The DOJ Wants To Drop Charges Against 2 Cops Who Played a Crucial Role in Breonna Taylor's Death |
Breonna Taylor
The DOJ Wants To Drop Charges Against 2 Cops Who Played a Crucial Role in Breonna Taylor's Death
But for a fraudulent and misleading warrant affidavit, Taylor would not have been killed during a fruitless late-night drug raid.
Jacob Sullum | 3.23.2026 3:40 PM
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Louisville, Kentucky, Detective Joshua Jaynes lied when he applied for the March 2020 search warrant that resulted in Breonna Taylor's death. Then he lied about his lies. Sgt. Kyle Meany, the supervisor who approved the warrant application, also tried to cover up its shortcomings. According to an August 2022 federal indictment, both officers knew that police did not have probable cause to search Taylor's apartment.
Based on those allegations, the indictment charged Jaynes and Meany with violating 18 USC 242 by "willfully" depriving Taylor of her Fourth Amendment rights under color of law. It also charged them with conspiring to falsify a document and mislead federal investigators. But according to the Justice Department, which asked U.S. District Judge Charles R. Simpson III to dismiss those charges on Friday "in the interest of justice," the indictment exemplified the Biden administration's "inappropriate, weaponized federal overreach."
Although that judgment is hard to fathom as a matter of law, it is consistent with President Donald Trump's blasé attitude toward police abuses, which he sees as an acceptable cost of "STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION." It is therefore not surprising that Trump's Justice Department seems to view federal remedies for police abuses as unseemly meddling with local law enforcement. But abandoning those remedies undermines civil liberties by signaling that the Justice Department is no longer interested in pursuing charges against police officers who willfully violate Americans' constitutional rights.
In her motion to dismiss the charges against Jaynes and Meany, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, does not say the defendants are not guilty of knowingly violating Taylor's Fourth Amendment rights. Nor does Dhillon say they told the truth when they were asked about Jaynes' warrant affidavit, which according to the 2022 indictment "contained false and misleading statements, omitted material information, relied on stale information, and was not supported by probable cause." Dhillon's silence on those crucial points suggests she simply does not view the officers' conduct as sufficiently serious to warrant federal charges, which is alarming given the facts of the case.
Jaynes' warrant affidavit, which he submitted to Jefferson County Circuit Judge Mary Shaw on March 12, 2020, implied that Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT and aspiring nurse, was involved in drug trafficking by her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. But that allegation was based almost entirely on guilt by association: Taylor was still in touch with Glover, who no longer lived with her but continued to receive packages at her apartment after he moved out.
What was in those packages? According to Glover, who said he worried that the packages would be stolen if he had them delivered at his new address, they contained shoes and clothing he had ordered from Amazon. That is consistent with what Jaynes told internal investigators after Taylor's death. In late January or early February 2020, according to Jaynes, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who would later execute the search warrant, "nonchalantly" told him "your guy [Glover] just gets Amazon or mail packages there." Jaynes added: "I remember 'Amazon' resonating in my head. I just remember the word Amazon."
According to the 2022 indictment, that conversation never happened. After the shooting, it says, Jaynes called Mattingly to "try........