Although the request by top U.S. Department of Justice officials seeking a one-day sentence for a former Louisville police officer who participated in the raid that led to Breonna Taylor's death wasn't heeded, former federal prosecutors and defense attorneys say a government request to downgrade a sentence is unusual, but likely to recur in politically relevant matters.

Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, and Robert J. Keenan, senior counsel for the division, personally made the case for the sentencing downgrade for former Louisville Police Department Officer Brett Hankison, raising the specter of appointees in the division overstepping career prosecutors in law enforcement misconduct cases.

In its sentencing memorandum, the DOJ said that Hankison fired his weapon indiscriminately into Taylor's apartment, but did not hit her. U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings ultimately gave Hankison a 33-month sentence in court Monday, which was more than Dhillon and Keenan had requested, but far less than the 11-to-14-year sentence that the federal probation office recommended in Hankison's pre-sentencing report.

The DOJ declined to comment about why Dhillon and Keenan have become increasingly involved in civil rights investigations involving police misconduct, or whether career prosecutors are being consulted about their decisions.

Len Kamdang, who is the director of the Criminal Justice Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Law360 that the choice by Dhillon and Keenan to step in is not typical. Kamdang, who previously served as a public defender on federal cases, said it's rare for top officials to get involved in sentencing arguments.

"The person who typically signs the sentencing memorandum is the prosecutor — that makes a lot of sense — because the prosecutor is most familiar with the case, and most familiar with the sentencing factors," Kamdang said. "So the fact that the sentencing memorandum came from the kind of political heads of the Civil Rights Division is unusual."

This is part of a broader trend of involvement by both Dhillon and Keenan, and the DOJ's Civil Rights Division generally, to reverse course on police reforms, Kamdang said.

Dhillon was seen as a major supporter of President Donald Trump prior to being tapped for her current role. She worked in private civil practice in California, including being of counsel at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP for one year, prior to starting her own firm, the Dhillon Law Group Inc., based in San Francisco, according to her LinkedIn.

Notably, Dhillon represented President Trump on a successful challenge to a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that would bar him from appearing on the state's ballot in 2024. The decision was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dhillon was tapped to lead the Civil Rights Division in December, following President Trump's presidential victory a month prior, according to the DOJ website.

Keenan, by contrast, is a career prosecutor with the DOJ who worked on criminal cases in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in the department's Santa Ana office, according to federal court records.

In May, Keenan appeared before a federal judge in California to unsuccessfully argue for the release of a former FBI informant who was imprisoned for lying to federal agents about former President Joe Biden accepting bribes. Keenan told the judge he has been a prosecutor with the department for 24 years "regardless of what administration is in Washington."

Keenan has started showing up in cases of police misconduct that he did not prosecute, such as arguing for reduced sentences in Hankison's case, as well as signing off on a plea agreement in June with former Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Trevor Kirk, who was accused of pepper spraying an unarmed woman during a robbery investigation.

Keenan was the only DOJ official to sign off on the plea agreement; none of the prosecutors who had previously been working on the case signed or were listed as counsel on the deal. The agreement and resulting sentencing memorandum, like with Hankison, were authored by Keenan and sought to keep the defendant out of prison by seeking a sentence of probation.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson ordered a four-month prison sentence for Kirk, as well as one year of probation. Kirk and his attorneys have filed an appeal before the Ninth Circuit to challenge the sentence, and Keenan is listed as representing the government in the appeal.

Stacey Young, the executive director of the Justice Connection and a former litigator with the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, told Law360 that it's telling when career attorneys with the department refuse to sign briefs for cases they have worked on.

"It is extremely unusual that only political officials would sign something like that," Young said. "Career attorneys are the ones who almost always sign court filings — they handle the cases."

Young's organization works to connect current and former DOJ employees with resources, particularly in light of recent layoffs, as well as dramatic shifts in the department priorities that have been occurring since the start of the Trump administration's second term. A number of decisions relating to police reform have been made surrounding police misconduct investigations since President Trump took office, most critically a decision by the DOJ to stop utilizing consent decrees with law enforcement agencies accused of misconduct.

The decrees, which are court-enforced agreements between the DOJ and local police departments, are designed to correct problems relating to policing. The Civil Rights Division has had the authority to investigate departments since 1994 when President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

Dhillon announced in May that the department would be ending the use of decrees, announcing the dismissal of two lawsuits against police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis, as well as ending investigations into six law enforcement agencies, including the entire Louisiana State Patrol.

The lawsuits against departments in Louisville and Minneapolis started following the high-profile deaths of Taylor in Louisville in March 2020 and George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis two months later, sparking worldwide protests for police reform.

On Thursday, Dhillon also filed a motion in Washington federal court to end consent decrees with the Seattle Police Department that had been in place for nearly 13 years.

The decision comes amid significant downsizing within the Civil Rights Division, with as much as 70% of its workforce being laid off or transferred within the department, and those that remain are being issued new mission statements, according to Young, who left the division in January.

"The statements make it clear that the division is no longer enforcing civil rights laws in the way Congress intended; they are basically carrying out the president's agenda," Young said. "It's weaponizing those laws to advance its anti-DEI, voter suppression, and other political goals, while moving away from protecting the rights of disfavored groups."

Former defense attorneys who once went toe-to-toe with federal prosecutors have also noticed the shift, particularly now that top DOJ officials are getting involved in cases of white police officers who have killed or injured Black residents who are often unarmed, as was the case with Taylor, Floyd and the woman pepper sprayed by Kirk in Los Angeles County.

Leon Parker, a former federal defender who now works as a principal at The Wren Collective, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, said he sees the shift in department priorities as a response to work done by previous administrations on the issue of police misconduct.

"The department is claiming in its memorandum that [Hankison] has PTSD, without evening mentioning Breonna Taylor or who killed her," Parker said in an interview. "It shows the disregard this administration has, particularly for Black and brown lives, and it is clear it is trying to undo the progress under the Biden and Obama administrations."

Parker said that, in nearly eight years as a federal defender, he rarely saw political appointees author a sentencing memorandum, and he has also never seen such a light sentence being recommended by the department.

The criminal defendants that Parker typically represented would often get significantly higher penalties for less serious offenses, he said, and that considering the attention Hankison's case is getting from the department, he is expecting that the interference with the prosecution will continue.

"We are reserving clemency in this case for one group of people — privileged white men," Parker said. "I would not be surprised if he will be put up for a pardon from the president."

--Editing by Dave Trumbore.