I finished reading the transcripts over the holiday. I’ll be posting questions and reactions over the course of the next couple of days.

But let’s start with the marijuana.

The actual amount of marijuana in Maye’s apartment was even smaller then we originally thought. Total weight was 1.1 grams. I just looked at an individual tea bag of Lipton tea. The tea inside the bag weighs 6 grams. So the amount of marijuana for which Prentiss police kicked down Maye’s door in the middle of the night, putting him in the position of having to decide if he was being searched or under attack, was less than one-sixth of the amount of tea in a typical teabag.

Don’t forget that Jones’ confidential informant allegedly said he’d seen a “large stash” of marijuana in both apartments. Which leaves one of three possibilities:

(1) The informant was correct, and Maye either sold, smoked, or destroyed all of his large stash in the 24 hours between the time Jones got the tip and the time the raid commenced.

(2) The informant was mistaken, in which case the raiding officer had no business breaking into Maye’s house.

(3) Maye’s first attorney’s theory is correct — there never was a tip on Maye’s apartment, only on Smith’s. Police broke down Maye’s door because it was attached to Smith’s home, not believing there’d be anyone inside. After Jones was shot, they illegally obtained a retroactive warrant for Maye’s apartment to cover their error. This theory is supported by the fact that Jones’ gun was still in his holster when he stormed the apartment. Cops generally don’t force entry into the residences of suspected drug dealers without arming themselves. One argument against this theory is that it would have required the illegal complicit aid of Judge Kruger, a man even Maye’s current attorney says is “as straight as they come.”

The problem is that because Jones kept no record of his investigation, there’s really no way for us to know which of these scenarios is correct. What does seem clear is that he conducted no independent investigation of either Cory Maye or his girlfriend. There were no controlled buys. Only the word of a single informant that he’d seen the “large stash” in the apartment. There aren’t even any specifics on how he saw the stuff. Through the window? Was he actually in the apartment when he saw it?

Of the three scenarios, only under the first could you arguably make the case that Maye should have known the men breaking into his home that night were police (and even then, there are compelling counter-arguments). Under either of the other two scenarios, cops had no legitimate reason to be in Maye’s home that night. I’d argue that there’s sufficent reasonable doubt here alone to at least acquit on the capital murder charge. And that’s not even touching the other troubling aspects of the case.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2005 at 1:32 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.