LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The jury in the federal retrial of Brett Hankison visited Breonna Taylor’s apartment where she was shot and killed during a botched police raid in 2020.
Hankison, a former Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) detective, is charged with violating the civil rights of Taylor and her neighbors when he fired 10 shots into the side of her apartment.
Wednesday marked the third time a jury has visited Taylor’s apartment to better understand testimony and avoid confusion when deliberating a verdict later in the trial.
The visit happened early in the morning and was kept quiet to protect jurors' identities.
University of Louisville law professor Sam Marcosson has been following the Breonna Taylor case since the fatal police shooting. He said the jury’s visit to Taylor’s apartment doesn’t favor one side or the other.
“They can all now have in their mind’s eye a sense of, ‘this door was here, the other apartment was there,’ and how they relate to each other,” Marcosson said. “Then when they start talking, they have a common experience having visited the site.”
Back in the courtroom, LMPD Chief Paul Humphrey took the stand as a key witness for prosecutors.
Humphrey led the police department’s training division in 2020 and was asked for his reaction to Hankison’s actions the night of the raid. The chief testified he doesn’t know why someone would decide to fire their gun under those conditions.
"It's bad," Humphrey said. "You shoot the wrong person and innocent people die."
Defense attorneys continued to hammer that Hankison perceived danger to his and other officers’ lives, saying that Humphrey can’t say what Hankison saw, heard or felt in that moment.
That being said, federal prosecutors are taking a new strategy during this trial and using Hankison's own testimony from his federal trial last November when he admits he couldn't see a target when he fired shots that night.
"If he says or said things in his testimony that help the prosecution to paint a picture of him acting recklessly, using that testimony is an extraordinarily smart strategy for the prosecution," Marcosson said.
Prosecutors also called Cody Etherton to the witness stand, closing yet another day of testimony with someone who was living in that apartment complex the night of the shooting.
Etherton, along with his then-pregnant girlfriend and her 5-year-old son, lived in the apartment adjacent to Breonna Taylor’s at the time of the raid.
He describes hearing a 'boom' that night, feeling the vibration in his home.
Federal prosecutors said they hope to wrap up their witnesses on Thursday.
Hankison faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, if convicted. Neither jury in his past two trials have found him guilty on any charges in the Breonna Taylor case.
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