Thursday, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) reacted to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron determining no police officers would be charged directly for the death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in March.
After offering her sympathy to the Taylor family, Jackson Lee called the decision “shameful,” arguing it is “very obvious” there was a “grave injustice” committed. She also called for a “civil rights investigation” into the case.
“[I]t is shameful what came out of the attorney general’s office and the grand jury, not because of grand jurors, but because we know prosecutors craft their own narrative,” Jackson Lee told CNN “New Day” host Alisyn Camerota. “They can expand the number of witnesses that go into a grand jury, or it can be very narrow. And if there is an issue of fact and law that still remains, individuals should have the right to express their defense in a trial by their peers. He did not do that. The attorney general of Kentucky did not do that. It is very obvious to us there was a grave injustice because did he call the other witnesses who said they did not hear the officers announce themselves? Were some officers in plain clothes, so if you’re in the middle of the night, coming into a private home, which is another sacred place in … Americans’ heart, in the middle of the night, plain-clothes, and people were asleep, and they could not see who you were? Did he not add that narrative so that grand jurors could understand what it means?”
“And then let me just say this — it was a defective warrant,” she continued. “How do you even not indict officers when, one, they came with a defective warrant, the person was in custody, and they have a fact question about whether they announced themselves or not. Frankly, this cries out for a civil rights investigation, Alisyn, and the FBI needs to do its job because people are in pain, and they are right to be in pain.”
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