The Marshall Project by Jamiles Lartey 8/8/2020
Why It’s Not So Simple To Arrest The Cops Who Shot Breonna Taylor
Memes and billboards are calling for arresting the three officers. But what does Kentucky law say?
The entire internet, it seems, is calling for the arrests of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor in her Louisville, Kentucky, home. The viral meme goes like this: take any subject and insert a reference to Taylor. For example, on the first day of the delayed baseball season the Tampa Bay Rays tweeted: “Today is Opening Day, which means it's a great day to arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor.†On Friday, Oprah Magazine began erecting some 26 billboards in Louisville making the same plea for arrests.
But it’s not that simple, partly because of a tangled legal doctrine that applies to Kentucky and 28 other states. There is no specific law in these jurisdictions addressing police shooting in self-defense, which means officers have the same rights and obligations as any resident. Yet police have the unique power to initiate violence—like knocking down the door of a private home in the middle of the night—that other people don’t.
Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was struck by eight police bullets in March as officers attempted to serve a no-knock warrant on her home during a narcotics investigation. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired his gun first, believing intruders were invading their home and striking an officer in the leg. Officers returned fire. No drugs were found in the home.
More:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/08/08/why-it-s-not-so-simple-to-arrest-the-cops-who-shot-breonna-taylor
