Reader David Seth Michaels writes:

Two additional things should be emphasized. First, according to the Hattiesburg paper, Maye was convicted of the capital murder on Friday morning, and he was sentenced to death on Friday afternoon. That means that the penalty phase of this case was less than 1/2 a day long, including opening statements and deliberations. That, compared to usual cases is way, way, way too little to convince a jury not to kill. It suggests ineffective counsel at the very least on sentencing.

Second, this case reached a verdict in January 2004. That was 2 years ago. There’s still been no filing (apparently) on the direct appeal. That could happen in Mississippi because of delays in getting a transcript (you need one to appeal), but more likely, it’s because whoever is representing Maye on the appeal doesn’t know what s/he’s doing. Put another way, nobody of modest means (Maye was renting a “shabby” duplex as described in the Hattiesburg paper) has enough resources to hire decent appellate counsel in a death case. I know this from experience. So a big question is why this guy doesn’t have appointed, qualified Miss counsel who are up to the task at hand.

As I mentioned in the original post, Maye’s family fired his first attorney, Rhonda Cooper, after his death sentence. According to Cooper, they then hired a guy from California who apparently has little legal background, and doesn’t appear to have yet filed an appeal. So far, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Maye’s family to verify the status of his representation or his appeal.

As for Cooper, she seems like a very nice woman who represented Maye the best she could. She takes on a lot of indigent clients. I’m not qualified to assess the competency of her representation, though it’s probably worth noting that Maye was her first capital case. I thought her suggestion to jurors that God would judge them should they not show Maye mercy was a bit odd, though for all I know that kind of thing may not be all that uncommon in some parts of the country.

In any case, several people have asked about a legal fund, and about the adequacy of Maye’s current counsel. I don’t know about any defense fund, and I’m neither qualified nor the appropriate person to start one up. Should one get going, though, I’ll be sure to post the details. When I called the Mississippi ACLU shortly before putting up the first Maye post, they had never heard of his case. Perhaps they’d be the most likely source of competent representation for him.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 11th, 2005 at 6:55 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.