Former Louisville detective Kelly Goodlett pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy on Tuesday for her role in the infamous police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in her home, offering the first criminal conviction in a case that ignited nationwide protests over racial justice and police brutality.
Goodlett, one of four white former police officers charged in the case, admitted to helping another officer to falsify a search warrant of Taylor’s apartment and writing a false report to cover that up. She faces up to five years in prison.
She is the first of that group to be convicted in a case that, along with the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparked racial justice street demonstrations across the US in 2020.
That year, in March, as part of a larger investigation into alleged drug trafficking in their city’s West End, Louisville police conducted a no-knock raid on Taylor’s apartment, the sole property that wasn’t located in the area of interest. Officers suspected that Taylor’s ex-boyfriend – a convicted drug trafficker – was hiding cash or drugs at her home.
Taylor, 26, was in the apartment when officers entered, and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker – who feared intruders were robbing the place – fired a single shot from his handgun. In response, police fired more than 30 shots into the apartment, killing Taylor.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Goodlett, who worked for Louisville police for eight years, “knowingly and willfully conspired and agreed” to cover up a false search warrant affidavit with Detective Joshua Jaynes that led to the deadly raid. She also allegedly coordinated a “false cover story” with Jaynes in an attempt to escape responsibility for their roles in preparing the warrant affidavit that contained false information, according to a federal indictment.
Prosecutors say that Goodlett, who was not involved in the raid, knew a claim made by Jaynes in the search warrant – that he “verified” from a US postal inspector Taylor’s ex-boyfriend received packages at her address – was false. She also added a “misleading” claim to the warrant application that suggested Taylor’s ex-boyfriend registered her address as his “current home address”.
After a postal inspector debunked the warrant’s claim, Goodlett later met with Jaynes at Jaynes’s garage where they agreed to say they heard the claim from a police sergeant.
Jaynes has pleaded not guilty to his alleged role in the case.
Goodlett, who resigned from Louisville police after she was charged, was the only one of the four who was not indicted by federal grand jurors on 4 August but instead charged through what is known as a bill of information. That, along with this guilty plea, offers a strong sign that she has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in other cases.
Before the federal charges, only officer Brent Hankison had been charged by Kentucky’s state authorities, in his case with wanton endangerment for blindly firing shots into Taylor’s apartment. He was later acquitted of those charges but faces separate ones in the federal case that ensnared Goodlett.
The other three officers charged in the case – Jaynes, Hankison and Kyle Meany – are expected to go to trial in October. All of them have since been fired from their jobs at the Louisville police department.
Even as the conviction against Goodlett moves ahead, police officers who have engaged in charges of civil rights violations over use of force practices continue to evade prosecution.
Prosecutors on Tuesday declined to pursue charges against Atlanta police department officers Devin Brosnan and Garrett Rolfe in the shooting of Rayshard Brooks, who was shot and killed by officers after a confrontation outside of a Wendy’s in 2020.
