Brett Hankison is found not guilty of wanton endangerment

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A Kentucky jury acquitted a former Louisville cop on all charges in the March 2020 drug raid that ended with Breonna Taylor’s death. 

Brett Hankison, 45, was found not guilty of three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots that ripped into a neighboring apartment on Thursday afternoon after the jury heard five days of witness testimony. 

The panel of eight men and four women delivered its verdict about three hours after it took the case following closing arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys. 

Hankison was tried for firing shots during the raid that went through a sliding-glass side door and a window of Taylor’s apartment and into a unit next door where a couple and small child lived. The raid left Taylor, 26, dead. 

The defense never contested the ballistics evidence presented to the court, but said he fired 10 bullets because he thought his fellow officers were ‘being executed.’ 

Had Hankison been found guilty, he faced one to five years in prison for each charge. He was the only police officer charged in the raid.

Hankison, who testified during his trial, broke down on the stand Wednesday as he outlined the events of the botched March 13, 2020, no-knock warrant raid, saying officers were told Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was alone in the apartment at the time of the raid as they were trying to bust him for a drug crime.

Hankison added that he was shocked to learn the 26-year-old woman was in the apartment after the gunfire had broken out.

‘He was supposed to be alone. There wasn’t supposed to be a girl inside,’ Hankison said as he started to cry.

‘Ms. Taylor’s family, she didn’t need to die that night’ he said, addressing her mother, Tamika Palmer, who was in court, before the prosecution cut him off.

He also testified that he saw a muzzle flash from Taylor’s darkened hallway after police burst through the door and thought officers were under heavy fire, so he quickly wheeled around a corner and sprayed 10 bullets, hoping to end the threat.

But in closing arguments Thursday, prosecutors cast doubt on what Hankison said he saw, challenging whether he could have looked through Taylor’s front door when police broke it open with a battering ram.

‘He was never in the doorway,’ Assistant Kentucky Attorney General Barbara Maines Whaley told the jury. Referring to Taylor she added, ‘His wanton conduct could have multiplied her death by three, easily.’  

Whaley also reminded the jury that none of the other officers who testified recalled Hankison being in the doorway before the gunfire began. All the shells from his weapon were found in the parking lot, among a row of cars.

She said while other officers were in the line of fire of a single shot fired by Taylor’s boyfriend, Hankison was ‘over here, shooting wildly through sliding-glass doors covered with vertical blinds and drapes.’ 

Defense attorney Stewart Mathews told the jury in his closing argument Thursday that Hankison thought he was doing the right thing and is not a criminal who belongs in prison.

‘He did what he thought he had to do in that instant. This all happened in such a short span,’ Mathews said.

During his testimony, the former narcotics detective admitted to firing through Taylor’s patio doors and bedroom window, but said he did so to save his fellow officers. Asked if he did anything wrong that night, he said ‘absolutely not.’ 

Hankison, as he broke down in tears Wednesday, told the courtroom he believed Walker was armed with an AR-15 rifle when he fired at police officers, thinking they were introducers. Walker was not armed with a rifle but instead fired at officers with a 9mm handgun.  

Hankison said that because of the poor visibility, Walker’s pose and the bright flash of the gun, he believed the officers were being shot at with an rifle. 

‘It appeared to me like they’re being executed with this rifle,’ Hankison said as he started crying recalling the moment Walker shot Sgt. Jon Mattingly in the leg. 

When asked how he responded, Hankison said he ran to the side of the house and returned fire through sliding glass doors.

‘I felt helpless that I had a handgun fighting against a rifle.’ 

Hankison also explained that officers are trained to get out tight spots during shootings, known as a ‘fatal funnel,’ in order to secure their safety and put them in a better position to remove a threat. 

He denied the possibility that he could have shot fellow officers when he was firing at the location of the gunfire he saw inside the apartment, adding that as the situation calmed, Walker stepped out of the apartment with his hands up. Hankison instructed him to come closer as he questioned the man about the police shooting. 

Hankison claimed Walker denied firing at police and instead blamed Taylor, saying she was the one to fire at the officers. 

‘That kind of shook me,’ Hankison said as he explained that the raid was suppose to take place when Walker was alone to bust him on drug selling charges. 

Hankison, who was fired by Louisville Metro Police for shooting blindly during the raid, added that the incident was the first time he ever fired his weapon while in the line of duty since joining the police department in 2003.    

A 20-year veteran K-9 officer assigned to handle a drug-sniffing dog during the raid, Hankison said he was positioned behind an officer with a battering ram, and could see the shadowy silhouette of a person ‘in a shooting stance’ with what looked like an AR-15 rifle as Taylor’s door swung open.

No long gun was found – only the handgun of Walker, who told Louisville Police investigators he thought intruders were breaking in. 

Investigators determined Walker fired the shot that passed through the leg of Sgt. John Mattingly, who along with officer Myles Cosgrove, returned fire. A total of 32 rounds were fired by police. Walker wasn’t hit.

Whaley said other officers next to Cosgrove and Mattingly chose not to fire, and there was no evidence of any shots from a long rifle at the scene.

‘Nobody got shot with an AR because there never was one,’ she said.  

The killing of Taylor loomed over the trial, though prosecutors insisted in opening statements that the case wasn’t about her death or the police decisions that led to the March 13, 2020, raid. Jurors were shown a single image of her body, barely discernible at the end of the hallway.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician who had been settling down for bed when officers broke through her door, was shot multiple times and died at the scene.

Kentucky Attorney General David Cameron’s prosecutors asked a grand jury to indict Hankison on charges of endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but declined to seek charges against any officers involved in Taylor’s death. Protesters who had walked the streets for months were outraged.

Taylor’s name, along with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery – black men who died in encounters with police and white pursuers – became rallying cries during racial justice protests seen around the world in 2020.

The jury of 10 men and five women was selected after several days of questioning from a pool expanded to about 250 people. Before deliberations, the jury was reduced to eight men and four women after three alternates were dismissed. The judge declined to release details about their race or ethnicity.