I would generally argue that the death penalty is pretty final - too bad when it hits an innocent person. My view would be that getting rid of it would help avoid situations like that.
Makkun
Here is my view on the situation as a police officer and former SWAT member. You are required to announce yourself upon entry to a domicile, the amount of time between announcement and entry varies on the size of the dwelling. This task force should never have taken along an inexperienced officer as this Jones character.
Anyone who has ever made an entry knows that very rarely do you do multiple points of entry on a small dwelling due to the crossfire aspect. That out of the way, with the execution of the warrant on the wrong side of a duplex, that is wreckless work. Before you make an entry you should check, recheck and then have the other members check and recheck the addresses. My only question to the case is, did this man have legal ownership of the firearm used in self defense? If he did not you have a very foggy situation in my honest opinion.
All that aside, if my door kicks in at 130 in the morning I’m shooting too, I am not hoping for a police announcement after the fact. I say at the very least this man deserves monetary compensation for emotional distress caused by the wrongful execution of a search warrant and even more money for being sentenced to death in defense of his life and property. The dynamics of the situation do change however if the firearm in question is not legal. BB is there anyway you would be able to find out the status of his weapon?
[quote]snipeout wrote:
Here is my view on the situation as a police officer and former SWAT member. You are required to announce yourself upon entry to a domicile, the amount of time between announcement and entry varies on the size of the dwelling. This task force should never have taken along an inexperienced officer as this Jones character.
Anyone who has ever made an entry knows that very rarely do you do multiple points of entry on a small dwelling due to the crossfire aspect. That out of the way, with the execution of the warrant on the wrong side of a duplex, that is wreckless work. Before you make an entry you should check, recheck and then have the other members check and recheck the addresses. My only question to the case is, did this man have legal ownership of the firearm used in self defense? If he did not you have a very foggy situation in my honest opinion.
All that aside, if my door kicks in at 130 in the morning I’m shooting too, I am not hoping for a police announcement after the fact. I say at the very least this man deserves monetary compensation for emotional distress caused by the wrongful execution of a search warrant and even more money for being sentenced to death in defense of his life and property. The dynamics of the situation do change however if the firearm in question is not legal. BB is there anyway you would be able to find out the status of his weapon?[/quote]
You and I are in agreement on this(go figure:).
However, I ask you, how much of a difference does it make if the weapon was legal? Obviously, he should face additional possesion charges, but how would it affect the actual murder charge? How much does the weapon matter? If he had a machete by his bedside instead and chopped the guy’s head off, that would be a legal weapon, but no less lethal.
[quote]AZMojo wrote:
snipeout wrote:
Here is my view on the situation as a police officer and former SWAT member. You are required to announce yourself upon entry to a domicile, the amount of time between announcement and entry varies on the size of the dwelling. This task force should never have taken along an inexperienced officer as this Jones character.
Anyone who has ever made an entry knows that very rarely do you do multiple points of entry on a small dwelling due to the crossfire aspect. That out of the way, with the execution of the warrant on the wrong side of a duplex, that is wreckless work. Before you make an entry you should check, recheck and then have the other members check and recheck the addresses. My only question to the case is, did this man have legal ownership of the firearm used in self defense? If he did not you have a very foggy situation in my honest opinion.
All that aside, if my door kicks in at 130 in the morning I’m shooting too, I am not hoping for a police announcement after the fact. I say at the very least this man deserves monetary compensation for emotional distress caused by the wrongful execution of a search warrant and even more money for being sentenced to death in defense of his life and property. The dynamics of the situation do change however if the firearm in question is not legal. BB is there anyway you would be able to find out the status of his weapon?
You and I are in agreement on this(go figure:).
However, I ask you, how much of a difference does it make if the weapon was legal? Obviously, he should face additional possesion charges, but how would it affect the actual murder charge? How much does the weapon matter? If he had a machete by his bedside instead and chopped the guy’s head off, that would be a legal weapon, but no less lethal.
[/quote]
Honestly I am not sure how much of a difference it would make. I was honestly just curious for the simple fact that someone who illegally possesses a gun is more likely to kill someone than somebody possessing a sword or machete.
FYI any weapon used in the commission of a crime(not to say this young man committed a crime) is considered illegal possession of a weapon even a broken bottle or a tree branch, prosecutors use this to trump charges typically and make the person appear more guilty.
I still say this sounds like a it could be a movie, not a chance in hell with the facts provided is this poor kid convicted in NJ. Speaking as a cop myself I can’t even be mad at this kid for defending his home and family. I never unjustifiablly defend all cops, when the evidence presented is convincing enough I say the blame has to be laid.
In other cases I am quick to defend cops until ALL the facts come out, when they come out let the heads roll!! As for this chief of police he needs to be investigated also.
Cases like this are the reason why “judged by a jury of your peers” scares the shit out of me. Most people are fucking idiots, and to have my freedom in the hands of idiots scares me.
From that article, they literally put this kid on death row because they didn’t like his lawyer and thought he was spoiled.
That is fucked up.
Radley Balko is continuing to pursue this case on his weblog – check out the updates and further information here:
BB
This is an interesting post to discuss.
I applaud the blogger for making an issue of this.
I’m guessing the guy was convicted but his case was not appealed yet? Would the appelate court normally probe deeper into the evidence presented and would the appelate court take the “jury” out of the equation? isn’t an appelate review done by a panel of judges? Just curious.
I am a pretty black and white law and order guy. However this seems like a tragedy to me. The shooter wasn’t out to kill, only defend. The cop was in the wrong place at the wrong time. An inherent risk of his job sadly. I think Snipe is right, more thorough planning may have saved the poor fellow but it doesn’t make the shooter more culpable. In fact it makes him less.
This is the type of case that causes me to oppose the death penalty as it is currently implemented.
“Tookie” deserved to die, and I think allowing a member of one of his victim’s families to hold a sawed-off double barrel to his gut and squeeze both triggers would have been very appropriate.
But in all honesty I’d rather see one hundred Tookie Williams’ sitting in prison for the rest of their lives than to see even one Cory Maye get executed.
I’ve sat on a couple of juries, and it is downright scary how blatantly stupid some of your “peers” can be. I’ve sat in a jury room with people who honestly don’t think there’s any need for deliberation, just say “guilty” and go home. The prosecutor wouldn’t have charged the guy if he wasn’t guilty of something; evidence and testimony just get in the way of “justice”. The thought of being wrongly accused of a crime and having my fate placed in the hands of fools like that scares me to death.
Unless I was a celebrity and lived in SoCal, then I’d know I had nothing to worry about.
As some may know, I’m very pro-law enforcement. That being said, this case is very, very troubling.
Whether or not the police announced themselves at the door may be irrelevant. SWAT teams often obtain approval to execute what’s called a “no-knock” warrant – they don’t announce themselves at the exterior of the residence, instead breaking down the door and storming the house.
However, that’s where the silence ends. Once inside a residence, police officers are trained to start announcing “POLICE!!” Taught from day ONE in the academy that this announcement must be made, unless you want to get shot. Not only does the announcement identify you, the commanding voice, combined with the confusion of the moment is intended to pscyhologically overpower the suspect and lead to surrender.
When that officer entered the bedroom, he should have been screaming, “POLICE, get on the ground!” We may never know if he did, since he perished, but, if the defendant can be believed, he did not.
Just as an aside, what the FUCK is an UNARMED officer doing participating in a SWAT raid? Pretty shitty tactics and training!
Anyway. Police officers occasionally make mistakes entering residences. That, in and of itself, is not enough to make them in the wrong – so long as a good-faith effort was made to ensure they had the correct address and they take the responsibility to repair any damage done.
Was this the case? I kind of doubt it. Surveillance should have been done on the house to determine who came and went, number of occupants, and lifestyle patterns. Property records should have been checked for a floor plan – that most likely would have revealed the residence to be a duplex.
While I typically knock arm-chair quarterbacks, I’m going to play one here. Given the totality of the circumstances, I believe the defendant is innocent.
I sure as shit would kill someone who entered my house, if I were in fear for my life and did not know they were a law enforcement officer.
This whole case reaks of mistakes in judgement, prejudice, and an uneducated jury. Makes me sick.
[quote]snipeout wrote:
…
BB is there anyway you would be able to find out the status of his weapon?[/quote]
Here’s information on his gun, courtesy of Radley Balko’s blog:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025995.php#025995
Maye’s Gun
District Attorney Buddy McDonald emailed me yesterday to tell me the gun Maye used to shoot Officer Jones was unregistered, and possibly stolen. So far, I’ve found no mention of the gun in about a dozen local media reports on the case, nor was it mentioned in the evidence sheet of items seized from Maye’s home. The status of the gun was also suppressed at trial, though McDonald says his bringing up the gun and the judge’s suppressing that tesimtony will turn up in the transcript. I should have a copy of the transcript in a few days. Maye apparently told police he got the gun from a friend.
If this is true, I suppose it gives anyone looking for a reason to impeach Maye’s credibility a peg to latch on to. I’m not terribly surprised by it, nor does it make me less outraged by the fact that Maye’s on death row. The fact that a poor man living in a high-crime area borrowed or bought a gun from a friend for protection doesn’t strike me as all that scandalous. When I had my little run-in with cops and gangbangers last winter, several readers offered to lend me a weapon until I could buy one myself. If I’d accepted and, God forbid, had cause to use it in a scenario similar to Maye’s, I’d hope the fact that the gun wasn’t in my name wouldn’t be cause to send me to death row.
Beyond possibly striking a blow against Maye’s credibility, I don’t think this latest revelation does much at all to alter the facts of the case. The question here is whether or not Maye reasonably believed his life was in peril. That he used an unregistered gun to defend himself doesn’t affect that question one way or the other.
My position on this case is pretty clear. I think Maye should be pardoned and released. Probably compensated, too. But in the interest of gettng at the truth, I think it’s important that we put all information out there. Even information that isn’t necessarily productive to Maye’s cause.
UPDATE: Just spoke with Rhonda Cooper, Maye’s former attorney. She says there’s documentation showing that there’s no way Maye could have stolen the gun. It was apparently stolen from another part of the state, and well before it ever came into Maye’s possession. Sounds like a typical black market gun that made it’s way to Maye’s friends, then to Maye himself.
Here’s some interesting information on the cop who was killed by Maye:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025997.php#025997
…
The second question occured to me while rereading early media reports of the raid. Officer Jones wasn’t a member of the narcotics task force team. He was a K9 officer, and a member of the Prentiss police department. It appears that he was asked to come along on the raid because it was his investigation that triggered the raids in the first place. That’s troubling enough.
An officer with only four years experience on the force, and no experience on the paramilitary task force. gets brought along on a highly-volatile raid that involves breaking down doors? But we later learn that Jones was the first officer into Maye’s home. Why was the least experienced cop on the raid, a cop who really shouldn’t have even been there, the first one to burst into Maye’s apartment?
Some updated facts, including the fact there was a warrant for Maye’s address (but it didn’t name Maye - I think the new facts make the situation less cut-and-dried, but to my mind there is still quite an amount of reasonable doubt concerning Maye’s culpability, particularly when one considers the post immediately above regarding Officer Jones’ qualifications, and the fact that he was first through the door, gun not drawn.
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025989.php#025989
December 12, 2005 The Search Warrants
(Note: I’m putting these posts up pretty quickly, while simultaneously writing an op-ed on this case. Please forgive spelling errors, typos, etc. (Of course, if you spot some, do let me know) I’ll go back and correct them as I have time.)
I received one set of search warrants and affidavits this morning at 8:45am. There was one warrant and one affidavit for each apartment at the duplex. They were very spare – boilerplate, really – with no details about Officer Jones’ due dilligence to confirm that Cory Maye was dealing drugs. I then got a second fax at 9:50am, which included a document called “Underlying Facts and Cirucmstances,” in which Officer Jones lays out his reasons for requesting the warrants.
Here are the PDFs:
Warrant on Maye’s residence: The Agitator
Affidavit on Maye’s residence: The Agitator
Underlying facts on Maye’s residence: The Agitator
Post-raid evidence sheet on Maye’s residence: The Agitator
Warrant on Smith’s residence: The Agitator
Affidavit on Smith’s residence: The Agitator
Underlying facts on Smith’s residence: The Agitator
Post-raid evidence sheet on Smith’s residence: The Agitator
My observations:
First, a concession. There does seem to be a separate warrant and affidavit for each residence at the duplex. Warrants for Smith’s residence were issued in the name of “Jamie Smith.” Warrants for the residence occupied by Cory Maye were issued under “persons unkown.” This runs contra to an earlier post of mine in which I wrote that Maye’s original attorney believed police weren’t aware that the building was a duplex. It now seems pretty clear that they were. I’ll soon put up a post with corrections to the story thus far.
As I mentioned when I first learned of this story, my account of the raid was pieced together from various media accounts – some of them contradictory – and interviews with Maye’s former lawyer, who hadn’t seen the case in nearly two years.
This story seems to be moving pretty quickly. I’ll continue to correct and clarify details on the fly. When I’m wrong, I’ll concede I’m wrong. It appears that I was wrong in stating that police didn’t know that the building shared by Maye and Smith was a duplex. But this detail by no means undermines Maye’s innocence.
That out of the way, it’s important to note that though his residence is cited, Cory Maye isn’t mentioned by name anywhere on the search/affidavit documents. Only Jamie Smith is mentioned. Officer Jones refers to Jamie Smith as “a known drug dealer,” but refers to Maye only as “persons unkown.” Indeed, while police found marijuana all over Smith’s apartment (as well as “crack cocaine residue”), they barely found any in Maye’s (and even that is questionable, which I’ll get to in a moment).
Newspaper accounts of the case have reported that Maye had been renting the duplex from Smith for less than two months before the raid. So it seems unlikely that Maye, who had just moved into the apartment with his baby daughter, and who (once again) had no criminal record, would have entered into the drug business with Smith.
And while it isn’t essential that a defendant be expressly named in a search warrant, the fact that Maye wasn’t in this particular case lends evidence to the theory that his house was raided not because he was dealing, but because he had the misfortune of living next to a known dealer.
Note also that the “Underlying Facts and Circumstances” documents are exactly the same for both Maye and Smith. Which means that Officer Jones did no independent investigation of Maye. He didn’t even know Maye’s name. You’d think he might have checked to see who was living in the other apartment in the duplex, and whether or not the person living there had a previous record before launching a late-night raid. Instead, he relied on the informant’s assertion, and traffic to and from the house. Even more evidence, I think, that Maye’s only real transgression here was living next to a “known drug dealer.”
It might be interesting to find Smith, and ask him if he knew Maye to be a dealer. Of course, given that Smith is facing his own drug charges (or doing time for them already – no one seems to know what happened to Smith after the raid), I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he says.
There’s something very suspicious about the evidence sheet from Maye’s apartment. Immediately after the raid, media outlets reported that police said no drugs were found in Maye’s side of the duplex. Jackson, Missippi’s Clarion-Ledger, for example, reported:
No drugs were found at the yellow duplex, which authorities said Maye rented. The duplex, adorned with a Christmas wreath on the door, Christmas lights and a small bike on the porch, was cordoned off by police tape.
The raid took place on December 26th at about 11:30pm. That story ran on December 28th, which means it was probably filed on December 27th. So apparently, someone in the police department told the press the day after the raid that there were no drugs found in Maye’s residence.
Now look at the evidence sheets for Maye and Smith. Smith’s sheet is dated December 26th. Two times were drawn in, then blotted out. I can’t decipher what they said before they were blotted. Given the blottings, there’s no time given for whent he evidence was seized from Smith’s place other than “December 26.” But if the Smith sheet was filled out on the 26th, it means police searched his apartment and drew up the sheet immediately after the raid.
But Maye’s evidence sheet wasn’t filled out until the 27th. And once again, there are two times of day scribbled on the sheet, then blotted out. The final time reads 5:20am.
This brings up a number of questions. Why did someone tell the media fairly late into the day on the 27th that no drugs had been found in Maye’s apartment? Why did it take (at least) five hours longer to fill out Maye’s sheet than it did to fill out Smith’s? Why were the times on both Maye’s and Smith’s sheets scribbled out twice? What did those times originally say? Did the times on Maye’s sheet originally read later than 5:20am? Did officers Brown and Bullock – who filed the evidence sheets – go back to Maye’s apartment and re-search for drugs?
If so, did this happen before or after they learned of Officer Jones’ death? And before or after police had already told the media no drugs were found in Maye’s apartment?
These are important questions. If police returned to the scene to conduct a second search – either after learning of Jones’ death, or after the media began filing stories about the police chief’s son getting shot in a drug raid on a home where no drugs were found – I think reasonable people might rightly grow suspicious about the drugs police claim to have found in Maye’s home.
Officer Jones’ informant says he saw “a large quantity of marijuana being stored in both apartments located on Mary St.” Unfortunately, we’ll never know the identity of that informant. One of the many unfortunate aspects of the drug war is that because drug crimes take no victims, police have to rely on tips from informants. Most of the time, informants are pretty shady – felons who exchange tips for leniency, rival drug dealers, and people with grudges to settle. Nearly every botched no-knock raid I’ve looked into in my research came about as the result of a tip from a confidential informant. But as DA McDonald told us, the identity of Jones’ informant and all of the details of Jones’ investigation “died with Jones.”
So we’ll never really know how credible the informant actually was. Jones swears in his affidavit that the informant had given tips in the past that led to an arrest (though, curiously, not a conviction). That means little. I’ve read cases where cops have described an informant as “reliable” when his tips proved to be accurate less than half of the time.
Officer Jones’ statement that he “personally surveillanced said apartment and witnessed a large amount of traffic at unusual hours traveling to and from said apartments” isn’t all that compelling, either. If Smith was a drug dealer, it’s understandable why there’d be traffic. That shouldn’t implicate Maye.
We should also note that we’ll never see any of the documentation of Officer Jones’ surveillances. All we have is the assurances of a dead cop that he conducted him. We don’t know how many times he surveilled the place, how long he stayed, how much traffic is “unusual” and precisely how many cars visited Maye’s residence, versus how many visited Smith’s. Keep in mind, Maye had a baby daughter. The daughter shared time between Maye’s place and her mother’s parents’ place.
And according to the Hattiesburg American, the daughter’s mother – Maye’s girlfriend – sometimes worked the night shift at a Marshall Durbin plant in Hattiesburg. Which means she probably came and went at odd hours.
Even if we take the evidence sheets at face value, I think they discredit Jones’ informant. Cops found “1 small bag” of marijuana in Maye’s apartment, and three pieces of a burnt cigar, which they believed to have contained marijuana before it was smoked. If Maye was indeed storing “a large quantity of marijuana” in his apartment 24 hours before the raid, as the informant alleged, he must have sold it very quickly in the hours before the raid. I suppose it’s possible, as DA McDonald suggests, that Maye flushed it all down the toilet in the seconds between the first knocks on his front door and when police broke down his back door.
But he’d have to have found time to flush his stash (and keep it down), run back to his bedroom, and load his gun in those few seconds. That’s quite a lot to take care of in so short a time.
I suppose a hardcore law-and–order type could argue that the presence of a small bag of marijuana proves that Maye was at least involved in illicit drugs. True enough. But is recreational marijuana use really just cause to break down someone’s door in the middle of the night?
My take? The search warrants raise far more questions than they answer. Officer Jones seems to have gone ahead with the raid on Maye’s home with very little evidence of wrongdoing. Smith’s home? Yes, given his history. But not Maye’s. And if the raid on Maye’s home wasn’t justifiable, it makes Maye’s affirmative defense all the more believable. Why would a man with nothing to hide attempt to take on a raiding squadron of armed police officers? Seems far more likely that he’d let them in.
Of course, even if Maye was a small-time marijuana peddler, it doesn’t justify breaking down his door in the middle of the night. Nor does it mean it wasn’t reasonable for him to assume that the people doing the door-breaking were coming to do him harm.
Is it illegal to own an unregistered firearm in Mississippi?
In most states it is not. Registration may occur if the gun is purchased from a firearms dealer but if the gun is given to someone or a person moves from another state I don’t believe registration is required.
[quote]Massif wrote:
Cases like this are the reason why “judged by a jury of your peers” scares the shit out of me. Most people are fucking idiots, and to have my freedom in the hands of idiots scares me.
From that article, they literally put this kid on death row because they didn’t like his lawyer and thought he was spoiled.
That is fucked up.[/quote]
Like skin color had nothing to do with it. This kid is in jail because he doesn’t look like the jury, period. A third year law student should have been able to argue this case. If the jury wasn’t completely against him because of age and skin color, chances are we wouldn’t even be discussing it.
This is the same issue many have with the judicial system or law enforcement. It is just that every case isn’t portrayed so neatly with very clear defined lines of what the true problem is. The location isn’t a big hint either.
This case is starting to get more attention, at least online – the mainstream media doesn’t seem to have picked up on it as of yet.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_12_11-2005_12_17.shtml#1134497241
The Troubling Case of Cory Maye: Kieran Healy ( Knock Knock, Bang Bang — Crooked Timber )points to an emerging blog movement concerning the very troubling case of Cory Maye, who is on death row in Mississippi for killing a police officer.
The remarkable part of the case is that it seems pretty likely that Maye was acting in self-defense. The police broke into Maye’s apartment at night while executing a warrant for drugs, but apparently they had the wrong apartment. Specifically, the police didn’t realize that the apartment had been divided into two units, and ? at least according to blog reports ? Maye was in one and the drugs were in the other.
According to Maye’s testimony at trial, as reported in the Hattiesburg American on Jaunary 23, 2004, Maye had no idea that the people breaking in to his apartment were cops, and shot the intruder to protect his young daughter:
[i] Cory Maye, 23, said he was asleep on a chair in the living room of his Prentiss apartment as his 14-month-old daughter slept in the bedroom when he heard a loud crash at his front door.
"I immediately ran to my daughter's room, got a pistol, put in a magazine and chambered a round," said Maye, who is on trial for capital murder in Marion County. "As I laid on the floor by the bed, I heard kicks at the back door. I was frightened, I thought someone was trying to break in on me and my daughter."
Maye testified that it was dark in his apartment when he heard someone breaking into the back door, which was located in the bedroom.
"That's when I fired the shots," Maye said. "After I fired the shots, I heard them yell 'police! police!' Once I heard them, I put the weapon down and slid it away. I did not know they were police officers."[/i]
How could this have led to the death penalty, you’re wondering? Well, first of all, I gather that the jury didn’t believe Maye’s story. Presumably they believed that Maye knew that he was killing an officer who was executing a warrant against him. Whether there was any evidence supporting that belief is unclear; the fact that the police didn’t find the drugs in the apartment suggests that this story is pretty hard to believe. The case is now on appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, and I hope that court will take a very close look at the evidence.
Second, the officer Maye shot and killed turned out to be the son of the local chief of police, who was a fourth-generation police officer. The local prosecutor in turn pushed for capital murder charges. (Lots of bloggers are also pointing out that Maye is black and the officer was white, although my recollection of the Baldus study ( Warren McCLESKEY, Petitioner v. Ralph KEMP, Superintendent, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. | Supreme Court | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute ) is that the race of the victim and defendant generally aren’t believed to exert a strong impact on the likelihood of capital punishment in extreme cases ? and I think this counts as an extreme case.)
The MSM hasn’t paid any attention to this story, but it should. And I hope the Mississippi Supreme Court will be paying lots of attention, too. For more on the story, visit The Agitator ( http://www.theagitator.com/ ), which has been leading the charge on this case.
The latest, most accurate summary:
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026002.php#026002
December 13, 2005 The Maye Case So Far (Note to Bloggers: Here’s the Latest, Most Accurate Summary Post)
As I mentioned before, I’ve been posting on the fly with this story, while trying to correct and clarify along the way. While blogland has been almost universally supportive of Maye, a few blogs and comments on blogs have noted that inaccuracies are being perpetuated. This is in part my fault, and in part due to the fact that the blogosphere sometimes functions like an enormous game of “telephone.” As for the part that’s my fault: My firsts posts on the Maye case were summaries, in which I collected information from media reports (which I’ve noted were sometimes contradictory) and from my conversations with Maye’s first attorney, who hadn’t been on the case in nearly two years. I don’t regret putting up those posts, inaccuracies and all, because they’re what put this case into public discussion. Only after those posts went up, and particularly after some PR help from Glenn Reynolds, for example, did folks in Mississippi start returning my calls.
But I don’t want this to be a case of blogs running amok with foggy details. Maye’s innocence stands just fine on its own. It doesn’t need propping-up. So before I go on with new information, I’d like to put up a post that aims to keep everyone on the same page.
Let’s start with misconceptions, inaccuracies, and clarifications.
The narcotics task force did have a warrant for Cory Maye’s apartment. I first reported that police assumed the entire duplex to be one residence. That wasn’t accurate. However, Cory Maye isn’t listed anywhere on the warrants by name. Only his residence is listed, and Maye is refered to as “person(s) uknown.”
Maye was not convicted by an all white jury. Two black women sat on the jury that convicted him. The remainder of the jury was white.
The question of whether or not this was a “no-knock” raid is tricky. The warrant itself didn’t specifically allow for a no-knock entry. But courts have generally found that police can, at the scene, decide to conduct a no-knock in spite of the warrant if (a) they believe the suspect may destroy important evidence, and/or (b) if they believe announcing themselves would endanger their own safety. There’s also the matter that this raid was conducted late at night. An announcement when the suspect is likely to be asleep, and unable to hear, isn’t much different than not announcing at all. The police who conducted the raid insist they knocked and announced themselves. Maye maintains that they didn’t. I’ve suggested that the bulk of the evidence in this case favors Maye’s account of the raid.
Let’s move on to the facts.
Facts Not in Dispute
A local narcotics task force conducted a drug raid on the Prentiss, Mississippi duplex apartments of Jamie Smith and Cory Maye on December 26, 2001.
Smith was arrested without incident. Significant quantities of marijuana were found in his home. Both Maye’s current and former attorneys say Smith was never charged for drug possession or distribution. District Attorney McDonald says he doesn’t remember Smith being charged or convicted. Maye was never charged with a drug crime. So the only criminal charge of any kind to come out of this raid was the murder charge against Maye.
Police executed the warrant on Maye’s home sometime after 11pm. They first attempted to enter through his front door, then went around to the back. Maye was in his bedroom with his 18-month old daughter when the door was forced open by a cop other than Officer Jones. Officer Ron Jones was the first one to enter Maye’s apartment. Maye fired three times. One bullet struck Jones, and killed him.
Jones was not a regular member of the narcotics task force. He was a K9 officer for the Prentiss police department.
At the time of his death, Jones was the son of the Prentiss, Mississippi police chief. Chief Jones is now retired.
Maye is black. Jones was white.
Jones was armed when he entered Maye’s apartment, but his gun was holstered.
Maye fired three times in rapid succession. After the third shot, the remaining members of the task force shouted “police!” and entered the apartment. At this point, Maye dropped his gun, put up his hands, and surrendered.
Maye had no criminal history, no history of violence, and no prior drug arrests – not even misdemeanors.
The search warrants and affidavits list Jamie Wilson by name, and refer to him as a “known drug dealer.” There was also a warrant for a search of Maye’s home, but it didn’t list Maye by name. None of the affidavits or warrants mention Maye by name.
The only direct evidence in favor of a search warrant against Maye seems to be a confidential informant’s tip to the investigating officer that a “large amount” of marijuana was being stored in Maye’s apartment 24 hours before the raid. The officer also says he saw considerable traffic coming to and from the duplex at unusual hours.
Immediately after the raid, police first said they found no drugs in Maye’s apartment. Days later, they say they found a small bag of “allegedly marijuana,” and three pieces of a burnt cigar, also containing “allegedly marijuana.”
Officer Ron Jones, the one who was killed, was also the sole officer who conducted the investigation that led to the raids.
Because of this, we’ll never know the details of his investigation. Nor will we learn the identity of his confidential informant. Jones apparently kept no records of his investigation into Maye or Smith. According to DA Buddy McDonald, all record of the investigation “died with Officer Jones.”
Nevertheless, judging by the information included in the warrant affidavits, it appears Jones made no effort to identify Maye, to make a controlled drug buy from Maye to corroborate the informant’s story, or to do a criminal background check on Maye. In fact, there’s no evidence that Jones knew the identify of the person occupying Maye’s apartment.
The gun Maye used to shoot Jones was stolen, though by all indications, it wasn’t stolen by Maye. Maye says he got the gun from a friend. Documents show that the gun was stolen in Natchez, 100 miles from Prentiss, at least a year prior to the raid on Maye’s home. The trial judge deemed the fact that the gun was stolen to be prejudicial, and withheld it from the jury.
Facts in Dispute:
Whether or not the narcotics task force sufficiently announced themselves and gave Maye time to peacefully answer the door before forcing entry.
Where the drugs in Maye’s apartment came from.
Why the times listed on the evidence sheets for both Maye and Smith’s apartments were repeatedly scribbled out. Why Maye’s sheet lists no exact time the evidence was collected. Why the evidence in Smith’s apartment was collected on the 26th, immediately after the raid, while the evidence in Maye’s was apparently collected at 5:20am the next day (though again, that time was the last of three times entered, the first two being scribbled out to the point of being illegible).
The legitimacy of the warrant for Maye’s residence. It appears to have been issued solely on the word of a confidential informant, who says he spotted marijuana in the apartment. If the warrant was illegitimate, police should never have broken down Maye’s door. If it was legitimate, they’d still have to have clearly announced themselves, and given Maye time to answer the door, for him to be guilty of capital murder.
According to Maye’s first attorney, two jurors told her after trial that Maye was convicted because (1) jurors resented Maye’s attorney for suggesting in her closing argument that God would remember whether or not they’d shown Maye mercy when it came time for their judgment day, and (2) the didn’t like Maye’s upbringing – they found him to be spoiled and disrespectful.
Maye’s Dirty Laundry
Because I think Maye is innocent on the facts, I’ve hunted around for anything that could prove damaging to his cause. Here’s what I’ve found:
The stolen gun mentioned above.
In addition to the 18-month old child Maye had with his girlfriend at the time of the raid, he has another child with another woman.
Maye was unemployed at the time of the raid. While some might take this as evidence that Maye was dealing, keep in mind that Maye had only recently moved out of his parents home. He and his girlfriend had been renting the duplex apartment for less than two months, and according to his first attorney, had actually occupied it for only a few weeks at the time of the raid. In other words, I don’t think Maye had been unemployed and out on his own long enough for those facts to be taken as support for the theory that Maye was supporting himself by dealing marijuana.
Radley Balko has posted many of the Maye trial documents and transcripts on his site. Let’s hope that shining light into this case leads to justice being served:
Lots of updates here:
Balko paints a particularly troubling picture of law enforcement and the justice system in rural Mississippi. Do any of you rural folks have any input on whether that sounds right? I once dated a girl from the Appalachian region of Ohio who described local law enforcement in a similar manner.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Balko paints a particularly troubling picture of law enforcement and the justice system in rural Mississippi. Do any of you rural folks have any input on whether that sounds right? I once dated a girl from the Appalachian region of Ohio who described local law enforcement in a similar manner.[/quote]
I would go as far as to say it is common knowledge, especially among black people. If I even drive through the area, it is understood that your chances of getting pulled over are higher for no reason other than “driving while black”.
[quote]doogie wrote:
More for shits and giggles:
http://www.davekopel.com/Waco/Arts/wanatrev.htm
(Waco is a particularly touchy subject with me)[/quote]
can i ask why?