 Welcome to the new Law with Lawson Law Show. I guess that's what we'll call it. But I talked to Jay Fidel and I said, Jay, I wanna come on here and do a show remotely on Zoom. And I wanna make the law wrong. I wanna give it to him wrong. He said, well, you can do it. So here I am. And today what we're gonna be talking about is the case of Breonna Taylor. And for those of you that don't know, Breonna Taylor was killed by the Louisville Police Department in a no-knock search warrant. And so I'm gonna talk to you about one, a why no-knock search. You know, what is a no-knock search warrant and why I also believe, because it's taken so long for these officers to be charged. What we're gonna talk about is why I also believe the officers won't be charged, at least the three that came through the door executing the search warrant. And I know some of you guys are gonna say, hey, Lawson, what are you talking about? But hold on, you know, and I'm gonna explain to you, somebody should be charged. And we'll talk about that as we go through here. But I want you to understand, you know, what is a search warrant? We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna be talking about the Fourth Amendment. We're gonna be talking about how the no-knock search warrant in Breonna Taylor's case was illegal and why it was invalid, why it never should have been issued, and why more than just the police officers are at fault. Now, the fact that I may come to the conclusion that the three officers that came through may not get charged, where the crime does not mean that they can't be so sibling. There should be somebody charged with the crime, and I'll explain who that is as we go through this. And so if we can put up the first slide. So bear with me, so that's the title of our show, right? And so you'll see that these three officers that you're seeing on your video right now are the three officers that actually executed the search warrant. And obviously that's Sister Breonna Taylor, who had no prior record whatsoever, was an EMT worker. Her and her boyfriend were in her apartment, and on the early morning hours of March 13th is when the police, using the no-knock search warrant, busted through a door, and the police say that the boyfriend, believing that he was being robbed, and she was being robbed, and that their lives were in danger, shot back, they shot over 20 bullets into her, killing her. Actually, they shot 20 bullets, and I think eight of them entered to her body. She was unarmed, you know, in her own apartment. And we've seen the George Floyd case, the officers in there have been charged. Brother Amoud, Aubrey, and Georgia, who was ran down like a runaway slave and killed by those three individuals while he was jogging, they got charged. And, but Breonna hasn't, the people that killed her have not been charged, and people are, you know, still active on social media. There's still protests going on in Louisville and other parts of the country, saying, you know, we demand these police get charged. And it's been taking a while, and I kinda wanna explain to you why it's been taking a while. So let's put the Fourth Amendment up here so we can start there with the Fourth Amendment. All right, so you see where it says the right of the people to be, so here's the Fourth Amendment in your constitution, right? The right of people to be secure in their persons' houses, papers, and the facts against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue. You see that? No warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, et cetera. Now, to the right of that, like fancy writing, right? I have some of the words highlighted, right? And so in order for it to be a Fourth Amendment violation and illegal search and seizure, you know, you see that on the TV all the time, right? It's an illegal search and seizure. What are you talking about? Not every search is a violation of Fourth Amendment, only unreasonable searches and unreasonable seizures. I have that highlighted in yellow for a reason, okay? So the search must be unreasonable and no warrant, i.e. no search, one shall issue, but upon probable cause. Well, hell, Lawson, what's probable cause? Right? You gotta have evidence. If you wanna get a search warrant for a house, if there's probable cause to believe, that you have to have evidence that there's probable cause to believe two things, that there's evidence of a crime that's gonna be in the place that I'm seeking to search. So if you wanna search, if you're a police officer and you wanna search a house, you have to bring to the judge enough evidence to show that if you issue me this warrant, there's probable cause, I'm probably gonna find evidence of a crime in this location, in this particular house, right? And if we can, I'm sorry to keep going back and forth, but if we can put that Fourth Amendment back up one more time, but you see in the yellow part where it says upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. So you have to do two things when you do a search warrant. You have to show, you have to tell the judge, I gotta describe particularly, what does that mean? I gotta give you a description of the house. Let's go to our next slide, so you can see what I'm talking about. So this was a search warrant in Breonna's. You may not be able to see that because it's kind of, at least with my old eyesight, but this is a search warrant. And as you can see these pictures, the photographs is in the search warrant, that the judge signed, above those photographs, it's describing the house, the location and the things that they wanna search and seize. All right, let's go to our next slide. Now the search warrant, this slide right here looks just like the slide you just saw, but they're different. The first slide you saw was the search warrant. All right, what you're looking at now before I leave, that last slide you were looking at was the affidavit for the warrant. All right, Lawson, you're confusing. Police wanna go search your house. Here's what they do. They say they wanna do it at night and they come and they have to draft a search warrant, they have to describe the place that they wanna search and then they have to do an affidavit under oath, where they have to swear under oath. Why they believe that if the judge issues a search warrant that there's gonna be evidence of a crime found in the place they're asking the judge to search. So they take the affidavit, that was the second document you saw. They take the affidavit, the officer is writing it under oath, in this case with Breonna Taylor, the officer to detect this name was Janus. Right, he was not one of the three people who searched the house that night. He's the one who went and got the search warrant. Detective Janus is the one who put in the search warrant, who put in the affidavit under oath, why he believed that if the judge gave him a search warrant to search Breonna's apartment, that they would find evidence of drugs in there. Right, and so what happens is the officer has to describe any affidavit. And so if you look at that, the officer is swearing under oath and writing. Some of you have had documents notarized before, that's like an affidavit. When you get, when you go to a notary and you swear under oath or whatever you just signed is true and accurate to the best of your belief, that's, and if you're lying, you can be charged with perjury, and so we can move off that slide. And so you have the affidavit and you take it to the judge and the judge reads it. And what's the judge looking for? The judge is looking for, is there probable kinds of beliefs based on what you're telling me in this affidavit that you're going to find drugs in her house? All right, now let's go to the next slide. So what did this officer say? Well, let me back up. What's a no-knock search warrant? You say Lawson, what's a no-knock search warrant? Remember when we talked about the Fourth Amendment a few minutes ago and I talked about an unreasonable search? And prior to 1995, if a search warrant issue, the officers had to knock and announce in order for it to be reasonable. So in other words, what the US Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States required is when an officer or a detective executed a search warrant at your residence before they could kick the door and they had to knock and announce who they are. If they did not knock and announce who they were and give you a reasonable time to come to the door before they bust in, that was considered an unreasonable search. And remember that slide that we showed a few minutes ago, not all searches and seizures are a violation of the Fourth Amendment. It's the unreasonable searches, right? And so when you look at that and so what the Supreme Court was saying in that slide is prior to 1995, if you get a search warrant office and you wanna go search somebody's house, you better knock and announce before you kick the door in. If you don't knock and announce and you just kick the door in, that's gonna be unreasonable, even if you have a search warrant and anything you find in there is gonna be thrown out, it's unconstitutional. Then came 1995. In 1995, the Supreme Court said, okay, look, if you can show certain circumstances to where it may be dangerous for you to knock and announce. In other words, if you believe there's a gang, the gang members in there and as soon as you announce to the police, they gonna start shooting through the door and you're safety may be in an issue. If you can describe to a judge before they issue that warrant, why you believe you're in danger and you put it in there, you have to swear to it, your honor. We're going over to the Cali Cartel house of a high ranking lieutenant in the Cali drug cartel. And we know that he has cameras up and he has armed men walking around outside the house and inside the house. And we wanna go execute the search warrant and we believe that if we're not gonna announce who we are based on our past experience with this very deadly group of individuals, that they're gonna shoot us through the door. Or if we are not gonna announce, they're gonna go and run and get their guns and by the time they open the door, we may be defenseless. So right, but they have the officer or the detective has to tell the judge. They have to under oath. Here's why we want you to give us a no-knock search warrant. And the judge says, why? Show me why you think the person is dangerous. And then they have to particularly describe that. That's what the Supreme Court ruled in 1995. All right, so let me slow down. I get excited when I do this stuff. Real excited. So listen, the another way they can use it is you remember Roger Stone? There was just in the news because he's President Trump's boy and they did it with Paul Manafort too. When they went to search Paul Manafort's house, they had a no-knock search warrant. When they went to search Roger Stone's house, they had a no-knock search warrant. I said, what you're thinking about now is, well, Austin, you just told us, man, that those can issue when the person is dangerous. I mean, Roger Stone is nutty, but he ain't dangerous. But Paul Manafort ain't a gangster. Well, he ain't an armed gang member. So why do they get no-knock search warrant in those cases? The other exception is this. If you can show evidence to the judge. So when you go get the search warrant, you say, judge, I need a search warrant to go see Paul Manafort's house. Judge, I need a search warrant to go search Roger Stone's house. But I need a no-knock. And just what do you mean you need a no-knock? Are they dangerous? No, they're not dangerous. Then why do you need a no-knock? Well, I'm also entitled to a no-knock, judge, warrant when I can show you that I believe that they're gonna destroy evidence. If we start knocking on their door and announcing that we're the police, they're gonna start running the shredders. They're gonna start destroying evidence, hiding evidence, deleting stuff off their computer. And because we believe based on some of Roger Stone's earlier statements on social media, that if we ever came to his house that he may destroy evidence, we want a no-knock so we can just bust in there and not give them time. Now, right? So what did I just tell you? As a detective, judge, I just told you particular reasons, very specific. As to why it is that I need you, judge, to give me a no-knock search warrant, right? And so again, in order for these search warrants to issue, so this is, we're gonna, right? There we go, right there, as you see that. In order to justify no-knock entry, the police must have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence under the particular circumstances would be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective investigation of the crime, for example, allowing a destruction of evidence. So this is that language that we just showed you was from the case from 1995. All right, so now, you're just like, Lawson, look, I told you to talk about Breonna Taylor. You keep going on with these legal lectures. Hey, this is good stuff though, man. You need to know about the protection of your house. You see all the protests going on about people's constitutional rights and the wear a mask and not wear a mask. All these things is underneath your first amendment and these constitutional amendments. Today, we're talking about the forward. All right, so let's put up the next slide. What I got, what I have next? You guys got to keep me on track. All right, so this is the guy, this is the detective. Right, this is detective Joshua Janus. He's on administrative reassignment until the question of how and why to know not search warrant was approved can be answered, okay? That's where he's at. So he's not the one that was fired. The one that was fired, so let me back up. There have been no charges filed against any of the police that entered into Breonna Taylor's apartment and killed her, right? Murderer. Some people got a problem when I say murder, right? It's where no one's been charged. You can't say that, yeah, look, when you purposely cause a death of somebody, that is murder. Now, whether you had a legal justification for doing it, that's another issue. So if your argument is self-defense, I'm going on another tangent, but you know I love this stuff and I'm not gonna charge you actually for this free legal advice. If you argue self-defense, that you kill somebody in self-defense, really what you're saying is I murdered somebody. If you define murder as purposely causing a death of another person, okay? So we got to view a question in a civil suit against them. And what I'll do is I'll answer the questions once, because yeah, my students here at the law school tell you, hey, look, don't distract Professor Lawson. Because see, they know if they wanna get me off a topic, they'll ask me a question and then I'm gone, right? I'm somewhere else, right? They do that to, so they don't, if we're on a boring topic. But hold your, you know, go ahead and submit your questions and I'll get to them at the end. Cause we'll have some time at the end. Let me get back to this, man. Forgot where I was there. Anyway, so you have to have that type of evidence to get in. And so now let's go back to Breonna Taylor. Now that I've kind of brought you in on, what does it take to get a search warrant, right? The affidavit under oath, right? And particularly describing why you gotta go in. And then if you wanna know not. Now, this is part of what Janice put in, the affidavit was his reason for, you know, this was in his affidavit. And if you can see it on your screen, what it says is, this is all the evidence he had to get into Breonna Taylor's apartment. This is what the judge is reading. So the judge is saying, okay, look, let's back up. When you read this, it says on August 16, 2020, during the afternoon hours, affiant. Affiant is Janice, right? That's the detective, witness, Jermakas Glover. And Jermakas Glover is the person who they believed was engaged in drug dealing. He did not live with Breonna Taylor. Jermakas Glover did not live with her, was not her boyfriend or anything like that at the time. Jermakas Glover lived on another street away from, 10 minutes away from Breonna Taylor's apartment, okay? Now they had, when Officer Janice came to the judge that day on March 12, 2020, to get the search warrant for Breonna's house. He also got four other search warrants to go search Jermakas Glover's houses and his cars, okay? So when Janice is talking to the judge and Sean heard this affidavit and asking the judge to give him a search warrant, he's asking for a total of five. That's why he was not at Breonna's residence that night. He was doing another search warrant at Jermakas Glover's house while the other officers were doing a search warrant at Breonna Taylor's house, okay? But it was Detective Janice who presented the affidavit under oath to the judge that allowed the search warrants to issue. And this is very, very important. Okay, so what the judge is saying is, okay, tell me why it is Officer Detective Janice. What are your reasons to believe that if I give you a search warrant to go into Breonna's house, that we're gonna find evidence of drugs in our house. And here's all he had in there. This is just part of it, but he didn't have that much on Breonna. And here it is on August, I'm sorry, on January 16th, 2020. During the afternoon hours, affidavit witnessed Jermakas Glover operating the listed red 2017 Dodge Charger. Glover pulled up and parked in front of whoever, then observed MJ Glover walk directly into apartment number four, right? So he says, I've seen him go into her apartment, then he comes back out. He gets, he has a suspected US, USPS package in his right hand. He gets into his car and drives off. Then Detective Janice then tells the judge under oath that he went to the US Postal Inspector and through the US Postal Inspector, found out that Jermakas Glover had been receiving packages and the detective knows through training experience that it's not uncommon for drug traffickers to receive mail packages at different locations to avoid detection from law enforcement. So he's telling the judge two things. Look, you can take me off the screen on that one. He's telling the judge two things. He's saying, look here, judge. Here's my reason why you should, here is under oath. My reasons why I believe you should give me a watch and go around this house. Just said, what is it, man? He said, hey, look, we was out there on January, on the 16th of January, 2020. And we saw this guy going to our house, the same guy who we wanted to go search this house, right, the drug dealer. We saw this drug dealer going to our house and come out with a UPS package. Then we went down to the postal inspector and he told us that this guy was getting suspicious packages at our residence. That's it. But then, so what's the next slide after this, right? And so again, it's the evidence implicating, just kind of just tell you, right? Same thing, right? And so, but what's really important about this slide, and if you look at the last sentence, on January 16th, right? He claimed that he verified through a U.S. Postal Inspector that Glover was receiving packages there. Now pull up the next slide for me real quick, right? And so, if you read that one, and the affidavit will not warrant a detective claim, but look at the last sentence. But the Louisville Postal Inspector has since said that he was never consulted by the officers, and there was nothing suspicious about the packages. One of my, so anyway, what Janice did was he told the judge that he had talked to a Postal Inspector. Here's another reason why I need you to let me go into Brianna's house. Here's why I need you to give me a search warrant. We went and talked to the Postal Inspector, and he claimed that these packages, these suspicious packages were being delivered to her residence in Jermarket's Glover's name, right? So the judge, in other words, he lied to the judge because after they killed Brianna Taylor, the detectives went down and spoke to the US Postal Officers or service people. And they said, there ain't no cops came down here and talked to it, and we ain't told them nothing like that. What am I getting at? He lied to the judge. He lied to the judge to get the warrant. Not only that, but if you look at, let's go to the next slide real quick. If you look at, so again, going back to what I said earlier, so the police actually obtained five warrants in connection with the investigation. Now, I'm about to show you, when we move off this slide, don't move off of it yet, but I'm about to show you that, because what it's telling you here is, you got five search warrants. He asked for no knock search warrants for all five places. And he used the same language. Remember I told you earlier that if you wanna do a no knock search warrant, the Fourth Amendment says you better tell the judge, particularly why it is that you are afraid that either evidence is gonna be destroyed, you can take the picture off. You have to tell the judge, if you wanna no knock search warrant, two things, and you better be particular about the facts. You have to tell her why it is you believe, why it is that you believe that if we let you bust in and Breonna Taylor's residence without knocking that she's a danger, tell me what makes you think she's a danger? Before I allow you to do a no knock warrant, tell me why you think she's gonna destroy evidence? All right, so let's look at the next slide. I'm gonna show you what, he put this in all five affidavits, and I'm not sure if you guys can read that or not. Some of y'all may be younger than me, but here's what it says. Affiant is requesting, Affiant means Detective Janice is requesting a no knock entry to the premises due to the nature of how the drug traffickers operate. These drug traffickers have a history of attempting to destroy evidence, have cameras on the locations that compromise detectors once an approach and a dwelling is made, and have a history of flowing from law enforcement. That's it, and he did that on all five search ones. Now how in the hell should a judge even let that go out? Why isn't the judge looking at that like, man, how are you gonna tell him you wanna find different locations and find different places? And you telling me that they got cameras in all five places? That's not what the constitution requires. That's not what the U.S. Supreme Court said. They said, if you wanna know knock search warrant in each place, you better tell me why you need one. See, going back to Paul Manafort, going back to Roger Stone, the FBI told, hey, look, we, Roger's done put it all out there on social media. Y'all come to my house, I'm destroying every damn thing, right? So yeah, he gonna destroy evidence. Detective Janice didn't tell the judge nothing. So both of them is at fault. Right, the judge, look, let's see what happens is, they go to these judges. So let's say, okay, here's how this works. All right, so it was illegal. They did not tell the judge why they needed to know not the information about Brianna's was stale. Warren was attained on March 12th. Keep in mind that they got the warrant on March 12th, but all this stuff that they claim happened back in January 16th, in other words, two months ago. And that's what I mean by a stale. Even if that happened two months ago, why do you think the evidence is still in there today? Even though there was no evidence in there. And what's the next slide? All right, so these three are the ones that went in. These are the ones who executed the warrant. Now think about this. If you sit back at the station and Detective Janice comes back and says, okay, look, I got the judge to issue the search warrant. And you don't know that he lied. I mean, all you know, he's detected the judge and gave a warrant and it's a no knock warrant. So if you do those three officers and you bust through that door, right? On the warrant. And the boyfriend thinks y'all robbing him and he shoots back and y'all kill Brianna. Have you committed a crime? See, right? And I think that was taken so long because what the three officers and what the prosecutor's looking at is, did they go in there knowing, right? That Detective Janice who wasn't with them that night had lied in the affidavit. What these three officers knew was we got an actual living search warrant, a legal search warrant that a judge signed. And our sergeant or our detective in charge of us told us to go do this one. So we went over there and it was a no knock and we entered. So we doing, we executing the search warrant that the judge said was fine. And we kick in the door, right? Now that they lied about whether or not they knocked and all that, right? So the one who shot her got fired. But his defense is gonna be the reason why we had a no knock is because they said it was dangerous. And so when I hear the gunfire coming out, I'm firing back in. Now they all gonna get sued. They gonna lose the lawsuit. But I think if anybody should be charged, Janice has to be, Janice is on administrative lead. Detective Joshua is on administrative reassignment until the questions of how and why the no knock search warrant was approved can be answered. He lied in it. He lied in it. Now see what's gonna happen is Janice gonna say, well, even if I didn't have it right, the judge still issued it. The judge can't be sued. The judge, it may be immune, but I'm telling you man. And that's why I know everybody's saying that those three officers, if we can put their faces back up at one last time, my mom was finished here. That's why everybody's saying, when are they gonna charge them? But you have to understand at least from their viewpoint, they may have known that Janice was lying. I'm not sure, but there's no evidence of that. If all they're saying is we were back at the station, Detective Janice came in. He said, okay, get your stuff. We're getting ready to go. You three are going to this location where Breonna Taylor is. The rest of us is gonna execute the other four search warrants. We're gonna do them all at the same time. So no knock, search warrants, be careful and go. And then these three just go and do what they did. The question is, did they commit a crime? Okay, and when I say commit a crime, now they may be negligent and reckless in how they went through the door. But the question is, did they go in there to commit the crime or are they gonna be immune from under qualified immunity and just immune from prosecution because they can say we had no idea that Detective Janice lied to get the warrant and the judge issued the warrant. So, I wish I could, y'all know me. I could go on for another 45 minutes but they telling me I got to go. I got to go. So that, and I'm sorry I can't get to your questions because I went on too long but maybe next week I'll answer your questions. I'll be back next Tuesday with the law at Lawson and we'll be a little bit smoother on the slides and stuff like that but it's the first show. So I hope you enjoyed it. And you can follow me on Facebook. I have on my YouTube channel but it's Ken Lawson on Facebook and Professor, I can't remember my YouTube channel. I'll fix that too next time. All right, everybody until next week, stay safe. I'm out.