The Department of Justice wants a federal judge to drop the remaining charges against two police officers who were involved in the fatal raid that left Breonna Taylor dead in 2020, The New York Times reports. Harmeet K. Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, signed the motion, filed in the Western District of Kentucky on Friday asking for leniency for former Sgt. Kyle Meany and former Detective Joshua Jaynes, neither of whom were present at the raid. CBS News reports that the dismissal request was “with prejudice,” which means it could be revived later.
Meany was charged with making false statements during an FBI interview. Jaynes had been charged with conspiracy and falsifying records. The DOJ previously alleged that the men deprived Taylor of her right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizure, according to CBS News.
Dhillon’s motion said that the DOJ believes the charges should be dropped “in the interest of justice” as it now views the charges as “weaponized federal outreach” by the Biden administration, per The New York Times. Merrick Garland, who was attorney general in the Biden years, had charged Meany and Jaynes along with other members of the Louisville Metro Police for setting up the course of action that led to Taylor’s death, as part of a ham-fisted search for a drug dealer.
“Kyle is incredibly grateful for today’s filing,” Meany’s lawyer, Michael Denbow, tells Rolling Stone. “He is looking forward to putting this matter behind him and moving forward with his life.”
An attorney for Jaynes did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, wrote on Facebook that she felt “extreme disappointment in Trump and the Department of Justice,” according to CBS News.
Kristen Clarke, who held Dhillon’s office at the DOJ under the Biden administration, was disappointed by the motion. “This move is indefensible and unsupported by the facts and the law,” she told The New York Times. “It is especially callous that this comes as communities just marked the six-year anniversary of her tragic murder.”
“We are sickened,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “Once again, Trump’s Justice Department is trampling over our civil rights and leaving impacted communities out in the cold. We will always lift up Breonna Taylor’s legacy and will never stop fighting for justice and accountability.”
On March 13, 2020, plainclothes officers broke down the door to Taylor’s apartment without knocking. She was watching TV. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, believed a home invasion was underway and fired once at the cops with his own legally owned gun. The police fired back, killing Taylor. She was 26. Her death, along with those of other unarmed Black people, sparked nationwide protests in 2020.
The DOJ at the time of the killing alleged that Jaynes had tried to cover up a false warrant affidavit, as CBS News notes. Kelly Goodlett, who worked with Meany and Jaynes, pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges and for lying to investigators in 2022, per the Times. She has not yet been sentenced.
Last August, a federal judge, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson, in Kentucky ruled that neither Jaynes nor Meany were responsible for Taylor’s death, instead placing blame on Walker for firing on the cops (even though he didn’t know they were police). “While the indictment alleges that Jaynes and Meany set off a series of events that ended in Taylor’s death, it also alleges that Walker disrupted those events when he decided to open fire,” Simpson said. But he did say he was “troubled” by the possibility that the officers faked a warrant.
Despite this ruling, several lesser misdemeanor charges remained, including civil rights violations, according to the Times, and that the pair falsified documents and attempted to hide what they did.
