Detective expected to plead guilty in Breonna Taylor raid

A police detective in Louisville, Kentucky, is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to mislead a judge in order to obtain a search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home, a plea that would mark the first conviction of a police officer over the fatal raid more than two years ago.

Federal prosecutors had brought charges against the detective, Kelly Goodlett, and three other officers this month over the nighttime raid in which police officers fatally shot Taylor, 26, a Black emergency room technician whose death was among several police killings that led to months of protests in 2020.

On Friday, a U.S. magistrate judge set a hearing for Goodlett to enter a plea Aug. 22. Goodlett’s lawyer, Brandon Marshall, told the judge that she would enter a guilty plea at that time, news outlets reported.

Police had been investigating Taylor’s former boyfriend for selling drugs, and another detective, Joshua Jaynes, claimed in a search warrant affidavit that he had verified with a postal inspector that the former boyfriend was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment. Jaynes later admitted that he had never verified the information with an inspector and was fired by the Louisville Metro Police Department.

Prosecutors said Goodlett had reviewed a draft of the affidavit and, despite knowing that the claim about the postal inspector was false, did not alter it. They also said she added a misleading line to the affidavit in which she said the former boyfriend had recently been using Taylor’s address as his own. Then, prosecutors said, as fallout from the raid worsened, Goodlett lied to investigators about whether Jaynes had verified the information about the packages.

Goodlett and Jaynes were charged in federal court last week along with a third officer, Sgt. Kyle Meany, who led an investigative unit in the Police Department and, according to prosecutors, approved the submission of the false warrant and later lied to the FBI.

Federal prosecutors also charged a fourth officer, Brett Hankison, who had fired blindly through a window and door, hitting a neighboring apartment where a family was sleeping but not injuring anyone. Hankison was acquitted on endangerment charges in state court this year.