“How Many More?” Attorney Ben Crump on Latest in Breonna Taylor, Tyre Nichols & Roger Fortson Cases

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, where a federal judge has dealt a major blow to calls for justice, after throwing out felony charges against two former Louisville police officers for their roles in her fatal shooting in her own home over four years ago. Officers Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany, who are white, were charged in 2022 with falsifying a warrant that led to the police raid on Taylor’s apartment in March 2020. The two officers were not present during the fatal shooting. The federal judge instead has ruled that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker is legally responsible for her death, after he fired his gun, thinking that the men were intruders in the home when seven plainclothes police officers serving a no-knock warrant broke down the door, barged in, just after midnight on March 13, 2020.

Twenty-six-year-old Breonna Taylor was an emergency medical technician and aspiring nurse.

In 2022, the Justice Department filed civil rights charges against four officers involved in Taylor’s death. Kelly Goodlett was the only one to plead guilty in 2022, admitting she had helped a fellow officer lie to convince a judge to sign off on the no-knock warrant, falsely claiming they had evidence of drug dealings taking place in Taylor’s home. No drugs were ever found.

Meanwhile, former Louisville officer Brett Hankison faces a third trial in October. He was acquitted in 2022 of three state counts of wanton endangerment for shooting into Breonna Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment during the raid. And last year a jury was deadlocked over whether to convict him on use of excessive force and violating Taylor’s rights, her partner’s and her neighbors’.

The two officers who actually fatally shot Taylor, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, have never been charged.

Breonna Taylor’s death in a hail of police gunfire in 2020, which came just two months before the police murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, sparked protests across the country and world.

For more, we’re joined by Ben Crump, civil rights attorney.

Ben, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you explain what this judge’s ruling means?

BENJAMIN CRUMP: That it continues the systematic pattern of disrespect to Black women and the fact that there is little to no justice when Black women are unjustly killed by those who are supposed to protect and serve them. The family is devastated. Us social justice, civil rights attorneys are just dumbfounded by this ruling.

You have officers who lie on a probable cause affidavit to get a no-knock warrant to bust into a woman’s apartment. That Black woman, Breonna Taylor, is killed as a result of your unnecessary, unjustifiable and unconstitutional affront to the Fourth Amendment against unlawful search and seizure. And yet the judge says, “Well, there’s nothing they did to cause her death.”

But yet we want to blame her boyfriend, a Black man named Kenny Walker, who is legally in the apartment, who has a lawful right to be a registered gun owner, who tries to defend his home, his woman, himself. And that is what you’re going to say is the cause of her death, because they were trying to defend themselves against people they thought were burglarizing their home. It flies in the face of justice and all common sense.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, Kenny was very clear in saying he did not understand that these men were police officers, that they didn’t identify themselves. They were breaking down his door.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Yeah. You know, Amy, it’s the intellectual justification of discrimination. These officers knew that they were lying before, on the probable cause affidavit, and then, as officer Goodlett has pled and testified, they were trying to conspire and lie in the aftermath of killing Breonna Taylor. Now, everybody else in America sees that. This federal judge, apparently, is doing what the United States government has done, whether it’s Pamela Turner’s case, a Black woman killed in Houston, Texas — we’re fighting Sonya Massey now in Illinois. It’s this — Sandra Bland. It’s this epidemic of Black women being killed by police, and police getting away with murder.

And we have to scream at the top of our lungs to continue to say their name and not let them get away with this. The Justice Department is going to appeal this matter. And what we’re going to continue to do is to rally for justice, both in the courtrooms and outside the courtrooms, for these Black women, like Breonna Taylor, like Pamela Turner, like Atatiana Jefferson, like Sonya Massey. I mean, how many more?

AMY GOODMAN: Ben Crump, I also wanted to ask you about the news that a second former Memphis police officer has pleaded guilty in the police killing of Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old Black father who died after a brutal police beating. The former officer, Emmitt Martin, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations and could face up to 40 years in prison. Go back to the story of Tyre Nichols. Tell us what happened and what this means.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Well, obviously, Tyre Nichols was one of the worst police videos of brutality that we’ve ever witnessed. Tyre Nichols was about two blocks from his home. He didn’t break any laws. But there was a SCORPION unit, this special tactic unit at the Memphis Police Department that was allowed to harass and violate the constitutional rights of Black people in a certain section of Memphis, Tennessee, under the guise that they were deterring crime. And so, it was a pattern and practice that they could just unjustly use excessive force to intimidate Black citizens in that part of the city. And they said they wanted to do it because they wanted to lower the crime. And as I and Reverend Al Sharpton said, well, if you’re not doing this in the white part of town, how do you prevent crime there? Well, that’s the same tactics you should employ in the Black side of town.

In this violent, brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by these five officers, I mean, he was barely conscious. And they kept holding him up, and they’re punching him some more like he was a rag doll, like he was a human piñata. I mean, they were kicking him, hitting him with batons. And they literally beat him to death. And if it was not for the camera on the night pole, they would have probably gotten away with it. But that camera showed us everything, Amy. And our stomachs were literally in knots, watching them beat a human being to death.

And at this point, all of them have been charged, both in the state and federal levels, for their crimes that caused the death of Tyre Nichols. The second officer has pled guilty and can face up to 40 years in prison in the federal case.

AMY GOODMAN: Ben Crump, I mean, it’s horrifying that I have one case after another to ask you about, but I want to ask about this third case that you’re working on, in Florida. A sheriff’s deputy has been charged with manslaughter in connection with the killing of 23-year-old Air Force member Roger Fortson, who was shot to death also in his own home. Police body-camera footage from the May 3rd killing shows Roger Fortson answering the door of his own apartment and immediately being fatally shot by an Okaloosa County officer who was responding to a domestic disturbance report that turned out to be false. The officer shot Fortson almost immediately as he opened the door. This is a clip of the horrifying video.

EDDIE DURAN: Sheriff’s Office. Open the door! Step out. [gunfire] Drop the gun! Drop the gun!

ROGER FORTSON: It’s over there.

EDDIE DURAN: Drop the gun!

ROGER FORTSON: I don’t have it.

EDDIE DURAN: 312, shots fired. Suspect down. Do not move! 312, get EMS my location.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, former Okaloosa County deputy Eddie Duran was charged with manslaughter with a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting of Senior Airman Roger Fortson, which is first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison, Ben.

BENJAMIN CRUMP: Yeah, Amy, it’s still heartbreaking that this 23-year-old senior airman, this American hero who fought to protect the constitutional rights, was killed in such an unjustified manner when he simply opened his door. It was, we believe, the apartment complex getting it wrong, but then this officer getting it wrong, because the officer did not give Roger any time to comply with his orders.

Roger, who was a law-abiding registered gun owner, again, like Kenny Walker, Breonna’s boyfriend — when Black men have guns, they are not seen as law-abiding citizens. They are seen as criminals that you must take down for whatever reason by law enforcement.

But he had his gun in a down position. The officer immediately told him to step back. Roger stepped back. Roger was following all the instructions of this officer, who shot him multiple times. And even while he was on the ground dying, Amy, he was still trying to follow the instructions and the orders of this officer.

And so, it was appropriate that this officer was charged with manslaughter for use of a firearm. And it’s so very rare in the state of Florida that this happens. It’s only been four officers in the last 35 years that have been charged for killing citizens. All of them happen to be African American citizens that were killed in these four charges. And there’s only been one conviction in 35 years. And so, we have to stay vigilant that Roger Fortson gets justice.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much, Ben, for joining us. Ben Crump is a civil rights attorney. He’s the attorney for the families of Fortson, Roger Fortson, and Tyre Nichols and Breonna Taylor.

Next up, we’ll be joined by New York City Councilmember Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, who just addressed the Democratic National Convention last week in Chicago. Back in 30 seconds.