After a judge ordered a recording of the grand jury proceedings in Breonna Taylor’s homicide be added to the trial documents for the indicted former police officer Brett Hankison, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced that he would release the tapes Wednesday, the Washington Post reports.
Neither Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, the two officers who shot and killed the unarmed 26-year-old EMT, were indicted by the grand jury. Hankison was indicted on three counts of wanton endangerment for blindly firing more than ten rounds through a plate-glass door that was shaded by a curtain. The three counts stem from Hankison’s round penetrating into a neighboring residence where three people were sleeping.
Earlier today, an unnamed member of the grand jury filed a motion in court to release the grand jury testimony, stating in the motion that Cameron did not correctly summarize the feelings of the members of the grand jury.
Cameron’s office fought releasing the recordings citing the need for grand jury proceedings to be secret, however, in a statement Monday, AG spokeswoman Elizabeth Kuhn said that the grand jury “is meant to be a secretive body,” but it is “apparent that the public interest in this case isn’t going to allow that to happen.”
The anonymous grand juror claimed that much of what was discussed in the grand jury room was misrepresented by Cameron, including the finding that the shooting of Taylor by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified.
“We have no concerns with grand jurors sharing their thoughts on our presentation because we are confident in the case we presented,” Kuhn wrote in a statement. “Once the public listens to the recording, they will see that over the course of two-and-a-half days, our team presented a thorough and complete case to the Grand Jury.”