A member of the grand jury in the Breonna Taylor shooting death case filed a motion that seeks the release of the transcript from the proceedings and allows other jurors to speak openly about the testimony.
A lawyer for the juror, who is not named in a Monday court filing, said that he or she wants more details opened up to the public so that “the truth may prevail.”
“The full story and absolute truth of how this matter was handled from beginning to end is now an issue of great public interest and has become a large part of the discussion of public trust throughout the country,” the petition filed in Jefferson County reads, according to the Courier-Journal.
The filing alleges that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron used the jurors “as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for those decisions.”
Also on Monday, former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment after being indicted by the panel on Wednesday. The grand jury did not indict Louisville Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, the other two officers who fired their guns in Taylor’s apartment during her March 13 death. None of the officers faced charges related to Taylor’s death.
In announcing the indictment on Wednesday, Cameron did not reveal the full scope of charges the grand jury considered, nor did he say which officers were being considered for charges. Kentucky’s attorney general did say that the state’s investigation into the March raid that killed Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman, found that Mattingly and Cosgrove were the ones who fired the bullets that killed her.
“While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law, these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed, and the grand jury agreed, that Mattingly and Cosgrove are justified in the return of deadly fire, after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker,” Cameron said at the press conference.
Protests erupted after the single indictment in Taylor’s case, which was not directly related to her death. The wanton endangerment charges stem from the assertion from prosecutors that Hankison endangered Taylor’s neighbors by firing bullets into a neighboring apartment. For months, Taylor’s shooting has become a rallying cry during protests against racial inequality and police brutality in the United States.
The grand juror’s motion asserts that Cameron put decisions “at the feet of the grand jury while failing to answer specific questions regarding the charges presented” and that he “attempted to make it very clear that the grand jury alone made the decision on who and what to charge based solely on the evidence presented to them.”
“The only exception to the responsibility he foisted upon the grand jurors was in his statement that they ‘agreed’ with his team’s investigation that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in their actions,” the grand juror’s lawyer wrote.
Hankison was released from custody after posting bond some 30 minutes after he was booked on the three counts. If convicted, Hankison, who was fired from the police department, could face up to five years in prison for each count.
