
US ex-policeman sentenced to 33 months over fatal Breonna Taylor raid
In an unusual intervention last week, Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department's (DOJ) civil rights division, asked Judge Rebecca Jennings to sentence Hankison to time served: the single day he spent in jail at the time of his arrest.
However, Jennings, who was appointed to the bench by US President Donald Trump during his first term as president, rejected the recommendation and said she was troubled by the prosecutor's sentencing memorandum and arguments for leniency, the Louisville Courier Journal said. She sentenced him to 33 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Hankison faced a maximum penalty of life in prison.
'Continue to call out the DOJ's failure'
Dhillon, in her sentencing memorandum to the judge, had argued that a lengthy prison term for Hankison would be "unjust." "Hankison did not shoot Ms. Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death," she said. "Hankison did not wound her or anyone else at the scene that day, although he did discharge his duty weapon 10 times blindly into Ms. Taylor's home."
Responding to Monday's verdict, the Taylor family's lawyers noted that while the sentence did not "fully reflect the severity of the harm caused," it was "more than what the Department of Justice sought." "We respect the court's decision, but we will continue to call out the DOJ's failure to stand firmly behind Breonna's rights and the rights of every Black woman whose life is treated as expendable," they said in a statement.
Biden-era discrimination lawsuits dropped
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her Louisville apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020, when they heard a noise at the door. Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding a police officer. Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock search warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.
Hankison fired 10 shots during the raid, some into a neighboring apartment, but did not hit anyone. He is the only police officer convicted in connection with the raid.
Help us improve Le Monde in English
Dear reader,
We'd love to hear your thoughts on Le Monde in English! Take this quick survey to help us improve it for you.
The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.
In May, the Justice Department announced that it was dropping lawsuits filed by the administration of former president Joe Biden against police forces in Louisville and Minneapolis that accused them of using excessive force and racial discrimination.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Local France
2 hours ago
- Local France
French health experts speak out against bee-killing pesticide
The legislation to reintroduce in France acetamiprid, a pesticide that is harmful to ecosystems but popular with many farmers in Europe, was adopted on July 8th, but without a proper debate to bypass gridlock in a divided parliament. The move sparked anger in France, and support for a student-initiated petition against the legislation has snowballed, with university lecturers, left-wing lawmakers and star chefs backing it. The petition had garnered more than 2 million signatures by Tuesday. READ ALSO : What is France's Loi Duplomb and why are people protesting about it?✎ Health experts and patient associations have now weighed in, saying in an open letter in French daily Le Monde that they cannot back "a law that is dangerous to the health of our fellow citizens". Advertisement President Emmanuel Macron, who has been under increasing pressure to act, said he is waiting to hear the verdict of the Constitutional Council, which is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the law on August 7th. The health experts and patient associations urged the Constitutional Council to reject the legislation, calling on its members to "respond to the democratic demand strongly expressed by French citizens". READ ALSO : Who can sign parliamentary petitions in France?✎ The signatories included Agnes Linglart, president of the French Paediatric Society, Olivier Coutard, president of the scientific council of France's flagship scientific research centre CNRS and Gerard Socie, president of the scientific council of the National Cancer Institute. The Constitutional Council, the letter said, must protect future generations from the legislation that "without a shadow of reasonable doubt compromises the health of young people, children and the unborn". The letter said the Senate committee preparing the bill heard from agricultural unions and government agencies but not "doctors, toxicologists or epidemiologists". The senators did not consult representatives of the CNRS, health and labour ministries, even though occupational exposure to pesticides is a risk factor for humans, the letter said. Citing the INSERM health and medical research organisation, the letter pointed to evidence of a link between exposure to pesticides and the occurrence of cancers, neurodegenerative, pulmonary and hormone-related disorders. Banned in France since 2018, the chemical remains legal in the European Union. The dispute over the bill is becoming increasingly heightened, with members of the farming unions who support the bill dumping manure, straw bales and wool outside the offices of Green MPs and other lawmakers who oppose it. Although France's largest farming union the FNSEA strongly backs the bill, other farmers groups - especially those who represent bee-keepers - oppose the reintroduction of the pesticide. The law itself was introduced in response to the farmer protests of 2024 which brought large parts of the French road network to a halt.


France 24
5 hours ago
- France 24
No, US Fed Chair Powell didn't step down
Jerome Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve, has been in the hot seat for several months. Essentially, US President Donald Trump has been very vocal about how unhappy he is with Powell's fiscal policy and his staunch refusal to lower interest rates. According to some social media users, the pressure became too much, and Powell finally resigned on July 22. These online accounts went so far as to circulate the resignation letter that the Fed chairman supposedly wrote. They also shared a video clip of Powell announcing his resignation live on the US television channel CNBC in a speech filled with swearing and insults. It turns out that both the letter and the video are fake. A fake resignation letter that duped a US senator 'Powell's out!' reads a tweet posted on the account of US Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, on July 22. The post featured what seemed to be Powell's resignation letter. In the letter, which is addressed to President Trump, Powell says that he'll be gone by the end of the day. But this isn't a real letter. The first clue is that it includes several spelling errors, which is strange for an official document. For example, the word 'grateful" has an errant dash '-' after the letter 'r' (in the letter, it is written "gr-ateful"). However, the biggest clue is that the supposed seal of the Federal Reserve at the end of the letter was clearly generated by artificial intelligence. The letters aren't in English – in fact, they are from no known alphabet. AI notoriously struggles to generate text correctly. Moreover, this seal doesn't look like any of the official seals of the Federal Reserve visible on their website. All of the official seals have a leaf pattern, which is missing from the AI version. Senator Mike Lee deleted his tweet shortly after its publication. A Facebook page for an alleged news site shared a video of Powell supposedly resigning live in an expletive-heavy speech on the American TV channel CNBC: 'I am sick of this sh*t. F*ck Wall Street. F*ck you all. I'm f*cking out." However, this video is also fake. First of all, there is no sign of this video on the website of CNBC or any other media outlet. If Powell had actually made such statements, it would have been picked up by news outlets the world over. We ran this video through Hiya, a tool from the InVid-We Verify project used to detect AI. The tool determined that there is a 99% chance that Powell's voice in the video was actually AI-generated. Despite Trump's criticisms, Powell will remain Fed chairman – for now In the end, the Trump administration was the one to refute the rumours about Powell resigning. 'There's nothing that tells me that he should step down right now,' said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the Fox Business channel on July 22. That same day, a journalist asked President Trump if he thought that Powell should resign. Trump confirmed, in his way, that Powell would remain in office. 'I think he's done a bad job, but he's gonna be out pretty soon anyway – in eight months he'll be out,' Trump said. This suggests that, at least for the time being, Trump thinks that Powell can remain at the head of the Federal Reserve until his term ends in May 2026.


France 24
9 hours ago
- France 24
French health experts speak out against bee-killing pesticide
The legislation to reintroduce in France acetamiprid, a pesticide that is harmful to ecosystems but popular with many farmers in Europe, was adopted on July 8, but without a proper debate to bypass gridlock in a divided parliament. The move sparked anger in France, and support for a student-initiated petition against the legislation has snowballed, with university lecturers, left-wing lawmakers and star chefs backing it. The petition had garnered more than 2 million signatures by Tuesday. Health experts and patient associations have now weighed in, saying in an open letter in French daily Le Monde that they cannot back "a law that is dangerous to the health of our fellow citizens". President Emmanuel Macron, who has been under increasing pressure to act, said he is waiting to hear the verdict of the Constitutional Council, which is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the law on August 7. The health experts and patient associations urged the Constitutional Council to reject the legislation, calling on its members to "respond to the democratic demand strongly expressed by French citizens". The signatories included Agnes Linglart, president of the French Paediatric Society, Olivier Coutard, president of the scientific council of France's flagship scientific research centre CNRS and Gerard Socie, president of the scientific council of the National Cancer Institute. The Constitutional Council, the letter said, must protect future generations from the legislation that "without a shadow of reasonable doubt compromises the health of young people, children and the unborn". The letter said the Senate committee preparing the bill heard from agricultural unions and government agencies but not "doctors, toxicologists or epidemiologists". The senators did not consult representatives of the CNRS, health and labour ministries, even though occupational exposure to pesticides is a risk factor for humans, the letter said. Citing the INSERM health and medical research organisation, the letter pointed to evidence of a link between exposure to pesticides and the occurrence of cancers, neurodegenerative, pulmonary and hormone-related disorders. Banned in France since 2018, the chemical remains legal in the European Union.