It wasn’t a movie ending, but the “Kentucky judge who signed off on the police raid that resulted in the death of Breonna Taylor lost her reelection bid on Tuesday,” a Louisville newspaper reported (read story here).
Judge Mary Shaw “was the only incumbent circuit judge to draw a challenger, and lawyers outside the race said she was vulnerable because of her role in the Taylor case,” the Courier-Journal said.
After losing a close election, Shaw said she was disappointed, and blamed “false narratives” about the “no knock” search warrant authorizing the police raid that resulted in Taylor’s death in her apartment.
Two police detectives are awaiting trial on charges they obtained the warrant on false pretenses, and Judge Shaw was accused of “rubber stamping” the warrant request. Read more details about the deadly search warrant here.
Unlike the movie version of Robert Penn Warren’s novel “All the King’s Men,” a fictionalized story about Louisiana politician Huey Long, the judge in this real-life case of police corruption wasn’t accused of bribery or corruption. Rather, Taylor’s mother argued Judge Shaw and the cops didn’t “care about the job that they were doing” (see story here).
In the 2006 movie version, Judge Irwin’s character (played by Anthony Hopkins) said, “There’s a price to be paid” before shooting himself. In Judge Shaw’s case, the voters exacted a price for what many saw as a careless exercise of judicial duties.