22 July—It speaks well of Federal District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings that she didn’t cave to the corrupt Trump administration’s implicit order to sentence former Louisville Kentucky cop Brett Hankinson to no time in the slammer for his part in Breonna Taylor’s death—murder—by police screw-up. It speaks especially well because Judge Jennings is a Trump appointee, having been nominated in September 2017 and taken her seat on the bench in April 2018. (It’s not the first time Judge Jennings has done the right thing, by the way, but that’s irrelevant.)

Hankinson had been convicted by a jury on 1 November last year—just a few days before Trump’s catastrophic reelection—of depriving Breonna Taylor of her civil rights during the raid on the wrong apartment that resulted in her death. He didn’t kill her, mind you, and in fact none of the 10 shots (presumably the full contents of the magazine of whichever of his pistols he was packing at the time) he fired blindly through a covered window and glass door during the botched no-knock raid hit anyone. But Hankinson managed to shoot up an apartment next door, narrowly missing a neighboring family. What a cop! Thirty-two shots in all were fired in the humongously botched raid. What cops!

Had Hankinon’s trial been put off and he not been convicted until Trump slithered back into office, Trump’s politicized, weaponized flunky Department of Justice surely would have dropped the case, as it’s done with New York Mayor Eric Adams among other scuzz. But Hankinson’s laughably inappropriate non-sentence would have been almost as good in the Trump world.

Instead, though, Judge Jennings sentenced Hankinson to 33 months up the river followed by three years of supervised probation. Less than a third of the max suggested by the federal sentencing mavens, to be sure, not really adequate in the circumstance, but better than the insulting bupkes sentence suggested by Trump’s flunkies.

Judge Jennings had no hesitation expressing disappointment with the flunky DOJ sentencing recommendation, on the other hand, accusing it of treating Hankinson’s actions as “an inconsequential crime” and calling its arguments “incongruous and inappropriate.” And she made it clear, “This sentence will not and cannot be measured against Ms. Taylor’s life and the incident as a whole.”

Not that any of it matters, of course. Because it’s not unlikely that Trump will issue Hankinson a full pardon or at least commute his prison sentence (and supervised probation). As he’s done and will do with so many criminals. And if he hasn’t already done it by the time you read this . . .