Cory Maye and the Death Penalty vs Tookie Williams and the Death Penalty

Cory Maye: "An Interesting Test Of The Power Of The Blogosphere."

While the fate of Stanley “Tookie” Williams drew plenty of attention in the in the mainstream media, many in the blogosphere – on the right and the left (Battlepanda has assembled a list of them, conveniently organized by political ideology) – have been lamenting the lack of similar attention to the death penalty case of Cory Maye. Maye is on death row for killing a police officer. Radley Balko of the libertarian blog The Agitator was first to blog about Maye, and those who have followed seem to agree that Maye is the victim of overzealous police and racial bias and doesn’t deserve the death penalty.

Balko offers a detailed summary of his findings in the case and sums it up as such:

Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frigthened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit says the case “sounds like a total miscarriage of justice”:

If the facts are as reports, this guy never should have been charged -- and he should have had a lawsuit (though those, unreasonably, are usually losers) against the police for breaking down the wrong door. The cop who was shot was the police chief's son. And there's a racial angle, too.

Obsidian Wings, who notes that “I don't have any moral qualms about the death penalty as a concept,” adds:

If it is true that Maye was mistakenly thought to be a drug dealer and he reacted as many innocent citizens might to an intruder, he ought not be executed. Maye is not the kind of killer that I have in mind when I argue in defense of the death penalty.

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal, who is “not opposed to the death penalty qua death penalty” writes:

Regardless of whether or not there's more here than meets the eye, there's not much doubt that Maye doesn't deserve to die. It's yet another example of how capriciously the death penalty is applied in the United States, and Maye's case is an almost perfect demonstration of the intersection of race, lousy representation, and likely police misconduct that are so often the hallmarks of capital cases.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2005/12/13/publiceye/entry1123405.shtml

Is there still an ongoing appeals process, or is it a scheduled execution that is reliant on a gubernatorial granting of clemency?

From what I see posted in responses at huffingtonpost, there hasn't yet been a first appeal in the case, which is automatic in all death penalty cases.

The media should pick up on this, but I think the heavy campaigning from anti-death penalty advocates should wait until after the first appeal is heard, simply because there is nothing they can accomplish until that time.

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 find 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 time. 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.


More at the link

http://www.theagitator.com/