The Breonna Taylor indictments
Andrew Branca covers the federal indictments of the previously-acquitted police officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor. As with everything I’ve seen from Branca, it is very comprehensive and very clear.
This is another example of the federal government pursuing in Ahab-like fashion police officers who unfortunately caused an accidental death, and charging them with capital offenses (for example, “deprivation of civil rights under color of law under circumstances in which death results”) with very poor evidence to support their guilt of that particular charge.
The laws against double jeopardy give the defendants no protection, because of the distinction between state and federal charges. I would like to see SCOTUS take up the question of whether this sort of federal charge after state acquittal is actually double jeopardy or not. But until that happens, AGs such as Merrick Garland will be bringing charges like this against defendants who have been acquitted by a state, particularly if they are white and the death was of a black person. These charges are political, in my opinion, and the left must think they serve their cause.
Please read the whole thing.
As you read it, please also consider that these extremely serious charges are for a killing that occurred when officers had already been fired upon and one was very gravely wounded, and the police return of fire was through a closed door. They could not see what was behind it. It is interesting to apply that to the Uvalde situation and imagine what would have happened had the police fired blindly through those classroom doors (there was a small window, but smoke and darkness made it impossible to see inside) and been responsible for the death of a student or teacher behind those doors. That’s not a full explanation for what happened there that day on the part of police, but I assume it may have been operating at some level.
At any rate, I cannot imagine that anyone would ever want to be a police officer anymore.
The Taylor case has other issues, including whether police actually announced themselves and whether no-knock warrants are a good or bad thing generally. But this post is about the federal charging itself.
[NOTE: By the way, I haven’t forgotten that promised follow-up post or posts analyzing some of the Uvalde testimony in depth. It’s just a big mouthful, and other concerns and events have intervened. I am still planning to tackle it in the not-too-distant future.]
The bringing of federal charges when a case has already been adjudicated at the state level seems to be the most blatant attempt imaginable to subvert the intent behind “double jeopardy”, and it would appear to be applied primarily in cases which have already been “racialized” by the government and in the media, exacerbating the steady erosion of our legal system into one of “anarcho-tyranny”, in which certain “protected groups” will be treated very differently indeed from disfavored groups. No task could be more important (albeit perhaps impossible) than to attempt to reverse this.
It’s a BLM payoff, Taylor case is to many the best case of police killing unarmed Black men or in this case woman they claim to have. To have that dismissed has probably rubbed them badly.
This will still bankrupt the officers for lawyers as the government can end millions.
I don’t get how Federal and States can both go after anyone and it’s not double jeopardy. It’s all for political reasons as it’s not a Federal case or crime.
If anybody hasn’t done this you should go watch “Nate the Lawyer” coverage of this case. The media has just produced so many lies about this case that they should be sued. I mean how many people know that even though it was written up as a no-knock it was actually served as knock and announce? Hell, I thought she was killed sleeping in bed which isn’t true either. I’d say Garland should be fired for unethical behavior but we all know the White House is cool with this.
The racialization of “justice” does no one any good.
FWIW Here’s Nate’s Coverage of the Hankison verdict.
This is the same thing that happened to the Rodney King cops. They saved his life by taking him down with no serious injury as Melanie Singer, the CHP cop, was ready to shoot him. They were acquitted by a local jury then the Clinton DOJ filed federal charges in down town LA. The selected jury convicted them. Melanie Singer testified against them twice, then retired on “Stress Disability.”
I sent money to Stacy Koons family while he was in prison. It was a gross injustice. Something Democrats seem to enjoy.
Three of the four currently indicted were not at the scene: they obtained the search warrant used to justify the raid. Clearly they made a bad mistake, since neither drugs nor dealer was in fact present, and someone died as a result. Whether the mistake was criminal will be up to a jury. If police officers in the future think very carefully about every word in affidavits asserting probable cause, that suits me just fine.
y81:
Clearly they made a bad mistake because they didn’t anticipate the Briona’s current squeeze would decide to fire at the LEOs serving the warrant. Yeah every LEO should be very careful about not being able to read minds and fortell the future. Suits you fine? Welcome to Soros DA land gone federal. Enjoy your stay, Property is theft ……. you will be made to care.
Nate covered the “They didn’t find drugs” talking point. Because people were shot(Breonna and a police office) the apartment was never searched. It’s unknown if there were drugs there or not. FWIW in one of his videos he goes over the evidence to get the warrant including a prison phone call with her boyfriend discussing I believe drug money. Admittedly I’m no fan of the drug war but it’s not like they didn’t have evidence that there was drug dealing.
Yet the DOJ (laughing ironically) is not the least bit interested in the death of Aahli Babbitt. The old saying, “different strokes for different folks” wasn’t directed toward the Justice system, but it is certainly appropriate.
Off topic. I see elsewhere that the U of Kansas is offering a course in the fall entitled,
“Angry White Male Studies” which portends to explore the root causes of the systemic and endemic state of the species. Should be interesting. I wonder if one of the identified issues might be that as often as not whenever someone publicly acknowledges a white male it is to throw virtual, or actual, rocks at him?
I know that Branden Tatum, retired cop, has said that there had been a lot of drug dealing at this apartment. If the warrant was improperly executed, that needs to be addressed, but IMO, it hardly makes them an accessory to a murder. Breonna’s boyfriend shot a cop. That’s a crime and the cops returned his fire. The overriding fact of Breonna’s death is that her boyfriend acted aggressively against police, and she happened to be in the line of fire.
When are the authorities such as the DOJ, FBI, police commissioners, governors, mayors and other executive figures going to start telling the lawless in our population that resisting arrest is a crime and it could get you injured or killed because we authorize our police to use the force necessary to effect the arrest? Every police shooting is investigated, and egregious cases can result in suspensions, firings, and prosecutions. Those punishments are best left to the city, county, or state that has jurisdiction. The idea that a policeman has violated someone’s civil rights when they use force to effect an arrest when the perp resists, is something that sounds ridiculous on its face.
Some background on the Taylor shooting which you won’t see in the legacy media:
https://anncoulter.com/2020/12/16/breonna-taylor-the-true-story-of-a-blm-herox/
“I would like to see SCOTUS take up the question of whether this sort of federal charge after state acquittal is actually double jeopardy or not.”
What case specifics would be required to meet the criteria for cert at SCOTUS? Has no case so far met those criteria? Have some, but SCOTUS denied cert?
“…I cannot imagine that anyone would ever want to be a police officer anymore.” Agreed, but one may be assured that Our Masters in Washington will bring similar charges against ordinary citizens at some point when they run out of cops to charge.
Further confirmation (if any were needed) that Merrick Garland is George Soros’s man at the DOJ.
Soros continued:
If you criticize Soros, then YOU ARE AN ANTI-SEMITE.
(This sort of insanity is nothing new, of course—it’s a Liberal fave—but it’s being reproduced and bandied about by one of the (what used to be) top newspapers in the nation in order to attack a former ace reporter/opinion writer who decided he had had enough of the Main Stream Corrupt Media, in this case the Chicago Tribune….)
“George Soros and Those Tribune Flies”—
https://johnkassnews.com/george-soros-and-those-tribune-flies/
H/T Powerline blog.
NB. If one attacks a Jewish person who is proudly, avidly, eagerly, incessantly and unrepentantly trying to destroy the quality of life in the US, that makes one an Anti-Semite.
While such an absurd contention has already been attacked and ridiculed by, among many others, Jews on the Right-of-Center (or even those who still know what it means to be truly Liberal), this very public declaration really ought to raise a few serious questions that all too many American Jews on the Left had better get their heads around. And quickly, that is, if it’s not already too late.
Corrosive Soros (continued):
More, unfortunately, on this master of subversion…with an Orwellian talent—
DeSantis explains why he fired that Florida DA:
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1555566375661408256
I’ve disagreed with Neo’s deference to law enforcement in the Uvalde massacre but I have no doubt she’s right the Breonna Taylor prosecution has how law enforcement handles such situations.
Mike
Y81 on August 6, 2022 at 10:12 pm got it right.
A clear version of the initiation of the shooting was, in my opinion, set forth by CNN(!!?!?!) at
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/08/us/kenneth-walker-breonna-taylor-dismissed-charges/index.html
and by ABC news at
https://abcnews.go.com/US/timeline-inside-investigation-breonna-taylors-killing-aftermath/story?id=71217247
Kenneth Walker III, Breonna Taylor’s then current squeeze, was not the supposed boyfriend (i.e., Jamarcus Glover) who was a subject of the warrant.
After midnight, with a no-knock warrant in hand, Louisville police attempted to breach with a battering ram Breonna Taylor’s door. Awakened by the invasion, Mr. Walker fired a bullet through that door in self defense, and the charges vindictively brought against him were dismissed.
Should charges be brought against the Louisville police who returned fire? I’m not sure. Very dangerous situations are created by police using no-knock warrants.
If the allegations are correct that materially false facts were set forth in the affidavit to obtain the no-knock warrant, then those who falsely testified in that affidavit have committed a crime.
” Awakened by the invasion, Mr. Walker fired a bullet through that door in self defense, and the charges vindictively brought against him were dismissed.”
I don’t know anything about the motivation to dismiss the charges (i.e. the reasons why charges were dropped), nor do I know the self-defense laws in that state, but in a lot of states, firing blindly through the door when someone is banging on it, is not lawful, and would not be excused as self-defense. They would have to be barging into your home with the threat of violence clearly evident. You would have to shoot after they are inside.
Nor have I heard anything on the background of the new boyfriend. Was he a boy scout? Or did he also have a history? Firing through closed doors suggests a certain familiarity with the procedures of the street.
Shameful waste of resources by the Feds, little to be surprised at though.
they want to make an example of the cops, and telegraph to urban yoots, go ahead engage in stupid behavior, like the crack kits,
I recommend to all (who have not already chased the link) BigD’s (Aug 6, 7:45pm) link to “Nate the Lawyer”‘s blog post on the shooting event. It was put up in March, contemporaneous with the state charges and trial. It has good info and good graphics showing who did what and when.
He puts this up to entice readers to evaluate the actions of the accused (later found not guilty) officer as would a juror hearing the evidence. The clearest item on this I have seen yet.
The warrant was endorsed for “no knock”, but the scene commander opted to execute it as a “standard knock and announce” warrant. They did knock and announce, just to clarify that one point.
I wish I still had a link to it but there was a discussion with I Viva Frei, Robert Barnes, and Nate about that. Barnes mentioned how normally no-knocks are done at night and knock and announce are done in the morning which makes sense given the situation of each scenario.(IE knock and announce are supposed to be less stressful and doing it that way makes it less stressful. No-knocks are supposed to give the subject no chance of fighting back.) The big screw up was doing a knock and announce but doing it late at night which was just asking for trouble.
@BigD– In my experience (CA) all search warrants are knock&announce; there is no provision of law providing for “no knock”. The “announce” tells those within it is the police and they have a warrant, and entry is demanded. The response of those inside dictate events from that point forward. There is also a prohibition against serving said warrant after 10PM and before 6AM following, unless specific night service endorsement is made at the time the judge signs the warrant. That is to reduce situations like the one at hand.
Could this be the Viva Frei post you refer to?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZDuS35ePcs
Garland is evil. Not just wrong. Not just morally defective. Evil.
The justice system is about using force against people.
This is tyranny. This is a moral abomination. At some point, the people are going to have to see this tyranny end or respond with their own application of force to end it.
Note — everyone who watches this play out KNOWS it is evil. Some people just support it because it makes them feel good about themselves.
Yes I think that’s the one where they go through the case. Thanks for finding it. Definitely worth a view since there’s a lot of misinformation in this case.
BTW before anybody brings it up Nate covered the “dead body found in her car” talking point. Apparently she rented a car and lent it to a friend/acquaintance. While he was driving it he was apparently robbed and murdered. So it’s not like she did something nefarious like as has been implied in the talking point.
This will be an unpopular comment but here goes: The police and feds are too much in love with “surprise” raids during the night. When you wake people up and invade their home, there is a high probability of something going wrong.
While I have double jeopardy concerns, the fact is that there was no reason this raid couldn’t have occurred during the day.
Not unpopular, just ignorant.
Related:
” ‘Stampede’ Quitting NYPD Even Before Reaching Pension Status”—
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/nypd-great-resignation-police/2022/08/07/id/1082080/
Which is another “Biden” aim; another “Biden” achievement….
Kill the Armed Forces. Draw and quarter Law Enforcement. Yep, that should do it!…
When that monster inflation bill passes, “he”‘ll really be able to break out the champagne.
(Which bill merely demonstrates just how essential it is to have Biden and Harris still in place… Still placeholders, demented, stupid, idiotic or otherwise. IT DOESN’T MATTER.
The question might be asked, though, how much more damage can they inflict on the country before they “exit stage…whatever”.)
Nikki Haley isn’t exactly enthusiastic:
“Nikki Haley: If GOP Loses Midterms, ‘There Won’t Be a 2024′”—
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/nikki-haley-midterms/2022/08/07/id/1082081/
(Personally, I’m not even sure there’s gonna be a “2022”…)
And for those who enjoy a bit of irony:
“Estimated 98 Million Americans Delaying Healthcare Amid Inflation”—
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/americans-healthcare-costs/2022/08/07/id/1082072/
I suspect, however, that all this means is that Obamacare will have to be, um, “fortified”: If you support the right political party, that political party will ensure you have health care…and food on the table (and possibly even a job, or two or three).
The Union of Socialist States of America…(?)
(What are increased taxes for, anyway?)
Bribe Back Better will prove to be the “center piece” of “Biden”‘s policy….
(IOW, the kill switch.)
As the war against the Deplorable “Enemies of the People” continues apace…
“Dems Poised To Make IRS Larger Than Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol Combined: Manchin-backed Inflation Reduction Act would more than double agency’s size.”—
https://instapundit.com/535610/
Tim Pool interviews John Mattingly, April 3, 2022 — Nashville cop shot (nearly bled out) in Breonna Taylor raid: https://youtu.be/u5-yYUagMWU
across the pond
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/07/police-fail-solve-single-theft-eight-10-neighbourhoods/
Not that unpopular. Before 1980 no-knock warrants were rare. Nowadays in some places there are more of them than knock-and-announce.
Crash and trash are often the warrant methods. It definitely increases the community trust in police when a family’s home is wrecked, and they cannot sue to recover damages.
In this case the police knocked and announced. Lots of unpopular facts about Saint Briona.
Mike Smith:
Why would you expect a lot of disagreement? I think it’s obvious that such raids are inherently dangerous and should only occur when there’s a necessity. I think perhaps one reason they sometimes do them is that they want to catch the people at home.
Occam’s Razor. Do you want to try and arrest potentially armed and dangerous suspects when they are wide awake?
It ain’t nerf guns or airsoft.
One of the LEOs was shot in the femoral artery by Briona’s boyfriend, lucky he didn’t bleed out then and there. He was unpopular, I guess.
does it seem like every organ of government in every western country is against the people
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/french-court-suspends-prominent-imam-s-deportation/2654554
The epitome of “Soros Creature”:
“Soros-linked prosecutor removed by Gov. DeSantis pledges ‘I’m not going down without a fight’ “—
https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/soros-backed-prosecutor-removed-desantis-pledges-im-not-going-down-without
Key grafs:
‘…DeSantis specifically cited Warren’s pledge to not prosecute Florida’s pro-life laws. He also mentioned how Warren has not enforced laws regarding trespassing, disorderly conduct and prostitution, among other things.
‘ Warren said he was building a “21st Century criminal justice system we can be proud of.”…’ [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Yep, a perverse, murderous, Through-the-Looking-Glass justice system that “we can be proud of”…
SAVOR IT!
Some time back, Bernie Kerik–once a NYPD big shot, so to speak–said they have something like 200 no-knock raids at the wrong address every month.
If what he meant was “every decade”, or if his numbers were off by a factor, say, ten, that would still be unacceptable.
One example, among a huge number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Maye
Yeah, if I were a cop, I’d prefer to take the guy awake walking down the street with both hands empty not having a clue we’re there. “no knock” supposedly provides the element of surprise, an advantage. But, in fact, it provides a couple of seconds and a hell of boost of adrenalin. And anybody who’s even the least paranoid about somebody busting in–being paranoid about somebody busting in isn’t proof of a guilty conscience deserved because of a life of crime–is going to react in the rational way.
You don’t need to fire a shot as the victim of a no-knock raid; just having trouble getting out from under the blanket could be a “reaching for a weapon” thing.
And none of the above requires you be actually guilty of anything or in the residence where the presumably guilty is supposed to be.
I have sympathy for the concept of sovereign immunity/qualified immunity, but past a certain degree of callous recklessness, or deliberate malfeasance, it ought to be void.
I recall reading of a no-knock which was premised on the fear the perp might flush the dozen six-foot marijuana plants–purpose of the raid– down the toilet of his mobile home if given a moment’s notice.