By Rich McKay
(Reuters) – A Kentucky grand juror said on Tuesday that the state attorney general did not present the jury a case for potential homicide charges in the killing of Breonna Taylor by police officers.
The juror released an anonymous statement through their attorney after Judge Annie O’Connell of Jefferson County Circuit Court ruled the individual could speak publicly about the secret grand jury proceeding because doing so was in the public interest.
The grand jury in September recommended no homicide charges against the three white officers in the case. One of the officers, Brett Hankison, was charged with three counts of wanton endangerment for firing into a neighbor’s apartment.
The outcome stoked days of protests over the use of excessive force by police against blacks and minorities. Taylor was black.
After the judge’s ruling, Louisville attorney Kevin Glogower, who represents the anonymous juror, on Tuesday released a statement from the individual who said Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron only presented the wanton endangerment charges against Hankison to the grand jury.
Taylor, an emergency medical technician, and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were asleep in her apartment on March 13, when police burst in, looking for contraband that focused on her ex-boyfriend.[L1N2H40KF]
Walker, who later said that he had thought the police were burglars, fired once, wounding one officer. Three police officers responded with 32 shots, six of which struck Taylor, who died at the scene.
Cameron, in a statement on Twitter late Tuesday, said he will not appeal the judge’s ruling and his office stands by its work. He said he had asked the grand jury for an indictment on charges that could be proven under Kentucky law.
“Indictments obtained in the absence of sufficient proof under the law do not stand up and are not fundamentally fair to anyone,” he said.
Accusing Cameron of misrepresenting facts to the grand jury, attorney Ben Crump, who represents Taylor’s family, said in a statement that an independent prosecutor should hold new hearings and “do the work A.G. Cameron failed to do and seek justice for Breonna Taylor.”
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
