By: Jovia Zhang

Breonna Taylor was shot and killed by police officers in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, after a judge had signed off on a no-knock warrant, allowing the officers to barge into Ms. Taylor’s home late at night to catch a drug dealer.

Prior to the shooting, detective Joshua Jaynes had informed the judge and other officers about a former boyfriend of Ms. Taylor’s who could possibly be hiding stashes of money and drugs in her home. Mr. Jaynes claimed to have proof that the packages had been sent to her house; a postal inspector had confirmed this information. This is why the detective asked for the warrant, Jaynes claimed at the time.

But this week, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Jaynes of lying. Whether Ms. Taylor received the packages or not was still unclear at the time of the raid. The prosecutors also said that Mr. Jaynes had actually never confirmed anything with any postal inspector. In fact, according to prosecutors, in new criminal charges filed in federal court, Mr. Jaynes talked things over with another detective in his garage, agreeing on a story to tell the F.B.I. and even their own colleagues in order to cover up the “false and misleading” statements given by the police to justify the shooting.

While many people are anxious to know whether or not the two officers who shot and killed Ms. Taylor will be charged, the Justice Department has turned the majority of its attention on the officers who obtained the warrant, focusing on the consequences that can result when officers exaggerate or even lie in order to get a search warrant authorized by a judge.

“It happens far more often than people think,” said Joseph C. Patituce, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor in Ohio, according to the New York Times. “We are talking about a document that allows police to come into the homes of people, oftentimes minorities, at all times of night and day.”

Unfortunately, prosecutors said, Ms. Taylor’s case is neither the first nor the only time people have died in an authorized law-enforcement operation based on misinformation spread by police.

In 2006, an officer lied about an informant buying drugs from 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston’s home in Atlanta, causing police officers to barge in and fatally shoot her.

In 2019, while executing a warrant, officers killed two people who lived in a home in Houston where heroin was supposedly purchased. It was only after the raid that Art Acevedo, the Houston police chief at the time, said there were “material untruths or lies” stated by an officer when obtaining the warrant. The officer pleaded not guilty, and the case is still pending.

And last month, a detective was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for lying in a search warrant affidavit about discovering drugs in a man’s truck, in order to justify a search of the man’s motel room in Baltimore.

According to the New York Times, “Judges often rely solely on the sworn narrative of police officers who apply for warrants, meaning the police can carry out potentially dangerous searches targeting innocent people before their affidavits are ever challenged.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that “when the police knowingly or recklessly include false statements in search warrant affidavits in cases where there would otherwise be insufficient cause, any evidence recovered cannot be admitted in court. False statements often come to light after arrests are made, when defense lawyers challenge search warrants in court.”

Even though police lies often come to light, there are still a number of affidavits that might never be closely looked over, according to legal analysts, as “defendants have agreed to plead guilty for other reasons.”

Thomas Clay, a lawyer from Louisville who is connected to the Breonna Taylor case, has seen this dilemma from both sides.

Mr. Clay and a colleague, David Ward, once represented Susan Jean King, an amputee with one leg, when she was accused of fatally shooting a former boyfriend at her home before throwing his body into the Kentucky River.

“This was his theory,” Mr. Ward said of the detective who took on the investigation as a cold case some eight years after the killing. “It was physically impossible for her to commit the homicide, drag his body out of her home and into her nonexistent car, and then take this large, 189-pound man and toss his body over a bridge and into the Kentucky River.”

Ms. King’s lawyers stated that the detective made at least one misstatement in at least one of the search warrant affidavits, claiming that a .22-caliber bullet found in Ms. King’s floor was what had killed her former boyfriend.

However, the man had died of .22-caliber bullets that stuck in his head but didn’t exit, rendering the detective’s theory impossible. The judge agreed with Ms. King’s lawyers, ruling that the detective had omitted important evidence from his search warrant affidavits.

But even given this evidence, Ms. King “entered an Alford plea to second-degree manslaughter – in which she pleaded guilty while maintaining her innocence – and was serving more than five years in prison when another man admitted to the killing. She was ultimately exonerated.”

In 2020, Ms. King received a $750,000 settlement from the state for malicious prosecution. The detective claimed to believe he did nothing wrong.

Now representing Detective Jaynes, the attorney Mr. Clay gets to see the other side of the problem.

“Search warrants are always fair game to be scrutinized and they should be scrutinized,” Mr. Clay said.

Mr. Jaynes claimed to be somewhat relying on information from another officer when he prepared the affidavit, though he pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.

Mr. Clay said officers who provide misleading information under oath while preparing search warrant affidavits may take “short cuts,” as they think they know the outcome of the case yet do not have enough evidence to support the warrant.

“The most extreme example is when they are just dishonest, even though they are under oath,” Mr. Clay said.

Detective Kelly Goodlett was charged with conspiring with Detective Jaynes to add misinformation to the warrant after saying that Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend had used her address as his own, or as his “current home address.”

Jaynes also admitted to lying about confirming the evidence of the packages with a postal inspector, claiming he believed that information he received from a police sergeant about the packages would be enough to back up his claims in the affidavit.

“I had no reason to lie in this case,” he told a police board in Louisville, according to the New York Times.

Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/06/us/breonna-taylor-police-search-warrants.html