Ex-Louisville police officer charged in Breonna Taylor search warrant to plead guilty

Andrew Wolfson, Louisville Courier Journal
·2 min read
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Former Louisville Metro Police Detective Kelly Hannah Goodlett will plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the civil rights of Breonna Taylor for helping falsify an affidavit for the search of her apartment in March 2020.

Goodlett, 35, will appear Aug. 22 before U.S. District Judge David Hale to enter her plea, her lawyer, Brandon Marshall, announced in court Friday.

Magistrate Judge Regina Edwards ordered Goodlett to surrender her passport and have no contact with her codefendants ― Sgt. Kyle Meany and former detectives Joshua Jaynes and Brett Hankison.

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Goodlett was expected to plead guity ― and testify against her colleagues ― because she was charged by information rather than indicted. She faces a sentence of no more than five years in prison.

The charging document says Goodlett falsely claimed a postal inspector had verified Taylor was receiving packages for her ex-boyfriend, convicted drug dealer Jamarcus Glover, at her apartment before the raid.

Goodlett, a detective in the now-disbanded Place-Based Investigations, also is charged with knowingly conspiring with Jaynes and others to falsify the search warrant affidavit.

Louisville Metro Police Officer Kelly Goodlett
Louisville Metro Police Officer Kelly Goodlett

The indictment alleges Goodlett met with Jaynes in his garage to “get on the same page” after a postal inspector said the claim that Taylor was receiving Glover's packages was bogus.

Jaynes, 40, and Meany, 35, also face civil rights charges for the search that ended in Taylor's death, while Hankison, 46, is charged with violating the civil rights of Taylor; her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker; and three of Taylor’s neighbors; by blindly firing shots into her apartment.

Taylor was killed during a police raid on her apartment near Iroquois Park when Walker, thinking an intruder was breaking in, fired one shot that hit Sgt. John Mattingly in the leg. He and another detective, Myles Cosgrove, returned fire, killing Taylor.

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She was 26, and her death set off protests that lasted for months in Louisville and other cities.

Mattingly has since retired, and Cosgrove was fired. Neither has been charged because U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said "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."

Andrew Wolfson: 502-582-7189; awolfson@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @adwolfson.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ex-cop charged in Breonna Taylor search warrant to plead guilty