Kelly Hanna Goodlett, the former Louisville Metro Police Detective accused of helping falsify an affidavit that was used to secure the warrant for the deadly Breonna Taylor home raid, pleaded guilty to the charge on Tuesday. According to the Louisville Courier Journal, Goodlett, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to violate Taylor’s civil rights.
Goodlett is also likely to take the stand as a star witness during the trial of her former colleagues, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany. The two former Louisville police officers are facing civil rights charges in Taylor’s March 2020 death. Another former cop, Brett Hankison, is also facing a federal charge in connection with the raid.
Goodlett’s guilty plea makes her the first police officer to be criminally convicted in the shooting death of Taylor. She faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, as well as three years of supervised release. The deceased Black woman’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was in the courtroom when Goodlett entered her plea.
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Goodlett tendered her resignation to the Louisville Metro Police Department after the Department of Justice indicted her and three of her ex-colleagues some weeks ago. The 35-year-old admitted she was untruthful when she claimed a postal worker had confirmed Taylor was taking in packages for her ex-boyfriend who was convicted on drug charges, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. But postal inspectors said there was nothing to prove Taylor was receiving packages for her ex-boyfriend.
Jaynes’ indictment also claims he and Goodlett met in his garage for the purpose of getting “on the same page” after a postal worker debunked the aforementioned claim.
As reported by Face2Face Africa, Taylor was with her boyfriend Kenneth Walker when she was shot by the three Louisville police officers who broke into her apartment in the name of executing a no-knock search warrant in a narcotics investigation on March 13, 2020.
Police later explained that they had been investigating Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted felon. But the deceased’s family sued the city, claiming “officers obtained a ‘no-knock’ search warrant with false information and burst into Taylor’s home after midnight without announcing themselves and ‘blindly fired’ into it, spraying bullets into her house and neighboring apartments with a total disregard for the value of human life.”
Two other former officers involved in the raid, Sgt. John Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, haven’t been charged in connection with the deadly incident. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland explained that the decision to not charge them was because “the officers who ultimately carried out the search at Taylor’s apartment were not involved in the drafting of the warrant and were unaware of the false and misleading statements that it contained.”
