Former Louisville Officers Indicted Over Breonna Taylor Warrant

Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment against two ex-Louisville officers, accusing them of falsifying a warrant that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor at her residence, ABC News reports. The Justice Department's superseding indictment comes weeks after a federal judge threw out major felony charges against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany. The new indictment includes additional allegations regarding how the former officers allegedly falsified the affidavit for the search warrant. It says they both knew the affidavit they used to obtain the warrant to search Taylor's home contained information that was false, misleading and out of date, omitted “material information" and knew it lacked the necessary probable cause. The indictment says if the judge who signed the warrant had known that “key statements in the affidavit were false and misleading,” she would not have approved it “and there would not have been a search at Taylor’s home.”

In 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced federal charges against Jaynes and Meany. Garland accused Jaynes and Meany of knowing they falsified part of the warrant and putting Taylor in a dangerous situation by sending armed officers to her apartment, even though they were not present at the raid. In March 2020, police carrying a drug warrant broke down Taylor’s door. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired a shot that struck an officer in the leg, believing an intruder was bursting in. Officers returned fire, killing Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, in her hallway. In August, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson declared that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend were the legal cause of her death, not a bad warrant. Simpson’s ruling effectively reduced the civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany, which carry a maximum sentence of life in prison, to misdemeanors. The judge declined to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes and another charge against Meany, who is accused of making false statements to investigators.