LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A juror in the Breonna Taylor case contends that the Kentucky attorney general misrepresented the grand jury’s deliberations and failed to offer the panel the option of indicting the two officers who fatally shot the young woman, according to the juror’s lawyer.
The unnamed juror filed a court motion Monday seeking the release of last week’s transcripts and permission from a judge to speak publicly to set the record straight. Hours later, the office of Attorney General Daniel Cameron granted both requests, saying that the juror is free to speak and that recordings of the session will be made public.
The grand jury did not indict the two white officers who killed Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, after one officer was shot by her boyfriend. It charged a third officer whose bullets entered a neighbor’s apartment after missing Taylor with the lesser felony of wanton endangerment.
“This is something where the juror is not seeking any fame, any acclaim, any money,” said Kevin Glogower, the juror’s lawyer.
The lawyer said the juror came to him last week feeling anxious after Cameron repeatedly said at a news conference that the law did not permit him to charge Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, the two officers who shot Taylor on March 13 — and that the jury had agreed with him.
“While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law, these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed — and the grand jury agreed — that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in the return of deadly fire after having been fired upon,” Cameron said, one of several moments in the news conference where he emphasized such a consensus.
Legal experts had warned that Kentucky’s vigorous self-defense laws made it unlikely that the two officers would be indicted on murder charges because Taylor’s boyfriend had fired first during the police raid on her apartment, striking one of them. He had mistaken them for an intruder when they breached the door.
“We have no concerns with grand jurors sharing their thoughts on our presentation because we are confident in the case we presented,” Elizabeth Kuhn, a spokesperson for the attorney general, said in an email Monday night, adding that her office would release the recordings of the deliberations by Wednesday.
Before the charges were announced last week, the city enacted a state of emergency. Courthouses shut down and businesses boarded up. Afterward, demonstrators demanded justice, with some smashing windows and setting fires. At the peak of the unrest, a protester opened fire on police, wounding two officers.