A judge gave grand jurors in the case permission to speak publicly, a rare move that immediately led one juror to speak out.
A Kentucky judge on Tuesday granted grand jurors in the Breonna Taylor case permission to speak publicly, a rare move that immediately led one juror to assert that prosecutors had not given the panel the opportunity to bring homicide charges in the case. Ms. Taylor,26, was killed in her apartment in March during a botched raid by Louisville police officers. After details of her death were made public, calls for justice helped propel protests over racism and police violence against Black people in the United States. One of the primary demands of protesters, to charge the officers who fired the shots that killed Ms. Taylor, was left unfulfilled when the grand jury’s only charges were three counts of wanton endangerment against a former detective, Brett Hankison, who shot into a neighboring apartment but did not fire any of the rounds that struck Ms. Taylor. Grand jurors are bound by secrecy rules that almost always keep their experiences unknown to the public, so the judge’s decision on Tuesday allowed them to shed rare light on the process. In a statement, an anonymous juror said the group “didn’t agree that certain actions were justified, nor did it decide the indictment should be the only charges in the Breonna Taylor case.” “The grand jury did not have homicide offenses explained to them,” the anonymous juror said. “The grand jury never heard about those laws. Self-defense or justification was never explained either. Questions were asked about additional charges and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn’t feel they could make them stick.
