Breonna Taylor: Audio released from grand jury hearings

Rare release of officer testimony reveals details from police killing of black woman inside her Louisville apartment

Roughly 20 hours of audio from grand jury hearings related to the police killing of Breonna Taylor have been released, following a juror’s demand to make the tapes public after none of the officers who fired their weapons into her Louisville apartment were directly charged for her death.

One former officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with wanton endangerment for firing into a neighbouring apartment. Two other officers, who fired the fatal shots, have not been charged.

The tapes, crucially, do not include jury deliberations or presentations with charging recommendations.

Police testified that they repeatedly knocked and announced themselves while executing a “no knock" warrant but did not search the property after firing into the building. Kenneth Walker, Ms Taylor’s boyfriend, has previously argued that he did not hear police announce themselves, believing that the men were breaking into the home.

A neighbour had also initially told investigators that he did not hear the officers announce themselves before saying that he did two months later. None of the officers wore body-mounted cameras that night.

There also was no clear plan for how to execute the raid when the seven officers converged on the scene, an officer testified, according to the tapes.

Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron agreed to the audio’s release but requested a delay this week to redact personal identifying information. The tapes were released by a Kentucky court on Friday after the court agreed that the files – typically kept away from the public – should be publicly available, giving Mr Cameron two days to prepare them.The files consist of 14 audio clips from hearings held on 21-23 September. No transcripts have been made available.

A motion from an anonymous juror had accused the attorney general of using the grand jury’s secrecy as a “shield” to mislead the public following indictments against Mr Hankison, who has pleaded not guilty.

The attorney general told local news outlet WDRB this week that he said the grand jury was never presented with murder charges.

He said it was "not appropriate" to recommend charges officers Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove.

"If they wanted to make an assessment about different charges, they could have done that," he said. "But our recommendation was that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their acts and their conduct."

Ms Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician, was at home in bed with her boyfriend on 13 March when officers used a ram to break the door to her apartment shortly after midnight.

All officers fired their weapons, the attorney general revealed, but officers Mattingly and Cosgrove were “justified in their return of deadly fire" because Mr Walker had fired first, Mr Cameron said as he announced charges last month.

That justification “bars” the office from pursuing criminal charges against them, he said.

The juror’s motion was filed just days after the indictment was announced “so that the truth may prevail,” the motion argued.

It also asks that the jurors be allowed to speak about the case as a matter of public interest.

“It is patently unjust for the jurors to be subjected to the level of accountability the attorney general campaigned for simply because they received a summons to serve their community at a time that adherence to the summons forced them to be involved in a matter that has caused such a palpable divide between sides,” the motion argued.

In a statement on Monday announcing that his office would comply with the request to release the documents, AG Cameron reiterated that “the grand jury is meant to be a secretive body" and that “it’s apparent that the public interest in this case isn’t going to allow that to happen.”

Following the audio’s release, AG Cameron said his office’s “presentation followed the facts and the evidence, and the grand jury was given a complete picture of the events surrounding Ms Taylor’s death.” 

“While it is unusual for a court to require the release of the recordings from grand jury proceedings, we complied with the order, rather than challenging it, so that the full truth can be heard,” he said.