On the night Breonna Taylor died, Detective Brett Hankison stood outside her apartment and blindly fired 10 rounds through a bedroom window and a sliding glass door, both of which were covered by blinds and curtains. Based on that reckless conduct, a federal jury in Louisville, Kentucky, last week convicted Hankison of willfully violating Taylor's Fourth Amendment rights under color of law.
Hankison did not kill Taylor, and his baffling behavior was just one of many things that went wrong before, during, and after the deadly March 2020 raid, including a misleading and legally deficient search warrant affidavit that tied the 26-year-old EMT to drug dealing based on little more than guilt by association. But Hankison's case vividly illustrates the difficulty of holding police officers criminally liable for abusing their powers.
