Now that Cory Maye has well-funded pro-bono representation, a few people have asked if it’s still worth making a donation to his defense fund.

I suppose the short answer to that is that if you’re interested only in paying for his defense, the answer is “no.” But if you’re really itching to do something to help, you might still consider giving.

I spoke with Bob Evans (still Maye’s chief counsel) last week about this. There are a couple of possibilities as to what would become of the defense fund. One is that it could simply be turned over to Cory should he ever be acquitted, pardoned, or granted clemency. Cory comes from an extremely poor family, and should he ever be released, it’s not likely he’ll have many prospects, or places to go. I’ve spoken a bit with some of the leftist groups on this. Seems to me one of the best things they could do is to give the guy a fresh start, and make sure that the hardening that almost certainly comes with a five or seven or ten year stint on death row doesn’t push Cory down the wrong tract if and when he gets out.

Should things not turn out so well for Cory, another possibility would be to turn the fund into a college fund for Cory’s two kids, including the little girl who was in the house the night of the raid.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 26th, 2006 at 8:04 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.