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Which Louisville Judge Let Police Search Your House? Most Signatures Are Unreadable

Breonna Taylor, here in December, would have turned 27 on Friday. Her friends and family remember Taylor as a caring person who loved her job in health care and enjoyed playing cards with her aunts.

Louisville police were executing a no-knock search warrant signed by Judge Mary Shaw when they shot and killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in her home. The case put a spotlight on the way Louisville police executes search warrants and how seriously judges scrutinize them.

In their new report, grantees from The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting (KyCIR) examined more than 200 warrants of residences and found that about 70% of them had illegible signatures, an issue at the root of transparency in the criminal justice system in Louisville and the nation.