This article contains news and liberal commentary.
Any pretense the cops who killed Breonna Taylor were cleared by a grand jury collapsed on Tuesday, October 20, 2020, after a judge allowed the jurors to speak out and “Anonymous Grand Juror No. 1” said Daniel Cameron, the AG, prevented them from indicting the cops for Taylor’s death. The juror also said they disagreed with Cameron’s conclusion that the shooting of Taylor was justified.
Cameron, a Republican, took over the case after local authorities dithered and refused to charge the cops. He fiercely resisted demands for transparency and the reason is now clear: The grand jury proceeding was a sham.
Cameron announced “a grand jury comprised of our peers and fellow citizens has made a decision,” and told the press “our team walked them through every homicide offense” and “the grand jury was ultimately the one that made the decision about indicting Detective Hankison for wanton endangerment.” Those were lies.
Cameron’s efforts to blame the unpopular decision on the jurors provoked a juror to hire a lawyer and seek court permission to speak out. A second juror later joined that effort.
The juror’s statement, released through an attorney, leaves no doubt that Cameron decided the killing was justified and wouldn’t let the grand jury consider the question. He even refused to answer their questions about self-defense. The juror said “the grand jury was not given the option of returning any charges other than wanton endangerment, or given any chance to weigh in on whether the three Louisville Metro Police officers acted in self-defense,” the Louisville Courier-Journal reported (read story here).
That violated Kentucky’s court rules of criminal procedure, which require prosecutors to draw up charges when requested by a grand jury (read about that here).
The city paid Taylor’s family a $12 million settlement, unusually large for a wrongful death involving police; such cases typically settle for $2-$5 million. In retrospect, that looks like an attempt to buy off Taylor’s family, to protect the cops from prosecution at enormous taxpayer expense.
It’s unclear what will happen next, but there have been calls for Kentucky’s Democratic governor to appoint a special prosecutor, and the attorney general’s misconduct would seem to make that more likely now.
Photo: Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron, who sabotaged the Breonna Taylor grand jury, is a supporter of Donald Trump, who has sided with cops in killings of black people and called Black Lives Matter “a terrorist organization.”
Only professional ethics require prosecutors not to charge someone they believe is innocent or the prosecution cannot prove its case. The grand jury is supposed to be a check on the prosecutors office. Showing that there is probable cause is frankly not a high hurdle. The problem may well be the juror has overstepped and there is simply no cause. Prosecutor does not have to run that past the grand jury though they gave them all the back ground. There are at least two rules that are in conflict here, and any reputable investigation is going to show the Prosecutor has discretion, and how he presents all this to the public is also within his or her discretion.
The jurors brining up all this are not supporting the fifth amendment which is why there is grand jury.
The juror spoke with permission of the court, so by definition, the juror did not overstep. The AG violated Kentucky law by usurping the grand jury’s authority to decide on charges, then lied about who made the decision, which isn’t exactly ethical.