DOJ moved to dismiss remaining charges against ex-officers who falsified Breonna Taylor warrant

On March 20, 2026, federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson III in Louisville to dismiss "in the interest of justice" the remaining federal civil-rights charges against former Louisville Metro Police detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany, the two officers accused of drafting and swearing to a warrant affidavit that omitted material facts and lacked probable cause, leading to the March 13, 2020 raid on Breonna Taylor's apartment in which she was shot and killed. The motion, filed by the Justice Department under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, came after judges had twice reduced the original felony charges against each officer to misdemeanors, finding no direct link between the false warrant information and Taylor's death; prosecutors said after the second reduction that they had decided to drop the case rather than pursue misdemeanor convictions.

The case had originally been brought by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division under the Biden administration. Of the officers involved in the raid, only Kelly Goodlett, Jaynes's LMPD partner, pleaded guilty (to a felony conspiracy charge, in 2022), and only Brett Hankison was convicted at trial, in 2024, for blindly firing ten shots into Taylor's apartment. In the months before this dismissal motion, the same Trump DOJ had separately asked that Hankison — sentenced to nearly three years — be released from prison while he appeals his civil-rights conviction.

Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, said in a Facebook post that she was "extremely disappointed" and called a DOJ phone call informing her of the dismissal "utterly disrespectful." Attorneys for Taylor's family, Ben Crump and Lonita Baker, said Taylor "always deserved more than the scraps of justice she got." U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who represents Louisville, called the decision "not justice."

Updates

2026-03-27 — Judge dismissed charges against ex-officers with prejudice [2, 3]

Judge Simpson granted the DOJ's motion and dismissed the charges against Jaynes and Meany with prejudice, permanently barring prosecutors from refiling. The same day, Rep. McGarvey sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi condemning the dismissal as part of a pattern of federal interference undermining accountability for Taylor's death, citing the administration's earlier move to unwind Louisville's police consent decree and its push for Hankison's early release.