Feds seek “significant downward departure and Booker variance” in sentencing officer involved in Breonna Taylor case

As reported in this CNN piece, the “Justice Department is asking that a former police officer found guilty of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor in 2020 — when she was shot and killed by police in her Louisville home — be sentenced to one day in jail.”  That request amounts to a time-served sentence based on his one day served while being booked, and here is more about the government’s sentencing filing:

The officer, Brett Hankison of Kentucky, was convicted on one count of abusing Taylor’s civil rights last year after firing several shots through Taylor’s bedroom window during a police raid. He is set to be sentenced on Monday.

Taylor’s killing became a pillar in the Black Lives Matter movement, and one of several cases that sparked nationwide protests against police violence in 2020. If granted, a shortened sentence could reinflame tensions with activists who believe that government institutions protect officers from facing consequences.

But in a court filing Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that although Hankison “was part of the team executing the warrant, Defendant Hankison did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death.” “Counsel is unaware of another prosecution in which a police officer has been charged with depriving the rights of another person under the Fourth Amendment for returning fire and not injuring anyone,” prosecutors wrote in their filing.

The request for Hankison to serve one day behind bars would mean a sentence of time-served, meaning that he would not return to jail. They are also asking Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings to sentence him to three years of supervised release.  The filing was signed not by lawyers involved in the case or the career staff who usually handle sentencing requests, but by Trump’s appointee to run the Civil Rights Department Harmeet Dhillon and a senior non-career official in her division.

This full 19-page sentencing filing makes for an interesting read for a number of reasons.  I was struck by the (all-too-common) misstatement of the “the Court’s charge” under the applicable sentencing statute in the submission’s introduction, as well as the memo’s discussion of what it calls “a number of factors [that] counsel in favor of” departures and variances.