"If you think America is not evil the Louisville prosecutors have offered a plea deal to her ex-boyfriend if he would commit perjury (lying under oath) to implicate Ms. Taylor who was murdered by an illegal, unauthorized no-knock invasion of her home by the Louisville Police.
"For months, as Breonna Taylor has risen to nationwide prominence as a symbol of racial injustice and police impunity — her name uttered by crowds of demonstrators and top politicians, her face appearing on banners, basketball jerseys, and magazine covers — Louisville prosecutors have continued to prosecute her ex-boyfriend, whose suspected drug trafficking led police to raid her apartment and fatally shoot her.
Taylor’s family and lawyers have insisted that she had nothing to do with Jamarcus Glover’s alleged crimes. With little evidence against her and no previous criminal record, they say, she was only pulled into the case through her ties to Glover, whom she had cut off before her killing.
Yet in July, Louisville prosecutors worked up a draft of a plea bargain with this offer for Glover: If the two-time convict said that Taylor had participated in his “organized crime syndicate,” according to court records first reported by WDRB on Monday, he could see a possible 10-year prison sentence turn into only a probation.
Sam Aguiar, a Louisville attorney representing Taylor’s family in a wrongful-death lawsuit, slammed the offer as part of a smear campaign. He said the offer shows that local officials are “desperate” to justify Taylor’s killing and “paint a picture of her which was vastly different than the woman she truly was,” he told the TV station.
“Shame on that office,” Aguiar wrote on Facebook. “She’s dead. Way to try and attack a woman when she’s not even here to defend herself.”
But Tom Wine, the Jefferson County commonwealth’s attorney, argued that the offer was only brought up during negotiations and never formally drafted into any actual plea deals.
“Our office has not and does not posthumously indict any person who is deceased,” Wine said in a statement Monday. “When I was advised of the discussions … I directed that Ms. Breonna Taylor’s name be removed.”
Glover, 30, who has vouched for Taylor’s innocence, failed to show up to court to accept any plea deal. But news of the offer is nonetheless likely to inflame tensions as Glover’s case — and by proxy, the series of events that led up to Taylor’s killing — continues to make its way through the courts, and protesters continue demanding accountability.
By now, the details of what happened to Taylor on March 13 are well-established: A young emergency room technician and aspiring nurse, she and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were asleep in her apartment when they heard someone coming in through the door.
Three plainclothes officers — Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, all White — had entered on a no-knock search warrant, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported. After Walker let off one shot, fearing the police were intruders, the officers responded with more than 20, including multiple that hit Taylor and killed her.
Less examined in the accounts has been Glover’s role. He and Taylor had been seeing each other intermittently for years, according to the New York Times, and she paid or arranged bail for him several times and remained in contact with Glover as he was secretly surveilled by police.
GPS trackers on Glover’s car showed him visiting her apartment, and police photos showed her at a suspected drug house. After he was arrested in the hours following Taylor’s death, he told several people in calls from jail that he had left thousands of dollars at her home, according to the Courier-Journal.
Still, Aguiar — as well as many activist leaders and the Kentucky ACLU — said that police lacked enough evidence to conduct a raid on Taylor’s apartment complex, especially with a no-knock warrant. When they did enter her residence, critics have said, police failed to follow key protocols, such as staging an ambulance nearby, that could have saved her.
“Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy. Period,” Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (D) wrote on Twitter.
Scott Barton, a defense attorney representing Glover, said that prosecutors had given him several plea offers, including one mentioning Taylor, he told WDRB, though the most recent offer did not.
But Aguiar, who had previously accused Louisville police of going to “great lengths” to dig up Taylor’s past, said the plea fell into a larger pattern.
As part of the July 13 offer, WDRB reported, Glover would have had to attest that through late April he and several “co-defendants,” including Taylor, trafficked large quantities of drugs “into the Louisville community.”
Wine has denied that Taylor would ever have been listed as a “co-defendant.” Contrary to Aguiar’s posts on social media, he said, Taylor was never mentioned as a “co-defendant” in court records or in the official plea deal presented to Glover. The document shared only was a pre-negotiation draft, he said.
But Glover, who was last arrested on Thursday, told the Courier Journal that Taylor was not involved in selling drugs.
In one jailhouse call, he said that police had “no business” looking him for him at her house. “At the end of the day, I know she didn’t — I know she didn’t to deserve none of this sh--," he said, according to WDRB."
Breonna Taylor's ex-boyfriend offered plea that said she was part of 'criminal enterprise,' family attorney says - The Washington Post
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