Kentucky AG seeks to delay release of Breonna Taylor grand jury recordings
Steve Harrigan on Kentucky Attorney General seeking to delay release of Breonna Taylor's grand jury recordings
A Kentucky judge on Wednesday delayed the release of grand jury recordings in the Breonna Taylor case until Friday, the office of state Attorney General Daniel Cameron said hours before they were supposed to go public.
Cameron announced that his office moved to delay the release of the proceedings in the controversial March police shooting of Taylor in Louisville by a week.
His office filed a motion late Tuesday to delay the release in order to protect the identity of the witnesses, particularly the private citizens, named in the recording, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. His office said it wants to "redact personal identifiers of any named person and to redact both names and personal identifiers of any private citizen."
BREONNA TAYLOR: KENTUCKY AG DID NOT RECOMMEND MURDER CHARGES
This undated photo provided by Taylor family attorney Sam Aguiar shows Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. A grand juror has filed a suit asking the court to release records and transcripts of the proceedings. (Courtesy of Taylor Family attorney Sam Aguiar via AP, File)
Elizabeth Kuhn, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general’s office, told the newspaper in an email early Wednesday that the audio recording is 20 hours long. She said the office filed a motion to request additional time "to redact personally identifiable information of witnesses, including addresses and phone numbers."
Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Ann Bailey Smith is expected to rule on the motion later Wednesday.
"We are complying with the judge’s order," Kuhn said.
Attorneys representing former Louisville Metro Police Detective Brett Hankison, who was fired in June, and was the only officer involved in the raid to be indicted last week, also agreed with the delay, Cameron’s office said.
Cameron's office did not immediately return a Fox News request for comment.
This comes after an anonymous juror filed a court motion Monday to have transcripts and a recording of the grand jury proceedings made public, as well as sought clarification as to what jurors can publicly discuss regarding the case. In response, Smith ordered Cameron’s office to file the recording in court by noon Wednesday.
In an on-camera interview Tuesday, Cameron said his office planned to comply with the court order by making the recording public despite concerns that such a release could jeopardize an FBI investigation into Taylor’s case and could chill future grand jury proceedings.
Cameron said his office did not recommend murder charges against the other two officers involved in the March 13 raid, Sgt. Johnathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, to the grand jury. He said both were justified in their use of force since Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired at them first and that all evidence suggested Walker fired the bullet that went through Mattingly's leg.
“The tragedy here is that Breonna Taylor was in that hallway with Mr. Walker and was hit and died,” Cameron said. “At the end of the day, our responsibility at the AG’s office is to the truths and to the facts. I cannot fashion the facts in such a way to meet a narrative that in many ways has already been put out there before the facts have been put out there."
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron addresses the media following the return of a grand jury investigation into the death of Breonna Taylor, in Frankfort, Ky., on Wednesday. (AP)
"I'm not afraid of any judgments or recommendations that we made," he said. “We presented all the facts that we uncovered in this investigation. The fact of the matter is we’re confident in the presentation that we put forth. Whether this grand jury speaks out or not, that's of their own accord and their own volition. I don’t have anything to do with that specifically."
The grand jury indicted Hankison on three counts of wanton endangerment last week in connection to shots fired into the apartment next door to Taylor’s while three people were home. He was not charged in connection to Taylor's death.
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Kevin Glogower, the attorney representing the anonymous juror, said in a press conference alongside his legal team Tuesday that “accountability and a sense of public trust” drove his client’s motion to make the recording public as well as obtain a declaration of rights from the court system to know whether grand jurors have the right to speak freely about their experiences in the proceedings “without fear of prosecution, persecution, condemnation, torment, etc.”
“My client wants to make sure the truth gets out. My client wants to make sure anything that happened in there becomes something of public knowledge,” Glogower said.
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