(PM.) A federal judge has ruled that the death of Breonna Taylor was caused by her boyfriend, who first shot at police officers the day she died, and threw out the core felony charges against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany, who were accused of producing a false arrest warrant.
US District Judge Charles Simpson’s ruling wrote that the actions of Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were to blame instead in the resulting death, per the New York Post. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice sought federal charges against the officers in 2022 after the high-profile 2020 case that many activists took up as a cause during the BLM protests and riots.
Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Jaynes and Meany, who were not there the day of the shooting, of knowingly making a false warrant that would put Taylor in a dangerous situation, leading to her death when officers shot back at Walker. Judge Simpson wrote in the opinion “There is no direct link between the warrantless entry and Taylor’s death.”
The ruling reduced the falsified warrant and civil rights violation charges against Jaynes and Meany to misdemeanors instead of felonies. Simpson, however, declined to dismiss a conspiracy charge against Jaynes as well as a charge against Meany, who has been accused of making false statements to investigators in the case.
