Kentucky AG agrees to release grand jury tapes in Breonna Taylor case

Kentucky’s attorney general has agreed to release the recordings of the secret grand jury proceeding that considered charges against three officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor.

Attorney General Daniel Cameron agreed to the release hours after a member of the grand jury sued to have the record of the proceedings opened to the public.

Cameron also said in a statement that the only charge he recommended to the grand jury was wanton endangerment. He had previously declined to provide details on what charges prosecutors brought to the grand jury to consider when it met last week.

Last week, the grand jury in Louisville issued charges against one of the officers for endangering neighbors of Taylor who had bullets fired into their home. None of the officers were charged in the killing of Taylor, who was shot five times after officers knocked down her door to serve a narcotics warrant on March 13.

Cameron said last week that two of the officers, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, were justified in firing their weapons because Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at them.

“Our prosecutors presented all of the evidence, even though the evidence supported that Sgt. Mattingly and Det. Cosgrove were justified in their use of force after having been fired upon by Kenneth Walker,” Cameron said in the statement. “For that reason, the only charge recommended was wanton endangerment.”

On Monday, a grand juror, who was not identified, filed a court motion asking a judge to release the record of the grand jury proceedings.

Cameron said in agreeing to the release of the recordings that the grand jury is meant to be a “secretive body.”

“It’s apparent that the public interest in this case isn’t going to allow that to happen,” Cameron said.

Indiana’s own Attorney General, Republican Curtis Hill, defended Cameron’s handling of the case in an op-ed published by Fox News on Saturday. Hill noted in his piece that there are only two Black attorneys general in the United States: Cameron and himself.

“Quite simply, Cameron properly defended the deliberations of a grand jury that considered the circumstances of a police action that so unfortunately ended in Breonna Taylor’s death,” Hill wrote. “Judging from the protests, however, many Black Lives Matter activists would have preferred that Cameron blindly pursue vengeance against police officers involved in the incident, regardless of whether they broke laws or not.”