What "wanton endangerment" means and what is the penalty for this new charge? #wantonendangerment #bretthankison

 

#guilty #learnmore

The Verify team has heard lots of questions about "wanton endangerment" in the wake of the grand jury indictment of former officer Brett Hankison.

Brett Hankison

Brett Hankison was one of the police officers in the Louisville Metro Police who shot Briona Taylor, who was killed on March 13, 2020, during a raid on her home. Her boyfriend Kenneth Walker initially shot the alleged self-defence without knowing that the police had raided their home. Police officers open fire, killing Briona Taylor. It was alleged that the raid was on the wrong house and that the officers made a mistake.

Brett Hankison is a Louisville Metro Police detective. On June 19, 2020, Mayor Greg Fisher announced that the chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department, Rob Schroeder, had begun termination proceedings against Hankison.

A letter was written by Chief Rob Schroeder reportedly accused Hankison of "firing 10 blind shots" at Briona Taylor's home.

In the wake of the grand jury's decision to indict one officer for "unjust endangering" in the Briona Taylor case, the Verify team received many questions about this actually mean.

What is wanton endangerment?

wanton endangerment is a charge in Kentucky, defined in the following manner by the state legislature:

"A person is guilty of wanton endangerment of the primary degree of danger, under circumstances that demonstrate extreme indifference to the worth of human life, in behaviour that makes a high risk of death or serious bodily injury to a different person. Exposure to the first-degree risk may be a class D felony."

Ron Aslam, a Kentucky attorney, spoke with the verification team to better describe the term.

"Intentional exposure to risk is fundamentally the intentional disregard for real or serious danger," he said. "Someone can be really hurt or die. It's firing a weapon at an abandoned building that may have people inside. It's screaming" fire "in the cinema. It's anything that poses a real risk that someone could die."

Aslam indicated that this is a Class D felony, which is a lower charge for something that could be a Class A, B, or C felony.

"wanton endangerment is a fourth-degree felony," he said. "This is reckless murder. The second manslaughter is C. Willful killing is B. Murder is A."

According to Aslam, the potential prison term for a person convicted of committing an arbitrary risk ranges from one to five years.

"In terms of what the community was expecting," he said. "I think this is often an enormous disappointment to the community, and specifically the protesting community."