Ex-officer Brett Hankison violated Breonna Taylor’s civil rights in deadly raid, jury finds

A jury on Friday found a former Kentucky police officer guilty of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights in a botched raid that led to her deathNBC affiliate WAVE of Louisville reported.

A jury earlier Friday found Brett Hankison not guilty of a second count that accused him of violating Taylor’s neighbor’s civil rights.

Taylor was killed during March 13, 2020 raid.

Prosecutors accused Hankison of shooting blindly into Taylor’s apartment, though he was not charged with fatally shooting her. Some of his shots flew into a neighboring apartment, but none hit anyone.

Hankison, 48, was being retried by the Justice Department after a first jury deadlocked on both counts, which ends in a void trialin November 2023.

In 2020, police were at Taylor’s apartment looking for evidence in a narcotics investigation involving her ex-boyfriend, who was living at a different address at the time.

During the raidofficers opened fire, killing Taylor, 26, who was Black, according to her loved fired a single shot at the front door, thinking an intruder had entered.

Hankison, a former police officer in Louisville, Kentucky, testified that he had to act quickly because he believed his fellow officers were being executed.

Hankison faced three lawsuits in two years. Before his federal trials, he was charged with endangering Taylor’s neighbors, but was found not guilty of endangerment no doubt taxes in 2022.

His latest trial in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky lasted about two weeks.

On Friday, a jury in that case found Hankison not guilty of trespassing before returning to deliberate on the charge against Taylor herself.

The jury later returned with a guilty verdict on the Taylor count, WAVE reported around 9:30 p.m.