Breonna Taylor was shot dead by police when they arrived at her home around midnight with a no-knock warrant. The killing of a Black woman in Kentucky sparked a wave of protests across the US.

A former Kentucky police officer was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Monday for violating Breonna Taylor’s rights during the raid in which she was shot and killed five years ago.

Kentucky police officers shot and killed Taylor, a Black woman, in March 2020 after they used a controversial no-knock warrant at her home.

Taylor’s death, along with the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in May 2020 by a white police officer, sparked racial justice protests across the US and internationally.

Civil rights attorneys for Taylor’s family welcomed prison time but had hoped for a tougher sentence.

“While today’s sentence is not what we had hoped for — nor does it fully reflect the severity of the harm caused — it is more than what the Department of Justice sought,” they said. “That, in itself, is a statement.”

Police officer fired 10 shots

The court heard that Taylor and her boyfriend were sleeping when they heard a noise at the door around midnight.

Her boyfriend, believing it to be an intruder, fired his legally-owned gun, wounding a police officer. Police officers then opened fire, killing Taylor.

“A piece of me was taken from me that day,” Taylor’s mother Tanika Palmer told the court.

Brett Hankison is the only officer to be convicted in connection with the incident.

He fired 10 shots during the raid but didn’t hit anyone.

US District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings said she was “startled” there weren’t more people injured during the raid from Hankison’s blind shots.

In addition to almost three years in prison, Hankison was also sentenced to three years of supervised release afterwards. The charges against him carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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Trump administration calls for lighter sentence

The Trump administration’s Justice Department had recommended that Hankison be given no additional prison time beyond the one day he spent in jail at the time of his arrest.

“Hankison did not shoot Ms Taylor and is not otherwise responsible for her death,” Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote in a rare memo to the judge.

“Hankison did not wound her or anyone else at the scene that day, although he did discharge his duty weapon ten times blindly into Ms Taylor’s home.”

However, Jennings said this recommendation treated the shooting as “an inconsequential crime” and would minimize the jury’s verdict from November, which found Hankison guilty of using excessive force.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru