Judge delays release of Breonna Taylor grand jury tapes as Kentucky AG admits he recommended no charges against cops
A Kentucky judge delayed until Friday the release of the audio recordings from the secret grand jury proceedings in the case of Breonna Taylor’s fatal shooting by Louisville police.
The announcement followed a request by Attorney General Daniel Cameron for more time to redact the tapes — as well as his admission in a Tuesday night interview that he specifically told panelists the cops who shot Taylor were “justified” and should face no charges at all.
Recordings of the proceedings were originally due to be released Wednesday, but Cameron asked for a week’s delay to redact private witness information.
The court ultimately agreed to the shorter delay, giving Cameron’s office until noon on Friday, according to spokeswoman for Cameron’s office.
In an interview with WDRB Tuesday night, Cameron clarified that the only charges he recommended to a grand jury last week were against former Louisville Metro Police officer Brett Hankison for the shots fired into a white neighbor’s adjacent residence.
Cameron said he explicitly told the jurors that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Det. Myles Cosgrove were covered by Kentucky law when they broke down a door and shot six and 10 bullets respectively inside Taylor’s apartment, killing the unarmed, 26-year-old Black emergency room technician.
“Our recommendation was that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their acts and their conduct,” Cameron said.
“Ultimately our judgment is that the charge that we could prove at trial beyond a reasonable doubt was for wanton endangerment against Mr. Hankison,” he said.
“They’re an independent body. If they wanted to make an assessment about different charges, they could have done that,” he said of the grand jury.
It was last Wednesday that the grand jury indicted Hankison for the wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors and returned no charges at all against Mattingly and Cosgrove.
Cameron previously said his investigation found that Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, 27, fired the first shot after Sgt. Mattingly first entered the couple’s apartment after midnight on March 13.
Lawyers for Taylor’s family have said the plainclothes police officers failed to properly identify themselves, so the startled couple thought they were the victims of a home invasion.
“Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker said in his 911 call reporting what he thought was a violent break-in.
Cameron said the grand jury heard testimony from one witness who’s given conflicting accounts of what happened that night but at one point claimed to have heard police announcing themselves.
Several neighbors provided witness accounts to Taylor’s family claiming the police did not properly identify themselves during the service of the no-knock warrant that led to Taylor’s death.
Cameron issued his statement after an unidentified grand juror filed a court motion Monday asking a judge to release the grand jury testimony and allow the panel members to speak publicly.
“The full story and absolute truth of how this matter was handled from beginning to end is now an issue of great public interest and has become a large part of the discussion of public trust throughout the country,” the attorney for the juror wrote in the court filing obtained by the Louisville Courier Journal.
“The attorney general publicly made many statements that referenced what the grand jury heard and decisions that were made based on what certain witnesses said,” the motion filed Monday afternoon by the anonymous grand juror reportedly said.
“He further laid those decisions at the feet of the grand jury while failing to answer specific questions regarding the charges presented,” the motion said.
With News Wire Services
