LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A former Louisville Metro Police officer pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to felony conspiracy, the first conviction stemming from the deadly March 2020 raid on Breonna Taylor’s apartment.
Kelly Goodlett admitted she knowingly included false information in the search warrant affidavit used to raid Taylor’s home and then conspired with another officer to cover it up.
Goodlett resigned from the department immediately after being charged in U.S. district court earlier this month.
Joshua Jaynes, Kyle Meany and Brett Hankison were also charged in the federal probe. Jaynes and Hankison were previously fired by the Louisville Metro Police Department. Chief Erika Shields fired Meany last week.
U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings could sentence Goodlett to up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years supervised probation.
It was implied during the hearing that Goodlett may be testifying or helping prosecutors with cases against other officers indicted in the Taylor case. Judge Jennings set her sentencing date for Nov. 22, barring any “extenuating circumstances.”
Trials for the other officers are scheduled for October. They have each pleaded not guilty.
Jaynes, Meany and Hankison face a maximum sentence of life in prison
Goodlett will remain out of jail pending sentencing. She spoke only when questioned by the judge, typically answering “Yes, your honor.”
Asked how she was pleading, she replied “Guilty.”
According to federal prosecutors, Goodlett’s partner, Jaynes, asked a judge to approve a search warrant for Taylor’s home a day before the early-morning raid on March 13, 2020.
He claimed in an affidavit presented to Jefferson Circuit Judge Mary Shaw that a postal inspector verified that drug suspect Jamarcus Glover, who had dated Taylor, was using Taylor’s home to receive parcels.
He also wrote that Glover was using Taylor’s home as his address even though he had not been there in many weeks, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Glover was at the center of a narcotics probe by Louisville police. The warrant for Taylor’s home was executed around the same time that police served other warrants on suspected drug houses in the city’s west end — some 10 miles away.
“The affidavit falsely claimed that officers had verified that the target of the alleged drug trafficking operation had received packages at Ms. Taylor’s address,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said when announcing the indictments earlier this month. “In fact, defendants Jaynes and Goodlett knew that was not true.”
Tony Gooden, a U.S. postal inspector in Louisville, told WDRB News in May 2020 that Louisville police didn’t confer with his office. He said a different law enforcement agency asked his office in January 2020 to investigate whether any potentially suspicious mail was going to the unit. The local office concluded that there wasn’t.
“There’s no packages of interest going there,” Gooden said.
Prosecutors said Goodlett and Jaynes knew false information was in the search warrant affidavit when it was presented to a judge and that other information was stale.
Garland also accused police of covering up their “unlawful conduct” after Taylor’s death. He said Jaynes and Goodlett “conspired to knowingly falsify an investigative document” after the shooting and “agreed to tell investigators a false story.”
Jaynes’ indictment claims that in April or May 2020 he tried to get an LMPD officer identified as “J.M.” to say that he had previously told Jaynes that Glover had been receiving packages at Taylor’s home. However, “J.M.” had told Jaynes in January of that year that he had no information to support that, according to the indictment.
The indictment says Jaynes and Goodlett provided a “false Investigative Letter” to criminal investigators around May 1, 2020.
Around May 17, Jaynes texted Goodlett that a criminal investigator wanted to meet with him after Gooden’s account refuting the information in the warrant affidavit was reported, according to the indictment. (WDRB published the postal inspector’s remarks on May 15.)
The indictment says Jaynes and Goodlett met the night of May 17 in Jaynes’ garage, where Jaynes allegedly told Goodlett “that they needed to get on the same page because they could both go down for putting false information in the Springfield Drive warrant affidavit.”
During that meeting they “agreed to tell investigators a false story,” the indictment says.
Then, on May 19, Jaynes “falsely claimed” to LMPD Public Integrity Unit investigators that “J.M” told him and Goodlett in January that Glover was receiving packages at Taylor’s apartment, according to the indictment.
The indictment says Goodlett made a similar claim to investigators for the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office in August 2020. And it says Jaynes told FBI investigators in June 2022 that “J.M.” had “made a nonchalant comment” that Glover was receiving “mail or Amazon packages” at the Springfield Drive apartment.
Taylor was inside the apartment with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker.
LMPD has claimed that while Jaynes obtained a “no-knock” warrant, police repeatedly knocked on Taylor’s door and announced themselves before knocking it in.
Walker has said he never heard police announce themselves and believed the couple was being robbed. He fired a shot, hitting Mattingly in the leg.
Police responded with 32 shots, hitting Taylor six times. The 26-year-old died at the scene.
No drugs were found in her home.
Hankison was the only officer previously charged in the raid. A Jefferson County Circuit Court jury found him not guilty of wanton endangerment charges earlier this year.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism