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LMPD Officer Admits Part Of Breonna Taylor Warrant Was ‘Incorrect’

J. Tyler Franklin

Louisville police detective Joshua Jaynes, who obtained the search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s apartment, admitted some language is “incorrect” in the affidavit for that search warrant, according to a filing submitted Friday.

In the new document filed in a civil case filed by Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, Jaynes’ lawyer wrote that his client admits that it wasn’t correct to say the United States Postal Inspector confirmed certain packages were going to Taylor’s home. He also said the inclusion of that statement as fact was no more than an “honest mistake.”

Louisville Metro Police Department released documents related to the police’s internal investigation in October that show Jaynes admitted the same to police investigators earlier this year.

Then-interim police chief Robert Schroeder placed Jaynes on paid administrative reassignment in June due to questions about how he obtained the warrant. That question is also at the heart of an ongoing FBI investigation into the Taylor case.

James Dilbeck, Jaynes’ lawyer, argued there was still “sufficient probable cause” for the search and that, under precedent, “the warrant-issuing judge is not required to attest to the validity of the information provided in the warrant.”

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Mary Shaw signed Jaynes’ warrant hours before the March 13 raid. In October, Shaw told the Courier Journal she was concerned Jaynes may have lied in the affidavit.

Walker fired a single shot at the plainclothes officers who were breaking down the door just before 1 a.m., and struck Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, according to police. He and two other officers — Det. Myles Cosgrove and former Det. Brett Hankison — fired more than two dozen bullets into Taylor’s apartment  and shot Taylor, who was unarmed, six times.

Walker has said he did not know who was entering the apartment, and filed suit in September alleging immunity from further prosecution under Kentucky’s stand your ground law, as well as false arrest and imprisonment and other complaints.

The search was based on LMPD’s narcotics investigation into Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. Jaynes claimed in the affidavit for his search warrant that Taylor was receiving packages intended for Glover, and that the postmaster confirmed that, but he didn’t.

Police investigators found some mail addressed to Glover, but no drugs or related money.

Jaynes, Mattingly and Cosgrove are still employed by LMPD; Schroeder fired Hankison in June. Four months later, a grand jury indicted Hankison on three counts of wanton endangerment for bullets fired into the apartment of Taylor’s then-neighbors.

Jaynes is among a large group of defendants named in Walker’s lawsuit, including Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Louisville mayor Greg Fischer, Jefferson County Attorney Michael O’Connell, Louisville police leadership, and the officers who participated in the raid on Taylor’s apartment.

Jaynes asked the judge to dismiss him as a defendant in Walker’s lawsuit in the filing Friday, as several other defendants have already done.

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