I can now see from the transcripts why there was a disconnect early on in this story about there being one or two warrants. I reported there was only one warrant after speaking with Maye’s first attorney, Rhonda Cooper.

I now see the reason I got that impression is that Cooper herself still believes there was originally just one warrant. This comes out in the transcripts, when Cooper attempts to suppress the evidence collected at Maye’s apartment before the trial. In her questioning and accompanying motion, she suggests the possibility that police obtained the second warrant only after the raid, and upon realizing that the house they raided was a duplex, and not a single residence. In other words, the drew up a retroactive warrant to cover up their mistake.

Maye’s current attorney doesn’t buy that theory. Bob Evans says that the judge who signed off on the warrants, Judge Donald Kruger, is in Evans’ words, “as straight as they come.” If Cooper’s theory were true, Kruger would have had to have been complicit in signing off on a retroactive warrant, which of course is illegal. Evans says that it isn’t likely. And though I don’t know Judge Kruger (and for reasons I’ll get into later, I think he was far too deferential in granting the second warrant), seems to me there would have needed to have been quite a bit of coordination to pull that off.

That said, let me add two more things.

First, there’s still quite a bit about the warrants one might find suspicious. We’ve already talked about the curious cross-outs of times on both the Smith and Maye evidence sheets, as well as the comlete lack of a time left on the Maye sheet. But have another look at the affidavits for the warrants. The affidavit for Maye’s apartment has the phrase “Apt. #2″ handwritten across the top. And the affidavit for Smith’s has “Apt. #1″ written in the same spot, in apparently the same handwriting. Here’s Cooper questioning Kruger about that handwriting:

Q: When were those numbers placed on there?

A: I do not know that.

Q: They were not designated as 1 and 2 when they were presented to you?

A: We talked about right and left, I believe, or east and west, but not apartment 1 and apartment 2. I asked him [Officer Jones] — in trying to identify where he wanted to go, when I finally figured out where the place was, I asked him if that was the Tommie Speights duplex over there, and he said he didn’t know. I knew she owned a duplex somewhere over in there, but I — it was there in town.

Q: Okay. But my question to you, when those affidavits — excuse me — those search warrants were presented to you, they were not designated apartment 1 and apartment 2, were they?

A: No, they weren’t. I’ve testified to that, I believe.

Q: No, I don’t recall that, but it is your testimony now?

A: The apartment 1 and apartment 2 were not on the search warrant that I signed.

This may be nothing at all. But either Jones himself wrote those designations on the warrants after getting them, or one of the other officers wrote them in after the raids. Cooper hinted that this was evidence that the warrants were doctored after the fact — particularly when taken with the scribbled-out times on the evidence sheets. Make of it what you will.

Secondly, however, the point to all of this is to get to Cory Maye’s mindset at the time of the raids. If he can establish that police had no business being at his apartment, particularly if they thought it was merely another entrance to the Smith residence, he’s got a good case for stating it was reasonable for him to believe he was defending his life that night. If there’s no warrant, it’s a homerun.

But even with a warrant, Maye has a strong case. Particularly with a vague warrant that doesn’t mention him, lacks any corroborative documentation of a separate investigation of him, his lack of criminal record, and after police failed to find a substantial quantity of drugs in his apartment. The fact that Officer Jones charged into Maye’s apartment with his gun still holstered, and that an ununiformed volunteer officer broke down Maye’s door are pretty strong evidence that either (a) the raiding officers didn’t suspect anyone was on the other side of that door, or that (b) they did suspect someone was behind that door, in which case they were incredibly reckless and careless. In either case, Maye comes out looking pretty good from where I’m sitting.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 at 8:02 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.