On Sunday afternoon, I met Cory Maye’s family (more on that later). After, on Sunday evening, I drove to Columbia, Mississippi to talk with one of the two black women who served on the jury that convicted Maye.

One of the black women has refused to talk with Cory’s lawyers because she works for the county in Columbia, and fears losing her job if she talks (which raises interest in both what she has to say (if it were all favorable to the state, one would think she’d have nothing to worry about) and what type of threats — implicit or otherwise — have been directed at her should she say it).

The other black woman who served on the jury lives in a particularly impoverished trailer park in a small clearing in the woods a few miles outside Columbia. She had no phone, so the only way to talk with her was to pay a visit (all praise to the GPS “NeverLost” system in my rental car).

Let me start by saying I don’t know how to write up what happened next without sounding condescending, or embarassing this woman. And, in fact, I debated putting this post up at all. But in the end, I think it’s important to give some context to the makeup of the jury, and where the jurors were coming from. So I’ll go ahead an put this up. I won’t use the woman’s name, though if anyone wants to verify, she’s in the trial transcripts.

First, the woman lived in a trailer that, even in the context of the shabby surroundings, was in bad shape. She looked to be in her late thirties, early forties, and was missing her front teeth — both top and bottom. She also wasn’t all that interested in talking to me.

“I don’t want to talk about that. I’m trying my best to put that out of my mind.”

“Just a few minutes?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget about it.”

“Do you think he did it? Do you think he knew it was a cop he shot that night?”

“I couldn’t say. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I couldn’t say.”

“You don’t know if he was guilty or not?”

“Some of what he said didn’t make no sense. Some of it made sense. But I couldn’t say.”

“If you weren’t sure, why did you convict him?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Did you feel any pressure? Were you intimidated?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? There’s some talk that some of the jurors felt intimidated.”

“No. It wasn’t like that.”

“So you can’t tell me if you think he actually did it or not?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Do you think he deserves a new trial?”

“Oh, yes. He ought to get a new trial. Everybody deserves a chance.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me about Cory Maye and the trial?”

“I don’t remember a lot of it. I was on lots of medication. For my nerves. With the medication, I didn’t hear everything. I didn’t remember everything that was going on. So I couldn’t say.”

“What kind of medication?”

“For my nerves.”

“What did you think of Cory’s lawyer?”

“I didn’t like her. I liked her at first, but then she did some things that made me not like her. A lot of people didn’t like her.”

“What kind of things did she do?”

“I couldn’t say, now. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Did you convict Cory Mayebecause you didn’t like her?”

“Maybe a little. I couldn’t say. I’m really not sure if he did it or not.”

This poor woman clearly wasn’t clear on the meaning of “reasonable doubt.” She’s also a good example of something I’ll write about in more detail later — a certain sense of reservation among blacks in this area that racism, injustice, and the occasional railroading at the hands of the criminal justice system are all just part life as a black person in this particular part of Mississippi. It’s not only accepted, it’s expected.

There are lots of reasons to be upset by the Cory Maye case that have nothing to do with race. And I’ve tried to avoid injecting race into my own analysis of the case. But it’s impossible to visit the area and come away with any feeling other than that race pervades nearly every facet of life down there.

If you’re one who is inclined to look at the fact that there were two black women on the jury that convicted Cory and sentenced him to death and determine that because of that, race wasn’t a factor at his trial, I think you’re mistaken. In this case, the black woman was not an educated, independent juror with a good grasp of the criminal justice system. She is an unfathomably poor woman who by all indications has had very little education, has little concept of what’s supposed to be determined at a trial, and who convicted Maye despite being far from convinced of what actually happened the night of the raid. She convicted because that’s what she was expected to do.

That she even made it onto the jury, I think, is yet another data point in support of the argument that Rhonda Cooper provided no real representation for Cory Maye at all.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 18th, 2006 at 3:50 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.