Taylor grand jury recordings released

A court in Louisville, Kentucky, took the unusual step of releasing recordings of three days of testimony presented to the grand jury that decided not to bring murder charges against police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, in her apartment.

The decision by the 12-member grand jury not to indict the two officers who shot Taylor while serving a warrant in March sparked outrage and widespread protests. A third officer, Brett Hankison, was charged with firing shots that endangered Taylor’s neighbors.

While grand juries normally review cases in secret, one juror asked a judge to release the recordings of the proceedings. The juror said Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, at a Sept. 23 press conference, had laid the decision not to charge the officers at the feet of the grand jury and that Cameron had failed to answer questions about what possible charges the jurors were presented.

Among the recordings released Friday was testimony related to whether police announced themselves before breaking down the apartment door. Taylor’s boyfriend, who was with her during the raid and fired his gun at police, says they had no idea officers were there because no one responded when they asked who was knocking.

An investigator for the Attorney General’s office told grand jurors last month that he interviewed 15 to 20 individuals who were at the apartment complex the night of the shooting, the recording show. Of those, the investigator mentioned only one who remembered hearing police announce themselves. But in other interviews with authorities, that witness didn’t say police identified themselves, the investigator said.