LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) –Former Louisville Metro police Det. Brett Hankison is now scheduled to stand trial Aug. 31 on three felony counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into a nearby apartment during the raid on Breonna Taylor's home in March.
However, the high-profile trial may not take place in Jefferson County.
After a judge Wednesday scheduled the trial date, Cincinnati attorney Stew Mathews, who represents Hankison, announced that he will file a change-of-venue request to move the trial outside of Jefferson County.
While Mathews didn’t give any reasons for the requested move, it is expected he will argue that the jury pool in Louisville has been influenced by constant media coverage and protests over the fatal shooting of Taylor and police brutality across the country.
In an interview after the hearing, Mathews declined to go into specific reasons for the request but said "the media coverage has a whole lot to do with it but there’s a whole lot more to it too."
Mathews said he would file the motion in the next two weeks. Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Ann Bailey Smith set a hearing date for March 25.
The last trial moved out of Jefferson County was in 2002 when the case against a former Jefferson County corrections officer accused of killing an inmate in 1998 was held in Lexington. The former officer, Timothy Barnes, was acquitted in the death of Adrian Reynolds.
Other police officers have been tried in Louisville, including McKenzie Mattingly on a a murder charge in the 2004 death of 19-year-old Michael Newby. Mattingly was found not guilty.
On Sept. 23, Hankison was charged with firing at a neighboring apartment unit, showing "extreme indifference to human life" for three people inside, a grand jury concluded.
Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said a man, pregnant woman and child were inside that unit at the time.
Hankison also shot into another apartment, but it was empty.
Each wanton endangerment charge carries a prison sentence of 1 to 5 years, if convicted.
Neither Hankison nor the two other officers who fired their weapons during the raid -- Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Det. Myles Cosgrove -- were indicted in Taylor's death. Taylor was killed by one of Cosgrove's bullets, according to FBI ballistics findings released by Cameron.
Police shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room tech and former EMT, during an undercover raid on her apartment on Springfield Drive as part of a series of raids elsewhere that targeted narcotics trafficking.
No drugs or money were found in her home.
Taylor’s death touched off Louisville’s racial justice protests and gained national prominence as demonstrations spread across the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man who died after a white officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck as he pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”
On Wednesday, Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley said prosecutors would need three to four days, not counting jury selection, to put on their case against Hankison. She also said all of the evidence has been turned over to Mathews.
Mathews said he has reviewed the "voluminous" amount of evidence and we are "ready to go. I don't think there are any outstanding procedural issues at this point."
Asked after the hearing about the evidence, Mathews said, "the facts are going to be much in dispute in this case."
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