Grand jury selected in Breonna Taylor case: report
Kentucky news outlets are reporting the office of Atty. Gen. Daniel Cameron will present evidence in the Taylor case over at least two days.
A grand jury has been selected in the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor.
Local news outlets in Kentucky are reporting that the office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron will present their findings in the case over at least two days.
WKYT, a local CBS station, interviewed a former assistant attorney of the commonwealth, Brian Butler, who said that he expects the Taylor case to “take longer than a regular case.”
“Historically, in Jefferson County, those cases have been presented in detail to grand juries,” said Butler, who is not at all involved in the Taylor case. “The grand jury can ask questions; the grand jury can interview witnesses themselves; they can ask to see additional evidence if they want to.”
Butler explained to the outlet what Cameron’s role in the process will be, which is to decide whether he wants to make a recommendation to them, whether he wants to recommend charges be filed or what types of charges could be filed. “Ultimately,” he said, “it’s the grand jury’s decision to do what they think is appropriate.”
On Wednesday, Cameron tweeted a statement about the probe. “An investigation, if done properly, cannot follow a specific timeline,” he noted.
“When the investigation concludes and a decision is made, we will provide an update about an announcement,” his tweet concluded, “The news will come from our office and not unnamed sources. Until that time, the investigation is ongoing.”
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Taylor was shot on March 13, when three Louisville Metro Police Department officers entered her home executing a no-knock warrant, and she and boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, believed they were burglars. The 26-year-old emergency medical technician was struck eight times when the officers fired into the apartment.
Sunday will mark six months since Taylor’s death, for which a lack of filed charges has helped give rise to the protests against police brutality taking place across the nation. Two of the officers involved in her shooting, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, have been on paid administrative leave since mid-May. A third, detective Brett Hankison, was fired in June.
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Cameron invoked Taylor’s name at the Republican National Convention last month when he intoned, “It was General Dwight Eisenhower, a future Republican president, who said: ‘Democracy is a system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.’ Whether you are the family of Breonna Taylor or David Dorn, these are the ideals that will heal our nation’s wounds.”
Dorn was a Black police captain who was killed in St. Louis in June by someone looting a store during protests.
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