A federal judge cleared Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany of felony charges last week. The two former Louisville police officers were accused of falsifying a warrant that led to a 2020 police raid resulting in Breonna Taylor’s death.
U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were the legal cause of her death. Walker fired a gun at the police executing the drug warrant, officers Brett Hankison, Jon Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove, when they entered Taylor’s apartment in March 2020. Police fatally struck Taylor when returning Walker’s fire, sparking nationwide protests accusing the cops of police brutality.
Walker’s “conduct became the proximate, or legal, cause of Taylor’s death,” Simpson ruled, adding that “while the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that [Walker] disrupted those events when he decided to open fire.”
Although Jaynes and Meany were not present for the raid itself, they helped prepare and approve the warrant. The judge found “no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death,” and the Department of Justice will now review the case and “assess next steps,” the agency told the Associated Press.
“Obviously we are devastated at the moment by the Judge’s ruling with which we disagree and are just trying to process everything,” Taylor’s family said in a statement. “The Assistant United States Attorneys on the case have informed us of their plan to appeal. The only thing we can do at this point is continue to be patient. The appeal will extend the life of the case but as we’ve always maintained, we will continue to fight until we get full justice for Breonna Taylor.”
Jaynes and Meany now face misdemeanor charges instead of felonies. Simpson also declined to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes and a charge against Meany for allegedly lying to the FBI. Two other officers were federally charged in 2022 in connection to the Taylor raid: Kelly Goodlett, a detective who pleaded guilty to lying on the warrant, and Hankison, who was charged with endangering the lives of Taylor and her neighbors after he shot into Taylor’s apartment during the raid.