I've been thinking about this case a little bit yesterday and today, and I suspect that the GJ determination not to indict the individual police officers serves as a de facto indictment of the no-knock warrant process and the Louisville police department procedures. Clearly the public in general is unhappy that an innocent woman was killed under the facts presented . . . and if the individuals aren't culpable for her death then accountability has to lie elsewhere for it. As I understand it, no-knock warrants won't be used by Louisville police any more, and other police procedures are subject to changes as agreed in the settlement with the Taylor family . . .Yes .. and no.
I can't "prove" if it is true, but I was told by a very VERY liberal friend in the legal community here that the AG spent 3 days presenting evidence to the grand jury. They can maybe keep what was SAID in the room secret, but they can't hide the room, or the cars driven to/from the building, or the people who enter and leave. Thus, I tend to believe the AG did exactly what he said he did - presented all the evidence they had received/discovered about the event, and informed them of the statutory elements of the potential crimes, and let the grand jury decide who and what to charge.
Plus, Cameron also knows that someday the whole freaking transcript will probably get leaked - or even legally published through other means.
Plus, he has a DUTY not to lie in his job as AG, and has no real interest in doing so. If he wrongly "protects" 2 cops who later are shown to have NOT fired in self-defense, his career (political and otherwise) is over.
But mostly, the boyfriend - as noted above - had already been talking out of school and publicly admitted firing at the cops first. For some reason (money? sympathy? to get charges dismissed?) he and his lawyer elected to play the "I had a permit to carry my gun" card right out of the box, even though under Kentucky law, he no longer needed a permit - no one does. (That was one of those pesky legislative amendments I mentioned above.)
So it is no surprise that every piece of actual known evidence supports exactly what the AG said.
I understand that people WANT somebody to "pay" (be held "responsible") for Taylor's death. But under THE LAW, that appears to not be appropriate or possible. And if we are "a nation of laws, not men" - all of us entitled to equal protection and due process - then we have to live with the fact that the judge isn't gonna look at the 27 8-by-10 color glossy photographs of the crime, with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence. Every single long-time, prominent local criminal defense lawyer, white and African American and otherwise, left and right and otherwise, have all said the same thing - "if he shot first, absent evidence they lied to get the warrant, the cops can't be charged. If we want our clients treated fairly under the law, we have to treat the cops the same." And these are lawyers who probably PUKED at the thought of defending the police here. But they believe in THE LAW.
As do I.
. . . it's a loss all the way around . . . nobody has "won" . . . but given the facts of what happened, and short of a finding that individual police officers were culpable, it's hard to see how things could have turned out much better . . . unless the Louisville Police Department decides to take on a "learning organization" approach to law enforcement there and develops a virtuous cycle of how to improve continuously.
I hope and pray that when some new hotshot police chief comes in and wants to undo all of what has been hard-earned because of this circumstance, the mere mention of "Breonna Taylor" will dissuade the PTB and the voting public from walking that road again . . . .
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