LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The federal retrial of former Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) detective Brett Hankison is now underway, with many familiar faces already taking the stand.
Hankison is charged with violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, and her neighbors, the night of the botched raid at her apartment in March 2020.
Another former LMPD detective, who fired the shot that killed Taylor, testified Monday as a key witness for the prosecution.
For the third trial in a row, Myles Cosgrove reaffirmed under oath that he returned fire after another officer was hit by gunfire, trying to neutralize the threat.
Taylor's mom, Tamika Palmer, shed tears during Cosgrove's emotional testimony. At times, she was shaking.
Cosgrove testified that before he and other officers served that search warrant, he inspected Taylor's sliding glass door and window from the outside. He said they were covered by plastic blinds making it difficult to see through at all.
Prosecutors are trying to prove it wasn't possible for Hankison to isolate a target when he fired his gun. Some of his bullets entered a neighbor's apartment.
One of those neighbors, Chelsey Napper, testified before Cosgrove about what happened that night. She was pregnant, living with her boyfriend and son in an apartment adjacent from Taylors at the time. The jury saw evidence of the bullets that flew through their apartment, with Napper saying it sounded like a war zone or like a bomb had gone off.
"It's common sense, if you can't see something, you shouldn't be shooting at it," Cosgrove, who is now a deputy with the Carroll County Sheriff's Office, said on the stand. "You have to identify what you're shooting at because the risk is so great. You couldn't see into the apartment, I couldn't think of a reason I knew to shoot through the windows."
In an apparent effort to discredit his testimony, Hankison's attorneys pointed to Cosgrove's own termination from LMPD. The department found he had fired 16 shots the night of the raid without identifying a target, with statements from internal investigators stating he fired at a “distorted shadowy mass” after Taylor’s boyfriend fired a single shot at officers.
Hankison's attorneys also pressed Cosgrove on if he himself had an opportunity to think before each round was fired, to which he responded given the stress and fear, it was not 'humanely possible' to think about every round fired.
Defense attorneys also noted that in an internal investigation, Cosgrove said he thought he had fired six shots rather than 16.
In opening statements, federal prosecutors called Hankison's actions "unfathomably dangerous," saying "he guessed" when he heard sounds of exchanged gunfire.
But defense attorneys argue no one can tell Hankison what he saw and heard during the shooting.
Hankison has said in the past he thought his fellow officers were being executed and he was trying to protect them.
"Policy can't train for everything," one of Hankison's attorneys, Jack Byrd, said. "A policy violation is not always a criminal act."
Kamal Wells, one of Breonna Taylor's cousins, was also in the courtroom Monday, amongst a packed crowd. He believes he's seeing the jury be more attentive thus far compared to the one last November.
"I'm watching how they react and how they respond to different statements, different testimonies that's being given to their alertness, you know, to the story shifts to the questions that's being asked and answers being given," Wells said.
Hankison had family and friends watching in the courtroom, too, including his daughter.
Late Monday afternoon, prosecutors called Ju'Niyah Palmer, Breonna Taylor's sister who lived with her, to the stand.
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