Prosecutors have dropped felony charges against 87 protesters who peacefully gathered this week outside the Kentucky attorney general’s home to demand charges against the police officers responsible for the death of Breonna Taylor.
Mike O’Connell, the Jefferson County attorney, said on Friday that after carefully reviewing the relevant law, he had decided to dismiss the felony charges proposed by the Louisville Metro Police Department.
“While we do believe the L.M.P.D. had probable cause for the charge, in the interest of justice and the promotion of the free exchange of ideas, we will dismiss that charge for each protester arrested this past Tuesday,” he said in a statement.
More than 100 people attended the protest on Tuesday, which started at Ballard High School in eastern Louisville and ended on the front lawn of Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general. There, police arrested 87 protesters including Leslie Redmond, the president of the N.A.A.C.P.’s Minneapolis chapter; the Houston Texans wide receiver Kenny Stills; and Porsha Williams, a member of the cast of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”
The protesters were asked to leave the property and were told that staying would be “unlawful,” the police said in a statement. The department’s decision to charge them with felonies for “intimidating a participant in the legal process” has been widely criticized as a disproportionately harsh response to a peaceful demonstration.
Mark Osler, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., said that felony intimidation charges are typically filed against someone who tries to intimidate witnesses or jurors in a court case. He called applying this or any felony charge to protesters who gather on the property of a public official “unusual.” Along with prison time, a felony conviction comes with other lifelong consequences.
Though the felony charge will be expunged from the protesters’ records, they may still face misdemeanor charges, the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office said.
Until Freedom, a social justice group involved in organizing Tuesday’s protest, said on its Facebook page that it would fight the possible misdemeanor charges — criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct — as well.
“We are glad to see that officials came to their senses for now and dropped the bogus felony charge against the Louisville 87,” the group wrote, calling the felony charges an attempt to intimidate the protesters and “create a distraction from our message: arrest the cops who murdered #BreonnaTaylor.”
On Friday, Jessie Halladay, special adviser to the Louisville Metro Police Department, defended the original charges.
“Officers have to make the best decisions they can with the information they have at the time,” she said in a statement. “We appreciate that the county attorney agreed that the officers in this case had probable cause to make the charges they did.”
Police officers shot and killed Ms. Taylor, 26, an emergency medical technician, on March 13 after three officers used a no-knock warrant to enter her apartment with a battering ram during a late-night drug investigation.
The Louisville police have fired one of the officers involved in the shooting, Brett Hankison, saying he violated their policy on the use of deadly force by “wantonly and blindly” firing 10 shots in Ms. Taylor’s apartment. The officers have not been charged, fueling daily protests in Louisville and in cities across the country.
Jacey Fortin and Allyson Waller contributed reporting.
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