10/20/20
The Breonna Taylor grand jury was not given an opportunity to consider homicide charges in the case against police officers who served a no-knock warrant at her home the night she was killed, an anonymous member of the panel said Tuesday. The statement came shortly after a Kentucky judge ruled that the grand juror may speak publicly about the case presented by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron. "The grand jury did not have homicide offenses explained to them," the anonymous grand juror wrote in a statement issued by attorney Kevin Glogower. "The grand jury never heard about those laws. Self defense or justification was never explained either." The rare statement -- juror said the panel was only presented with wanton endangerment charges against one of the officers involved the police shooting in March. "Questions were asked about additional charges and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn't feel they could make them stick," the juror's statement said. "The grand jury didn't agree that certain actions were justified, nor did it decide the indictment should be the only charges in the Breonna Taylor case. The grand jury was not given the opportunity to deliberate on those charges and deliberated only on what was presented to them. I can't speak for other jurors but I can help the truth be told."
Sam Aguiar, a lawyer for Taylor's family, said in a statement: "Daniel Cameron should be ashamed of himself. He made a decision based upon a political agenda." Aguiar added that Cameron, a rising star in the Republican Party, "tried to hide behind secrecy rules and now his lies got exposed. O'Connell wrote in her opinion that "justice requires disclosure of the grand jury proceedings in this case." "There exist additional interests to consider in making this decision: the interest of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to be assured that its publicly elected officials are being honest in their representations; the interest of grand jurors, whose service is compelled, to be certain their work is not mischaracterized by the very prosecutors on whom they relied to advise them; and, the interest of all citizens to have confidence in the integrity of the justice system," O'Connell wrote. The anonymous grand juror has suggested that Cameron may have misrepresented to the public the case presented to the panel, according the juror's attorney. In court filings, an attorney for the grand juror has said Cameron has made several public statements on the proceedings but is preventing grand jurors from doing the same and called Cameron's statements on the process "misleading."
abcnews.go.com
