A FORMER DETECTIVE pleaded guilty today to providing false information to obtain a search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home that lead to a 2020 raid in which police fatally shot the 26-year-old.
Her death, along with the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis the same year, became the focus of a wave of protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.
Kelly Goodlett, the former detective, admitted to conspiring with another ex-detective to “falsify a warrant affidavit for Breonna Taylor’s home” and to making “false statements to cover up the false affidavit,” according to the plea agreement.
She faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release, the document says.
Goodlett and two other officers were facing federal charges for falsifying the warrant, while a fourth was charged with using excessive force by opening fire during the raid, which was part of a drug trafficking case against Taylor’s ex-boyfriend.
The guilty plea sets the stage for Goodlett to be a key witness for the prosecution.
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020, when they heard a noise at the door.
Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer. Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.
Walker said police battered down the door unannounced, while the officers insisted they had identified themselves.
The city of Louisville, the largest in Kentucky, settled a wrongful death suit with Taylor’s family for $12 million in September 2020.
Taylor was an emergency room technician at the University of Louisville Health.
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