Protesters gather in downtown Louisville, Ky., Saturday, March 13, 2021, to mark the anniversary of the killing of Breonna Taylor in a botched raid by Louisville police officers. (Xavier Burrell/The New York Times)
The day before police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment, a detective tried to persuade a judge that an ex-boyfriend of Taylor’s might be using her home to stash money and drugs.
Detective Joshua Jaynes said the ex-boyfriend had been sending packages to Taylor’s apartment, and even claimed to have proof: a postal inspector who had confirmed the shipments. Jaynes outlined all of this in an affidavit and asked a judge for a no-touch order so officers could enter Taylor’s home late at night before drug dealers had a chance to remove evidence or run away The judge signed the order.
But this week, federal prosecutors said Jaynes had lied. It was never clear if the ex-boyfriend was receiving packages at Taylor’s house. And Jaynes, prosecutors said, had never confirmed as much with any postal inspector. As outrage grew over Taylor’s death, prosecutors said in new criminal charges filed in federal court that Jaynes met with another detective in his garage and agreed on a story to tell the ‘FBI and his own colleagues for covering up false and misleading statements made by the police. to justify the attack.
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Amid the protests over Taylor’s murder, much of the attention has focused on whether the two officers who shot her would be charged. But the Justice Department focused most of its attention on the officers who obtained the search warrants, highlighting the problems that can arise when searches are authorized by judges based on facts that police has exaggerated or even made it up.
“It happens a lot more often than people think,” said Joseph C. Patituce, a defense attorney and former Ohio prosecutor. “We are talking about a document that allows the police to enter the homes of people, often minorities, at all times of the night and day.”
Taylor is far from the first person to die in a law enforcement operation authorized over what prosecutors said were police misconduct.
The story continues
In Houston, prosecutors charged a police officer with falsely claiming an informant had bought heroin from a home to obtain a search warrant in 2019; officers killed two people who lived there during a shootout when they tried to execute the warrant, and only after that did the police chief at the time, Art Acevedo, say that there were “lies or material lies” in a affidavit of the warrant he drove. in the raid The officer pleaded not guilty and the case is still pending.
In Atlanta, police officers entered a home and fatally shot a 92-year-old woman, Kathryn Johnston, in 2006 after an officer lied in a search warrant affidavit about an informant who was buying drugs at his house
And in Baltimore, a federal judge sentenced a detective to 2 1/2 years in prison last month after prosecutors said he lied in a search warrant affidavit about finding drugs in the truck of a man in order to warrant a search of the man’s motel room.
Judges often rely solely on the sworn narrative of police officers seeking warrants, meaning police can conduct potentially dangerous searches targeting innocent people before their affidavits are challenged.
The Supreme Court has ruled that when police knowingly or recklessly include false statements in search warrant affidavits in cases where there would otherwise be insufficient cause, any evidence recovered may not be admitted in court . False statements often come to light if arrests are made, as defense attorneys challenge search warrants in court.
A series of flawed affidavits may never be closely examined, legal analysts say, because the defendants have agreed to plead guilty on other grounds.
In Louisville, Thomas Clay, a lawyer involved in the Breonna Taylor case, knows the issue from both sides.
Clay and a colleague, David Ward, once represented Susan Jean King, a one-leg amputee with a slight build who was accused of fatally shooting a former boyfriend at her home and then throwing her body to a river
“That was his theory,” Ward said of the detective who took over the investigation as a cold case about eight years after the murder. “It was physically impossible for her to commit the murder, drag his body out of her house and into her nonexistent car, and then pick up this 189-pound big man and throw his body over a bridge and into the Kentucky River.”
King’s attorneys claimed the detective falsely implied in at least one of the search warrant affidavits that a .22-caliber bullet found on the floor of King’s home was one of the rounds that killed him the man.
But it had already been established that the man died from .22-caliber bullets that lodged in his head without exiting, King’s lawyers noted, arguing that the detective’s claim was implausible. A judge agreed, saying the detective had omitted exculpatory evidence from the search warrant affidavits.
However, King entered an Alford plea to second-degree manslaughter, in which he pleaded guilty while maintaining his innocence, and was serving more than five years in prison when one man admitted to the murder. Eventually, she was exonerated.
In 2020, the state agreed to pay King a $750,000 settlement for malicious prosecution. Through his lawyer at the time, the detective, who had then retired from the force, denied any wrongdoing.
Now, Clay represents Jaynes, the detective accused of lying to get a search warrant for Taylor’s house.
“Search warrants are always fair game to be scrutinized, and they should be scrutinized,” Clay said, though he declined to discuss Jaynes’ case.
Jaynes pleaded not guilty to the federal charges Thursday and has said he relied in part on information from another officer when he prepared the affidavit.
Officers who provide false information under oath when preparing search warrant affidavits may take shortcuts, Clay said, because they believe they already know the outcome of the case, but don’t yet have enough evidence to support the warrant.
“The most extreme example is when they’re just dishonest, even though they’re under oath,” Clay said.
Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner, said the consequences of lying about a search warrant could be severe.
“It’s tragic when you see police falsify information to get a search warrant, and it’s also stupid,” Davis said. “Each of these search warrants can turn into a disaster.”
In Taylor’s case, prosecutors said another detective, Kelly Goodlett, who the department moved to fire Thursday, also added misleading information to the affidavit, saying Taylor’s ex-boyfriend had recently used the your address as “current address”. Prosecutors accused Goodlett of conspiring with Jaynes to falsify the warrant.
Jaynes has admitted that he did not personally verify the information on the packages with a postal inspector. He has said a sergeant told him about the packages and he believed there was enough to support his claims in the affidavit.
“I had no reason to lie in this case,” he told a Louisville police board that was considering his firing last year.
In the federal indictment against Jaynes, however, prosecutors charged that this statement was also false and that the sergeant had twice told Jaynes that he did not know packages had been sent to Taylor’s home for her ex-boyfriend.
The judge who signed the warrant for Taylor’s apartment, Judge Mary Shaw, declined to comment Friday through an assistant, noting that she could be called to testify in the criminal case against the officers. Shaw is up for re-election in November, and The Louisville Courier Journal reported that she was the only one of 17 incumbent Jefferson Circuit Court judges facing a challenger for her seat.
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