Tag: jury

Breonna Taylor's death: Mistrial declared after jury fails to reach verdict in case of ex-Louisville cop

Jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict on federal civil rights charges Thursday in the trial of a former Louisville police officer charged in the police raid that killed Breonna Taylor, prompting the judge to declare a mistrial.

Brett Hankison was charged with using excessive force that violated the rights of Taylor, her boyfriend and her next-door neighbors. Hankison fired 10 shots into the Black woman’s window and a glass door after officers came under fire during a flawed drug warrant search on March 13, 2020. Some of his shots flew into a neighboring apartment, but none of them struck anyone.

The 12-member, mostly white jury struggled fruitlessly to reach a verdict over several days. On Thursday afternoon, they sent a note to the judge saying they were at an impasse. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings urged them to keep trying, and they returned to deliberations.

FORMER KY OFFICER FACES SECOND CONVICTION ATTEMPT AFTER FIRING INTO BREONNA TAYLOR’S APARTMENT

BREONNA TAYLOR DEATH: FORMER LOUISVILLE DETECTIVE PLEADS GUILTY TO FALSIFYING AFFIDAVIT FOR RAID

The judge reported there were “elevated voices” coming from the jury room at times during deliberations, and court security officials had to visit the room. Jurors then told the judge Thursday they were deadlocked on both counts against Hankison, and could not come to a decision — prompting Jennings’ declaration of a mistrial.

The mistrial could result in a retrial of Hankison, but that would be determined by federal prosecutors at a later date.

Federal prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to an email afterward seeking comment.

Before the mistrial was declared, the lead federal prosecutor, Michael Songer, said in court that it would take “enormous resources … to retry this case.” Songer wanted the jury to keep deliberating.

Jennings said she believed the jury would not be able to reach a verdict. “I think the totality of the circumstances may be beyond repair in this case,” the judge said. “They have a disagreement that they cannot get past.”

Lonita Baker, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said afterward that Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, was disappointed with the outcome but remained encouraged “because a mistrial is not an acquittal. And so we live another day to fight for justice for Breonna.”

Hankison, 47, was acquitted by a Kentucky jury last year on wanton endangerment charges. State prosecutors had alleged he illegally put Taylor’s neighbors in danger. Months after his acquittal last year, the U.S. Department of Justice brought the new charges against Hankison, along with separate charges against a group of other officers involved in crafting the warrant.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CHARGES 4 LOUISVILLE POLICE OFFICERS IN BREONNA TAYLOR INVESTIGATION

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Taylor, a 26-year-old nursing student, “should be alive today” when he announced the federal charges in August 2022. The charges that Hankison faced carried a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Hankison was the only officer who fired his weapon the night of the Taylor raid to be criminally charged. Prosecutors determined that two other officers were justified in returning fire after one was shot in the leg.

Songer said Monday in the trial’s closing arguments that Hankison “was a law enforcement officer, but he was not above the law.” Songer argued that Hankison couldn’t see a target and knew firing blindly into the building was wrong.

Hankison’s attorney, Stewart Mathews, countered that he was acting quickly to help his fellow officers, who he believed were being “executed” by a gunman shooting from inside Taylor’s apartment. Taylor’s boyfriend had fired a single shot when police burst through the door. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he believed an intruder was barging in.

“If his perception was reasonable in the chaos of that moment, that was not criminal,” Mathews said.

The night of the raid, Hankison said he saw the shot from Taylor’s boyfriend in the hallway after her door was breached. He backed up and ran around the corner of the building, firing shots into the side of the apartment.

“I had to react,” he testified. “I had no choice.”

The single shot from Taylor’s boyfriend hit former police Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who dropped to the ground and fired six shots. Another officer, Myles Cosgrove, fired 16 rounds down the hallway, including the bullet that killed Taylor. Mattingly testified as a defense witness for Hankison in the federal trial, while Cosgrove was called to testify by prosecutors.

Cosgrove was fired by Louisville police along with Hankison. Mattingly retired.

BREONNA TAYLOR DEATH: LOUISVILLE POLICE DOCUMENTS SHINE LIGHT INTO INVESTIGATION DETAILS

Taylor’s death didn’t initially garner much attention, but after the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020 and the release of Taylor’s boyfriend’s 911 call, street protests over police brutality erupted around the country. Demonstrators in Louisville shouted Taylor’s name for months, along with high-profile Black celebrities like Oprah and Lebron James who demanded accountability for the police officers involved in the case.

Taylor’s case also cast intense scrutiny on so-called “no-knock” warrants, which were later banned in the city of Louisville. The warrants allow officers to enter a residence without warning, but in the Taylor raid officers said they knocked and announced their presence. The Louisville police chief at the time was subsequently fired because officers had not used body cameras the night of the raid.

Three other former officers involved in drawing up the warrant have been charged in a separate federal case. One of them, Kelly Goodlett, has pleaded guilty to helping falsify the warrant. She is expected to testify against former detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany in their trial next year.

Goodlett’s guilty plea remains the only criminal conviction of a police officer involved in the Taylor case.

Grand jury indicts two men who allegedly posed as federal agents, gave Secret Service agents gifts

Two men accused of posing as Homeland Security personnel and heaping lavish gifts on Secret Service agents were indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday on charges of false impersonation of an officer of the United States and unlawful possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device, according to a court filing.

How a big idea persuades a jury, and you can persuade your prospect

I know this isn’t you, right? But the biggest problem most marketers face is they just don’t invest the time to flesh out a clear, compelling big idea.

They throw together a lousy idea, then think the way to improve it is to load it up with hype-y copy or false scarcity or a lot of countdown timers and widgets.

If you look at a company like Agora, a half-a-billion-dollars-a-year behemoth, you will notice that they don’t have that. They don’t rely on false scarcity.

Not that you should never use scarcity in your marketing. But scarcity can’t be the only thing you rely on to make a sale. We are in the idea business, not the scarcity business.

As Mark Masterson drilled into me, “Until you have a rock solid single idea that you can explain to someone in 15 seconds, and have them say immediately, ‘Wow! I’d love to hear more about that!’, then you don’t have a good idea.”

When your prospect says, “Tell me more!” to you, it means they are intellectually and emotionally interested, and they are excited about the payoff.

Lousy headlines come from lousy ideas

How often have you seen a headline like, “How to get rich with stocks!” It’s a boring headline because it’s a very weak idea!

So then the marketer tries to spruce it up and writes: “How to get filthy rich with stocks! How to get wealthy!” It just doesn’t help because at the root, it’s still a lousy idea.

It could take you YEARS to mine a gold nugget worth $100,000

Setting up a marketing funnel that generates 6-figures can be done in less than 30 days…

SEE HOW with the FREE 4-part video masterclass NOW!

Establish beliefs

Here’s the right way to do it.

Develop a big idea that gets attention and creates engagement. Then share your message by bringing your prospect through an EBM sequence. This sequence must be designed to get them to believe what they need to believe in order to make a buying decision. That is persuasion. It’s not selling.

Selling is when you’re talking about you, the product, the product’s features, the benefits, the advantages, and the price point. All of that information should be the last 20 to 25% of the funnel. But you can’t even go there – to the selling part – until you know they have the right beliefs that have prepared them to buy.

Be like a prosecutor

That’s why I love the analogy of the prosecutor.

When a prosecutor presents a case to a jury, at the end, he wants the jury to find the defendant guilty. So he has to lead them to a point where they have developed certain beliefs. And the end result of holding those beliefs is to say, “Yes, this guy is guilty.”

If you lead them through that process effectively, when you get to your closing argument – your call to action – they are ready to pronounce the defendant guilty.

For you, as a marketer, the prosecutor’s closing argument is the equivalent of the sales portion of the funnel, as I said, the last quarter of the EBM content.

The first three-quarters of the content is when you establish beliefs in the mind of your prospect, in the same way the prosecutor establishes beliefs in the minds of the jury. Only then do you present YOUR closing argument, the sales portion of your content.

To do this well, you have to go deep. Don’t just ask, generically, “What do my prospects believe?” Instead, ask, “What do they need to believe about ME? What do they need to believe about the INDUSTRY? What do they need to believe about THEMSELVES?” Create content that educates them while instilling these core beliefs.

Do some research in forums and in Amazon and in social media groups, and identify as many as six or seven different beliefs.

THEN develop your big idea. Make it something intellectually and emotionally interesting. Something compelling. Something that catches their attention immediately because it speaks to their core beliefs.

Only then are they ready to buy.

The post How a big idea persuades a jury, and you can persuade your prospect appeared first on Marketing Funnel Automation.