I’ve received lots of email asking about a legal defense fund, pro bono work, etc. for Cory Maye. I posed the question to Maye’s current counsel, public defender Bob Evans. He replied:

Certainly am interested in anything that could be helpful to Cory’s case. Particularly would not be averse to talking with other interested lawyers who not only are willing but are CAPABLE of helping with the appeal and, hopefully, the retrial. Sentiment alone, while appreciated, is not helpful from a legal standpoint.

Defense funding would also be extremely helpful. Cory’s family, while obviously very concerned about him, are not financially able to obtain all the things that would be helpful in litigating his appeal. And while an indigent can, at the pretrial level, request the court’s financial assistance in obtaining things such as expert testimony (re: pathologist to discuss bullet path thru body and reasons that path does not jibe with Cory’s statement) and investigative help (for ex. to establish whether anyone else in the surrounding subdivision heard any of the cops announcing before entering), such assistance is not generally available at the appellate level where we now are. If others want to assist Cory in this manner, that would be fantastic.

Although being a cause celebre didn’t prevent Tookie’s execution this morning in California, he was undeniably guilty. Cory is not.

Let me know your suggestions about establishing a defense fund. Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I know nothing about how to establish a legal defense fund. And as I’ve written before, I don’t really think it’s my place to start one. But I’d be happy to put anyone with knowledge of such things in touch with Evans.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 6:05 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Cory Maye. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.