Special News Series: Rising Up for Justice! – Breonna Taylor Grand Juror Says Homicide Charges Were Not Presented

Introduction To This Series:

This post is one installment in an ongoing news series: a “living history” of the current national and international uprising for justice.

Today’s movement descends directly from the many earlier civil rights struggles against repeated injustices and race-based violence, including the killing of unarmed Black people. The posts in this series serve as a timeline of the uprising that began on May 26, 2020, the day after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck. The viral video of Floyd’s torturous suffocation brought unprecedented national awareness to the ongoing demand to truly make Black Lives Matter in this country.

The posts in this series focus on stories of the particular killings that have spurred the current uprising and on the protests taking place around the USA and across the globe. Sadly, thousands of people have lost their lives to systemic racial, gender, sexuality, judicial, and economic injustice. The few whose names are listed here represent the countless others lost before and since. Likewise, we can report but a few of the countless demonstrations for justice now taking place in our major cities, small towns, and suburbs.

To view the entire series of Rising Up for Justice! posts, insert “rising up” in the search bar above.

Breonna Taylor Grand Juror Says Homicide Charges Were Not Presented

A judge gave grand jurors in the case permission to speak publicly, a rare move that immediately led one juror to speak out.

By Will Right, The New York Times

A Kentucky judge on Tuesday granted grand jurors in the Breonna Taylor case permission to speak publicly, a rare move that immediately led one juror to assert that prosecutors had not given the panel the opportunity to bring homicide charges in the case.

“The grand jury did not have homicide offenses explained to them,” the anonymous juror said. “The grand jury never heard about those laws. Self-defense or justification was never explained either. Questions were asked about additional charges and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors didn’t feel they could make them stick.”

A mural of Breonna Taylor in the night.

The anonymous grand juror, in an initial legal motion seeking permission to speak publicly, accused Mr. Cameron of using the grand jury “as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility” and of planting “more seeds of doubt in the process.”

A second anonymous grand juror said in a statement that they were “pleased with the result” of the judge’s opinion, and would be discussing possible next steps with a lawyer.

Read the full article here

Learn more about the Breonna Taylor court case here and here

More Breaking News here