Third grand juror in Breonna Taylor case: Prosecutors wanted to give officers ‘slap on the wrist’

A third grand juror in the Breonna Taylor shooting case is criticizing the process, saying that prosecutors wanted to give the officers involved a “slap on the wrist.”

A woman who sat on the grand jury in September told The Associated Press that she thought the investigation into the March police shooting in Louisville, Ky., that left Taylor dead was incomplete.

She said the prosecutors, led by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, wanted to “close” up the case. 

The AP’s interview with the juror, who was not identified by name, was published on Monday.

The juror is the third to publicly criticize the grand jury proceedings. Other jurors have criticized that they were not given the option to charge the officers who shot Taylor after prosecutors concluded their use of force was lawful.

In September, Cameron announced that the grand jury had only charged officer Brett Hankison with three counts of wanton endangerment after he allegedly shot into a neighbor’s apartment. The charges against Hankison were not related to the shots that hit and killed Taylor.

The juror who spoke with the AP said when the grand jury ended with the three charges for Hankison, she felt herself saying “no, that’s not the end of it.”

“I felt like there should’ve been more charges,” she told the AP. 

The woman said she didn’t know why the prosecution didn’t consider endangerment charges against the other two officers involved, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, who shot Taylor, according to ballistic reports.

“All of them went in blindly. You really couldn’t see into that lady’s apartment, as they explained to us, there was just a TV on,” she said.

On March 13, officers acted on a narcotics warrant on Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. Her boyfriend Kenneth Walker thought intruders were entering the apartment and shot at Mattingly, and then the officers opened fire, killing Taylor. No drugs or cash were found at her home after the confrontation.  

Taylor’s death and the grand jury charges sparked protests across the country over police brutality and racial injustice. The shooting came two months before George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody, which led to national and international demonstrations. 

Grand jury proceedings are usually kept secret, but a male juror won a court battle to speak out on the proceedings. Another male juror addressed the public shortly after.  

The woman said she and the other jurors were upset by Cameron’s statements that the grand jurors “agreed” no other charges were justified and that prosecutors “walked them through every homicide offense,” which all three have said didn’t happen. 

“I felt like he was trying to throw the blame on somebody else, that he felt like we as jurors, we weren’t going to [speak] out,” she said. “He made it feel like it was all our fault, and it wasn’t.”

She said she wanted to speak out because she wanted Taylor’s mother Tamika Palmer to know “we didn’t have anything to do with” the lack of charges against the officers who shot her daughter. 

“I didn’t feel that the family was getting justice,” she said.

Cameron’s office referred to an Oct. 20 statement from the attorney general, in which he said he disagreed with the judge’s decision to allow the grand juror to speak about the proceedings.

“As Special Prosecutor, it was my decision to ask for an indictment on charges that could be proven under Kentucky law,” he wrote. “Indictments obtained in the absence of sufficient proof under the law do not stand up and are not fundamentally fair to anyone. I remain confident in our presentation to the Grand Jury, and I stand by the team of lawyers and investigators who dedicated months of work to this case.”

The office declined to comment beyond the previous statement. 

Kevin Glogower, an attorney for the three grand jurors, told the AP that Cameron seemed to believe the jurors wouldn’t address the case publicly. 

“The expectation that day was nobody would ever contradict what [Cameron] was saying,” Glogower said. “He was hiding behind the secrecy rule and the history of the grand jury.”

Updated at 5:09 p.m.