A federal judge in Kentucky has sentenced a former Louisville Metro Police Department officer to nearly three years in prison for firing a gun into the home of Breonna Taylor the night she died in March 2020.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings issued the 33-month sentence in court on Monday to Brett Hankison in a sharp departure from the one-day sentence requested last week by Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a statement to Law360, Dhillon said that while the sentence was not what the DOJ wanted, it was still a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines, closer in line with the department's request.

"Sentences are ultimately decided by the courts, and the Department of Justice respects the judgment of the court in this case — while noting that 33 months is a significant downward departure from the guidelines sentencing range, reflecting the court's assessment of the equities in this case," Dhillon said.

The federal probation office recommended in a pre-sentencing report that, based on relevant sentencing guidelines for the charge, Hankison be sentenced to between 11 and 14 years in prison.

Hankison was originally indicted in August 2022 on two counts of violating federal civil rights for his conduct the night Taylor died. He was tried three separate times, with the first two trials being declared mistrials. Prosecutors finally scored a conviction in November 2024 when a jury convicted Hankison of two counts of civil rights violations against Taylor.

Prosecutors maintained in the sentencing memorandum that Hankison was not directly involved in the shooting of Taylor, though conceded that he "blindly" fired into the home. A ballistics report following the shooting said the bullet that killed Taylor came from a gun belonging to Louisville police Detective Myles Cosgrove.

In an email statement to Law360, attorneys representing the family of Taylor, including civil rights attorney Ben Crump, said they had hoped Judge Jennings would follow the sentencing recommendation made by the probation office, but took the sentence as a win.

"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," Crump's firm said. "That, in itself, is a statement. The jury found Brett Hankison guilty, and that verdict deserved to be met with real accountability."

A spokesperson for Hankison did not respond to a request for comment.

The government had recommended that Hankison complete the one-day sentence as time served, meaning he would escape incarceration altogether, but requested an additional three years of probation. Prosecutors argued that the sentence would ensure that Hankison would likely never again be allowed to own a gun or serve as law enforcement.

Attorneys representing Hankison had requested an acquittal and a new trial, claiming there was prosecutorial misconduct throughout the trial. Judge Jennings denied that bid on Friday, saying in a 58-page order that the arguments for tossing the verdict were "nebulous and disjointed."

Hankison was initially prosecuted by the Biden administration, under a Department of Justice led by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The DOJ has signaled in the months following Trump taking office that it intends to stop virtually all police reform efforts, first announcing in a pair of memos in January that it will be abandoning the use of consent decrees with police departments. The decrees are court-enforced agreements between the DOJ and local police departments designed to correct issues related to policing.

The DOJ formally announced in May it would be dismissing police investigations and proposed decrees in Louisville and Minneapolis as well as in six other departments, including an investigation into the entire Louisiana State Police.

The DOJ's Civil Rights Division, led by Dhillon, accused the department's own investigations into law enforcement, launched under the Biden administration, of cherrypicking data on discrimination within the departments, according to the May announcement.

Hankison is represented by Jack Byrd of the Law Offices of Jack Byrd, Ibrahim A. Farag of Farag Legal Services PLLC and Donald J. Malarcik of Malarcik Pierce Munyer & Will.

The government is represented by Harmeet K. Dhillon, Robert J. Keenan and Michael Stronger of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The case is U.S. v. Hankison, case number 3:22-cr-00084, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.

--Editing by Marygrace Anderson.