Federal Judge Sentences Ex-Officer in Breonna Taylor Raid, Rejects Trump-Era Leniency Request
In a pointed rebuke to the Trump administration, a federal judge in Kentucky sentenced former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison to 33 months in prison on Monday for his role in the botched 2020 drug raid that led to the killing of Breonna Taylor, 26.
The sentence sharply contrasted with the one-day prison term requested by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Trump-appointed Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, who filed the unusually lenient recommendation last week. The move drew immediate backlash and prompted protests outside the Louisville federal courthouse on the day of sentencing.
Hankison, who is white, was convicted in November by a federal jury of violating Taylor’s civil rights by firing multiple shots blindly through a covered window and glass door. Although none of the 10 bullets he fired struck Taylor, his reckless actions during the raid made him the only officer federally charged in connection to her death.
Taylor, a Black emergency room technician, was killed in her apartment during a no-knock warrant raid. Her death — alongside the murder of George Floyd — ignited a national reckoning on racial injustice and police brutality.
The Trump administration’s sentencing request, filed not by the case’s career prosecutors but by Dhillon and one of her deputies, was widely seen as an effort to pivot the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division toward a culture-war agenda, moving away from racial justice enforcement. Dhillon, a veteran Republican operative and close Trump ally, has come under fire for politicizing the department’s mission.
Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings, a Trump appointee to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, strongly disagreed with the sentencing proposal but stopped short of issuing the maximum penalty of life imprisonment allowed by law.
The drawn-out legal battle over Taylor’s death has kept the spotlight on the Louisville Metro Police Department, and renewed scrutiny on the use of no-knock warrants, which allow officers to enter homes without prior warning.
Despite Monday’s sentencing, critics say the case underscores the slow pace of justice for victims of police violence and the enduring gaps in civil rights enforcement.
