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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 8:58 am 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.