Bluesky

On Monday, former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his role in the murder of Breonna Taylor. Hankison was one of three officers who broke into Taylor’s apartment while attempting to execute a falsified, no-knock warrant. He fired 10 shots, indiscriminately, toward Taylor’s bedroom. He didn’t hit Taylor, or her boyfriend Kenneth Walker, but some of his bullets passed into the apartment next to Taylor’s. After multiple trials, Hankison was convicted last year on one count of violating Taylor’s civil rights. He will likely be the only officer to face justice for killing Taylor.

Hankison received a light sentence, any way you slice it. The maximum sentence for a violation of civil rights that results in death is life in prison. Now, realistically, Hankison was never going to receive life because his individual shots did not strike the killing blow. Probation officials recommended a sentence of 135–168 months—which is in keeping with the guidelines for this kind of violation. Reuters reports that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines calls for 33–41 months. I’m not sure where they’re getting that number, but my hunch is that they’re using the guidelines for when deprivation of civil rights results in property damage, which I suppose you can get to since Hankison’s bullets didn’t actually hit anybody. Still, even if you somehow think Hankison’s crime was against property, 33 months is at the low end of the spectrum.

The judge who sentenced Hankison is Rebeca Grady Jennings, a former Kentucky lawyer who was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2018. Critics should be all over her for handing out a light sentence, but they’re not, because the Trump Justice Department, which has been busy decimating its Civil Rights Division, did something even more preposterous: It asked Jennings to sentence Hankison to just one day in prison.

People are right to focus on the gross insult of suggesting that a cop who has been convicted of a civil rights violation in a crime that led to the death of an innocent woman be sentenced to just one day in jail. But let’s not miss the fact that Judge Jennings essentially did what the Trump administration wanted her to do: treat Hankison with the leniency and mercy Hankison did not show to Taylor. She didn’t let Hankison waltz out of her courtroom and onto a show on Fox or Newsmax that is probably waiting for him, but she didn’t “throw the book” at him either. She did not punish him to the fullest extent of the law. Just because her sentence is better than the literal nothing the Trump administration asked for, however, doesn’t mean her sentence is justified. I promise you that if I unconstitutionally broke into someone’s apartment and then fired 10 shots in the dark, and a white woman died, I would not be going home inside of three years.

There was nothing the Justice Department could do to force Jennings to go easy on Hankison, and yet, she went easy on Hankison. At the sentencing hearing, Jennings complained that the Justice Department did not turn over victims’ impact statements. Usually, the prosecution hands over these statements to remind the judge of the seriousness of the crime during the sentencing phase. Trump’s Justice Department did not hand over these statements, because, again, they don’t actually think Black people, our lives, or our suffering matters. But it’s not like Jennings was unaware of both the community-level and national impact of Hankison’s crimes. I assume she’s had access to television and newspapers over these past few years. Jennings also said she was “startled” that Hankison’s bullets didn’t hit anybody. She had all the information she needed to sentence Hankison to something close to the max, but chose not to. That’s on her, not the racist Trump administration.

But the DOJ’s stunt has everybody reporting that 33 months is a lot longer than one day, as opposed to pointing out that it’s a lot less than life, or 168 months, or even 41 months. Simply by making an outrageous, nonsensical request, the Trump team has reframed the entire story. It’s one of the ways Trump keeps winning, even when he’s making losing arguments.

All that said, as an anti-carceral, actual progressive committed to criminal justice reform, I am obligated to point out that 33 months strikes me as good enough. I do not believe that more jail time means more justice, and regular readers know I maintain that intellectual position even when homicidal white folks are getting the benefit of sentencing leniency. My goal is not to treat white defendants like Black defendants: I wouldn’t wish being treated like a Black criminal defendant on my worst enemy, Sam Alito. My goal is to one day live in a world where Black defendants are treated with the same leniency often given to white criminals. If 33 months is what you get when you indiscriminately fire your gun 10 times into a darkened apartment, I want that same standard to be used when the shooter is Black.

But Trump could make it so Hankison serves no jail time at all for his violation of civil rights; all he has to do is grant Hankison a presidential pardon.

Hankison was prosecuted for a federal crime because Kentucky’s attorney general then, Daniel Cameron, refused to prosecute Hankison and his fellow officers. Cameron is now running to replace Mitch McConnell in the US Senate (after getting his whole entire ass handed to him by Andy Beshear when Cameron ran for governor). The federal prosecution of Hankison was a rearguard action taken by the Biden administration after Kentucky failed to hold its cops accountable.

Because Hankison was convicted on federal charges, he can be pardoned by the president. And Trump just loves pardoning violent whites. The Trump administration has already thrown out the settlement negotiated between the Biden Justice Department and the Louisville police department. They’ve already undone the few criminal justice reforms the Biden administration instituted after the murder of George Floyd. They’ve already come out in favor of the idea that the cops should be “immune” from all manner of accountability for brutal or homicidal actions. Pardoning the one person to be held accountable for the death of Breonna Taylor sounds like exactly the kind of thing a white supremacist president would do.

I am forced to assume that a Trump pardon will be the true legal end of this saga. The yearslong quest for justice by Taylor’s family will be short-circuited by Trump’s using a completely unchecked power to override the entire criminal justice system at his will.

Hankison, and the other officers who participated in the killing, should be in jail. But the entire system has worked to prevent that from happening, even before Taylor was pronounced dead at the scene. The white folks running this joint will not stop trying to help Hankison now, even after he’s been tried, convicted, and sentenced.

To be white is to always have another way to avoid responsibility and accountability for your actions. Your second chances never run out.