‘Only a sliver of justice’: Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter underlines breakthrough in Breonna Taylor case, but it’s ‘not nearly enough’

Good news came down from Louisville, Kentucky — AP reported that Breonna Taylor’s family got a long-overdue reprieve when a jury convicted Kentucky detective Brett Hankison for using “excessive force.” But the verdict isn’t shaping up to be the justice everyone was looking for.

The decision came late at 9:30 pm on Nov. 1, 2024, after the jury had earlier acquitted Hankison for using excessive force on Taylor’s neighbors. As the verdict was being read, some members were noticeably moved to tears, as the case has been ongoing for such a long time, causing understandably long-standing emotional labor for everyone involved.

Taylor’s case first started getting public attention in late 2020 after being underreported during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. Celebrities from Oprah to Lewis Hamilton led the charge in bringing attention to the accused’s actions that led to Breonna Taylor’s death.

On March 12, 2020, after a case of mistaken identity, Kentucky Police obtained a warrant to conduct a no-knock search at Taylor’s property, believing that her former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, was also on the property. The police department suspected Glover of trafficking drugs. Unfortunately, Glover was not at the property at that time; instead, Kenneth Walker III was at the house. Walker claimed he was not aware the police were there to look for Glover and also claimed they did not issue a warning. After Walker used his registered gun to defend against supposed intruders, the police fired back 32 rounds, taking Breonna Taylor’s life.

The celebrities and protesters pushed local legal entities to take the case more seriously than they did initially, which led to questioning nearly every aspect of the case, from whether the police department obtained the search warrants under false pretenses — which they were later found guilty of — to whether or not the police announced themselves, for which The New York Times could not find a conclusive narrative from witnesses. Even before the case concluded, Taylor’s legacy had already changed police practices, with legislation promptly passed to ban no-knock warrants.

But of course, for the family, nothing will ever bring back their loved one, and what they wanted now was justice for Breonna Taylor. Speaking of the verdict, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, called it “a long-awaited moment of accountability.”

For others on social media, however, this ruling was nowhere near enough as after a long wait the justice that prevailed failed to accurately hold the officer liable for actions that took a life.

Though the verdict of the court has pushed the police department to accept some accountability, the disappointment prevailed over the attempt to minimize the severity of the tragedy as the officer will be getting punished for using “excessive force” and not for manslaughter.

For Tamika Palmer, Breonna Taylor’s mother, this was a long journey where the simple conclusion that her daughter “deserved justice” “when she said, “It “took a lot of time. It took a lot of patience. It was hard.”

It remains to be seen what the next hearing adds to this delayed arrival of justice in Breonna Taylor’s case. As per the conviction against Hankison, he can face a maximum sentence of life in prison when he receives his sentence on March 12, 2025.