Credit: Eric Lee for The New York Times
New York Times
None of the police officers who raided Breonna Taylor’s home used body cameras, impeding the public from a full understanding of what happened. The Times’s visual investigation team built a 3-D model of the scene and pieced together critical sequences of events to show how poor planning and shoddy police work led to a fatal outcome.
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“The family asked for one thing: that Brett Hankison be sentenced in accordance with the law and federal guidelines,” the lawyers wrote, adding: “Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity.”
Samantha Trepel, a former attorney with the civil rights division, urged the judge to ignore the recommendations, calling the filing “transparent, last-minute political interference.”
Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the botched operation that prompted protests across the country. His shots did not kill Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Two other officers, also white, fired the fatal shots, but neither was charged.
None of the police officers who raided Breonna Taylor’s home used body cameras, impeding the public from a full understanding of what happened. The Times’s visual investigation team built a 3-D model of the scene and pieced together critical sequences of events to show how poor planning and shoddy police work led to a fatal outcome.
The killing brought national attention to “no-knock” warrants. A judge initially signed off on such a warrant for Ms. Taylor’s apartment, but officers were later instructed to announce themselves. Whether they complied remains an unresolved issue.
The chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department was fired in the wake of protests of the killing, and a report by the Justice Department two years ago found that the department had shown a pattern of discriminating against Black people.
Hundreds of lawyers and other staff members have left the civil rights division, with veterans of the office saying that they were driven out by Trump administration officials who want to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League, other schools and liberal cities. Lawyers in the division traditionally saw their work as protecting the constitutional rights of minority communities and marginalized people.
Shortly after Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term, his political appointees at the Justice Department ordered an immediate halt to all new civil rights cases or investigations — and signaled that it might back out of Biden-era agreements with police departments that engaged in discrimination or violence, according to two internal memos sent to staff.
The actions, while expected, represented an abrupt about-face for a department that had for the past four years aggressively investigated high-profile instances of violence and systemic discrimination in local law enforcement and government agencies.
The first of two memos sent by Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff at the department, ordered a “litigation freeze” at the civil rights division to decide whether Trump appointees want “to initiate any new cases,” according to a screenshot of the document viewed by The New York Times.
A second memo ordered a similar freeze on department activity involving so-called consent decrees — agreements hashed out with local governments intended to address flawed police practices, or bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disabilities.
In May, Ms. Dhillon announced she was backing out of Biden-era agreements with Louisville and Minneapolis that were intended to enact policing reforms in the wake of the Taylor killing and murder of George Floyd, calling them “overbroad” and bureaucratic.
The moves were part of a larger effort, spearheaded by Ms. Dhillon and backed by senior White House officials, to prioritize enforcement of Mr. Trump’s culture war edicts, including participation of transgender women in sports, over the division’s founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
In an email in April, Ms. Dhillon directed the division’s career work force to pursue the president’s agenda, outlined in executive orders and presidential memorandums, or face unspecified consequences. The revised statement encouraged investigations into antisemitism, anti-Christian bias and noncompliance with a range of Trump executive fiats.
“The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires the full dedication of this section’s resources, attention and energy to the priorities of the president,” she wrote..”
–Glenn Thrush, “Justice Dept. Asks for 1-Day Sentence for Ex-Officer Convicted in Breonna Taylor Raid", New York Times, July 17, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/us/politics/justice-department-brett-hankison-sentence-breonna-taylor.html
Justice Dept. Asks for 1-Day Sentence for Ex-Officer Convicted in Breonna Taylor Raid
The administration asked the judge in the case to sentence the former officer to essentially the brief time he had served when he was first charged, and three years of supervised release.
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Brett Hankison appearing for his federal trial last October in Louisville, Ky. Credit: Matt Stone/The Courier-Journal, via Imagn
by Glenn Thrush
Reporting from Washington
July 17, 2025
New York Times
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The chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights unit has asked a federal judge to sentence a Louisville police officer convicted in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor to one day in prison, a stunning reversal of the unit’s longstanding efforts to address racial disparities in policing.
Last year, a federal jury in Kentucky convicted Brett Hankison, the officer, of one count of violating Ms. Taylor’s civil rights by using excessive force in discharging several shots through Ms. Taylor’s window during a drug raid that went awry.
He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, and a judge will consider the government’s request at a sentencing scheduled for next week.
On Wednesday, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, asked the judge in the case, Rebecca Grady Jennings, to sentence Mr. Hankison to one day in prison — essentially the brief time he had served when he was charged — and three years of supervised release.
In the filing, Ms. Dhillon suggested the prosecution was excessive, arguing that the Biden Justice Department had secured a conviction against Mr. Hankison after his acquittal on state charges and the ending of his first federal trial in a mistrial.
“In this case, two federal trials were ultimately necessary to obtain a unanimous verdict of guilt,” Ms. Dhillon wrote, adding that Mr. Hankison, now a felon who was fired from his job five years ago, had already paid a substantial penalty for his actions.
“The jury’s verdict will almost certainly ensure that defendant Hankison never serves as a law enforcement officer again and will also likely ensure that he never legally possesses a firearm again,” the filing added.
Such requests are typically filed by career prosecutors who worked on the case. Wednesday’s filing was signed by Ms. Dhillon, a political appointee who is a veteran Republican Party activist with close ties to President Trump, and one of her deputies.
Shortly after the department made its request public, the family’s legal team issued a statement describing Ms. Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, as “heartbroken and angry.”
“The family asked for one thing: that Brett Hankison be sentenced in accordance with the law and federal guidelines,” the lawyers wrote, adding: “Recommending just one day in prison sends the unmistakable message that white officers can violate the civil rights of Black Americans with near-total impunity.”
Samantha Trepel, a former attorney with the civil rights division, urged the judge to ignore the recommendations, calling the filing “transparent, last-minute political interference.”
Mr. Hankison, who is white, was the only officer to be charged for his actions during the botched operation that prompted protests across the country. His shots did not kill Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Two other officers, also white, fired the fatal shots, but neither was charged.
None of the police officers who raided Breonna Taylor’s home used body cameras, impeding the public from a full understanding of what happened. The Times’s visual investigation team built a 3-D model of the scene and pieced together critical sequences of events to show how poor planning and shoddy police work led to a fatal outcome.
The killing brought national attention to “no-knock” warrants. A judge initially signed off on such a warrant for Ms. Taylor’s apartment, but officers were later instructed to announce themselves. Whether they complied remains an unresolved issue.
The chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department was fired in the wake of protests of the killing, and a report by the Justice Department two years ago found that the department had shown a pattern of discriminating against Black people.
Hundreds of lawyers and other staff members have left the civil rights division, with veterans of the office saying that they were driven out by Trump administration officials who want to aggressively pursue cases against the Ivy League, other schools and liberal cities. Lawyers in the division traditionally saw their work as protecting the constitutional rights of minority communities and marginalized people.
Shortly after Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term, his political appointees at the Justice Department ordered an immediate halt to all new civil rights cases or investigations — and signaled that it might back out of Biden-era agreements with police departments that engaged in discrimination or violence, according to two internal memos sent to staff.
The actions, while expected, represented an abrupt about-face for a department that had for the past four years aggressively investigated high-profile instances of violence and systemic discrimination in local law enforcement and government agencies.
The first of two memos sent by Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff at the department, ordered a “litigation freeze” at the civil rights division to decide whether Trump appointees want “to initiate any new cases,” according to a screenshot of the document viewed by The New York Times.
A second memo ordered a similar freeze on department activity involving so-called consent decrees — agreements hashed out with local governments intended to address flawed police practices, or bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disabilities.
In May, Ms. Dhillon announced she was backing out of Biden-era agreements with Louisville and Minneapolis that were intended to enact policing reforms in the wake of the Taylor killing and murder of George Floyd, calling them “overbroad” and bureaucratic.
The moves were part of a larger effort, spearheaded by Ms. Dhillon and backed by senior White House officials, to prioritize enforcement of Mr. Trump’s culture war edicts, including participation of transgender women in sports, over the division’s founding purpose of fighting race-based discrimination.
In an email in April, Ms. Dhillon directed the division’s career work force to pursue the president’s agenda, outlined in executive orders and presidential memorandums, or face unspecified consequences. The revised statement encouraged investigations into antisemitism, anti-Christian bias and noncompliance with a range of Trump executive fiats.
“The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires the full dedication of this section’s resources, attention and energy to the priorities of the president,” she wrote.
In a separate mission statement sent to the division’s voting rights unit, Ms. Dhillon directed department lawyers to root out voter fraud and prosecute undocumented immigrants who tried to vote in U.S. elections. Both are rare events, despite efforts by Trump Republicans, including Ms. Dhillon, to portray them as a major threat to election integrity.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2025, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Is Seeking Day of Prison In Taylor Raid Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
See more on: U.S. Politics, Joe Biden, Brett Hankison, Breonna Taylor