A key fact is that the police shot Taylor after her boyfriend shot at the police, thinking they were intruders. While he was fully entitled to do that, the NYT doesn’t believe in gun rights so that’s a messy fact. To make the victim seem more sympathetic, the narrative under the heading “What Happened in Louisville?” doesn’t mention Taylor‘s boyfriend shooting first. Instead, you need to go down several paragraphs to learn that fact. Which leaves the whole article deeply confused: at first you think police just started shooting for no reason, and then later you learn they shot because they were fired upon. Which of course leaves the reader with little understanding of what police actually did wrong. Were they not supposed to shoot back when Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them? Is that the problem?
Obviously nobody expects the police not to shoot back when fired upon. What the police did wrong, instead, is failing to respect black peoples’ second and fourth amendment rights. This happened in Kentucky, where if you barge into someone’s house in the middle of the night you can expect to get shot. Police barging into people’s homes in the middle of the night unannounced is fundamentally incompatible with what the Constitution and Kentucky law gives homeowners the right to do: shoot at intruders in their home. And as such the practice of serving these no-knock warrants is an infringement of that right. It leads to tragic consequences under predictable circumstances where homeowners are just exercising their rights. And of course, it’s doubtful that officers display the same callousness to the possibility of armed homeowners when it comes to policing white neighborhoods. It’s another one in a long pattern of cases where black people are murdered for daring to exercise their second amendment rights.
How about: they should be held responsible for the preventable death of this woman in a situation they directly and deliberately created? Is that not the problem?
I don't think anyone is demanding a first degree murder conviction here. They didn't walk in with the intent to kill her. But they sure as shit did kill her, and it's all their fault that it happened. Sounds like open and shut manslaughter to me.
Because one of these is very easy to fix and would 100% mean Taylor would still be alive. The other would be super difficult to fix and who knows if it would have saved her life.
The answer is: both should be addressed.
The officers should be thoroughly investigated for this incident by an independent third party. If the facts support it they should be charged with the most advanced crime that the facts support (e.g. manslaughter).
Simultaneously, we should immediately discontinue and abandon no-knock warrants. If they're not abandoned entirely we should radically alter the burden of proof required to obtain one from probable cause to clear and convincing evidence.
But my understanding is that leading up to the death of Taylor no laws were broken.
In Kentucky, KRS 507.040 defines "Manslaughter in the second degree" (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...).
This is defined as:
> A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when he wantonly causes the death of another person...
A "wanton" state of mind in KY is defined in KRS 501.020 (https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id...
> A person acts wantonly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the result will occur or that the circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts wantonly with respect thereto.
Now, this quickly gets fact specific, but if the following acts are true:
- LMPD breached the house suddenly, and loudly
- LMPD breached the house late at night
- LMPD officers were wearing plain-clothes
- LMPD officers did not announce themselves (disputed)
I personally would find that the officers acted wantonly in a manner that would predictably created a serious risk of injury or death to themselves or bystanders. As such, given the statute and those 4 facts I would be willing to vote to convince on second-degree manslaughter in this case.
I'll note, again, that this is fact specific. The officers specifically claim to have loudly announced themselves. Walker and neighbors dispute that fact.
I think it's unreasonable to argue that police disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk when a Judge literally signed a piece of paper that said it was a justified risk.
And I don't think doing your job in a way that judges sign off 40,000 times a year is a "gross deviation from the standard of conduct".
If all no knock warrants are conducted that way, then I would indeed say that they are all wanton acts.
I don't care if they were following orders, or had permission from the state. Crime is still crime, and getting your boss to tell you to commit a crime is still a crime. Even if your boss wears blue.
Note also you've shifted the law slightly by saying executing the no-knock warrant how it's typicality done cannot be a gross deviation of standard conduct. Yet that's not what the law says.
The law does not say: "...disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a police officer conducting a no-knock warrant would observe".
It says "...disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation".
So let me ask you this: if you went down to Kentucky, and loudly broke into a house in the middle of the night" do you think it's likely that someone (yourself or the people in the house) could come to harm from this?
I think no-knock warrants are typically conducted by uniformed officers who loudly declare that they are the police, That's a very different fact pattern than what I said would merit manslaughter.
Each of these decisions trades some risk of death and injury for an increased likelihood that the police officers will find drugs.
I don't think this is a good trade-off, I don't think any amount of drugs you can flush down a toilet in a minute is worth the loss of life or violation of individual rights that a no knock warrant entails.
> So let me ask you this: if you went down to Kentucky, and loudly broke into a house in the middle of the night" do you think it's likely that someone (yourself or the people in the house) could come to harm from this?
Likely, no, possible yes.
I'd argue that it's not likely also, but I would say it is substantial, which is sufficient under the law.
I understand the reasoning provided. I think it wantonly risks death for unjustifiable reasons. They can provide their justifications, but to me (were I sitting on a jury) I would think an objective reasonable person would not agree with them.
It sounds like we're mostly in agreement on their actions creating a circumstance where the death could occur. I think at this point maybe the only difference between us is whether that risk is "justifiable" as described in the statute.
I think it is not and (again, given the specific facts I proposed which would have to be proven at trial) I would find them guilty of manslaughter.