Former Louisville police detective Brett Hankison to be retried in Breonna Taylor case
By Sarah Dewberry, CNN
(CNN) — Brett Hankison, the former Louisville Metro Police Department detective federally charged in connection with Breonna Taylor’s 2020 death, will face a new civil rights trial after a jury last month reported it was deadlocked in his initial trial.
The judge declared a mistrial in November after jurors told the court they could not reach a unanimous verdict. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors informed Hankison during a status hearing that they plan to refile charges, his attorneys, Stew Mathews and Ibrahim Farag, confirmed to CNN.
Farag added he and his client “have no comments at the moment.”
Mathews and Farag told CNN a status hearing would be held on January 24 and a trial date has been tentatively set for October 14. Hankison’s other attorney, Jack Byrd, filed a new motion of acquittal, according to the court docket.
Hankison will face the same two civil rights violation charges, Farag said, which were for deprivation of rights under color of law: one for Taylor and the other for three of her neighbors.
Hankison could face up to life in prison if found guilty. According to the Department of Justice, “willfully violating someone’s rights carries a statutory maximum sentence of life in prison when the violation leads to death,” CNN previously reported.
A Kentucky district judge declared a mistrial on November 17 after jurors deadlocked on both counts in Hankison’s previous civil rights trial.
The charges stem from a botched police raid on March 13, 2020, where Taylor, 26, was shot multiple times by police inside her home while they attempted to serve a no-knock warrant.
CNN has reached out to Taylor’s family attorney, Lonita Baker, for comment.
Hankison fired multiple shots into Taylor’s home, some of which went through a wall shared with her neighbor, according to the federal indictment.
Hankison’s lawyers argued during his initial trial that the former officer thought someone in the window was holding a gun and shot at them to protect his fellow colleagues, CNN affiliate WAVE reported.
Hankison, who was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department in June 2020, was found not guilty last March on all three counts of felony wanton endangerment stemming from the deadly police raid.
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