(Washington) A former American police officer was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Monday for his involvement in the death of a young black woman, Breonna Taylor, icon of the Black Lives Matter movement, despite the key recommendations of the Department of Justice.
The Directive Department of the Administration of Donald Trump had requested last week a prison day, already purged, against this white police officer, Brett Hankison, found guilty in November 2024 by a jury in Louisville to have raped the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, 26.
A requisition qualified immediately by the lawyers of the victim of “insult to the life of Breonna Taylor and flagrant betrayal of the jury decision” and that judge Rebecca Grady Jennings estimated unconvincing, during the pronouncement of the sentence on Monday, report the local media.
The magistrate accompanied the prison sentence of three years of parole.
“Mr. Hankison is the only police officer condemned in connection with the police descent during which Breonna was killed,” said one of the victim’s lawyers, Ben Crump, in order in the affairs of violence against minorities.
Photo Timothy D. Easley, Associated Press Archives
The former Polier Brett Hankison in March 2022
The Department of Justice recommended a sentence of a day in prison, already purged by this policeman during his arrest at the start of the procedure, accompanied by three years of parole.
Unusual fact, this recommendation was signed, not for the prosecutor responsible for the file, but for the assistant justice secretary, in charge of civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative lawyer appointed by Donald Trump in this strategic position.
“The government respects the jury’s verdict which almost certainly guarantees that the accused Hankison will never serve in the police again and also probably that he will never legally hold a firearm again,” she said.
But a heavier penalty would be “unfair”, she said, stressing that “if he has made a good fire ten times towards the apartment of Mme Taylor, he injured neither her nor anyone that day. ”
“Recommend only a day in prison sends the without ambiguity message that white police can violate the civil rights of black Americans with almost total impunity,” replied the victim’s lawyers.
Breonna Taylor had been killed by at least eight bullets by the police, in her apartment, in Louisville, in Kentucky, on March 13, 2020.
The police burst into it in the middle of the night in the context of an investigation for drug trafficking targeting his former boyfriend.
His new companion had taken them for burglars and had shot with a legally detained weapon. The police had retaliated by pulling more than thirty shots, fatally touching Breonna Taylor.
