Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, is speaking out following the conviction of a former Louisville police officer involved in the botched 2020 raid that led to her daughter’s death.

Brett Hankison was found guilty of raping Breonna TaylorCivil rights by a jury on Friday. The verdict came just hours after Hankison was acquitted of a second charge of violating the civil rights of three of Taylor’s neighbors, whose nearby apartment was also hit by gunfire during the raid.

It was the first conviction of a Louisville police officer who was involved in the deadly March 2020 raid, which resulted in four officers charged by the US Department of Justice for violating Taylor’s civil rights. After the verdict, Palmer celebrated with friends outside the federal courthouse.

“It took a lot of time. It took a lot of patience. It was difficult. The jurors took their time to really understand that Breonna deserved justice,” he told reporters, according to the Associated Press. “They stayed the course,” he added of prosecutors, who retried the case after Hankison’s first federal trial ended in a mistrial last year when the jury could not reach a unanimous decision after deliberating for several days.

“I’m glad to be on the other side,” Palmer said. “Now I just want people to keep saying Breonna Taylor’s name.”

Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr.called the verdict “a long-awaited moment of reckoning.”

“While it cannot return Breonna to her family, it represents a crucial step in the search for justice and a reminder that no one should be above the law,” King said in a social media post Friday night. .

Taylor’s death sparked protests over racial injustice across the country. Prosecutors accused Hankison of acting recklessly, firing 10 shots at doors and a window where he could not see the target.

Hankison “violated one of the most fundamental rules of deadly force: If you can’t see the person you’re shooting, you can’t pull the trigger,” prosecutors said in their closing arguments.

But Hankison and his lawyers argued throughout the trial that he was acting to protect his fellow officers after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot them when they broke down Taylor’s door with a battering ram.

Hankison fired 10 shots into Taylor’s glass door and windows during the raid, which were covered with blinds and curtains, prosecutors said. Several of the bullets entered Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment, where three people were at the time. None of the 10 bullets hit anyone. Taylor was in the hallway at the time of the shooting.

Plainclothes officers were executing a warrant related to Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, suspected of drug activity, when they forced entry into her apartment. Although he was not there, her current boyfriend, Walker, believed an intruder was breaking in and fired a single shot, hitting one officer in the leg, prompting three officers to respond with gunfire.

During closing arguments Wednesday, Hankison’s lawyers maintained that he had acted appropriately in a “very tense and very chaotic environment” that lasted about 12 seconds.

Hankison’s conviction carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. He will be sentenced on March 12 by U.S. District Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings.

None of the officers who shot Taylor were charged in Taylor’s death. Federal and state prosecutors have said those officers were justified in returning fire because Taylor’s boyfriend shot them first.