruders. Three police officers responded with 32 shots, six of which struck Taylor, killing her.

Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, stands next to a painting of her daughter at a gathering to mark two years since police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor when they entered her home, at Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S., March 13, 2022. REUTERS/Jon Cherry

Goodlett and a fellow former officer, Joshua Jaynes, met days after the shooting in a garage where they agreed on a false story to cover for the false evidence they had submitted to justify the botched raid, prosecutors say.

Goodlett was charged with conspiring with another detective to falsify the warrant that led to the raid and then cover up the falsification.

Federal prosecutors also charged Jaynes and current Sergeant Kyle Meany with civil rights violations and obstruction of justice for using false information to obtain the search warrant. A fourth officer, former Detective Brett Hankison, was charged with civil rights violations for allegedly using excessive force.

In March, a jury acquitted Hankison on a charge of wanton endangerment. A grand jury earlier cleared the other two white officers who shot Taylor but charged Hankison for endangering neighbors in the adjacent apartment.

A grand juror on the case later said Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron only presented the wanton endangerment charges against Hankison to the grand jury.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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