My Fox column this week is on Cory Maye.

It’ll be interesting to see how Fox News consumers react to the case.

It’ll also give some indication of the chances of assembling a broad-based left-right coalition on this case.

The academic right has largely jumped on board with Maye’s cause, as you’d expect them too. The grassroots right is iffier. Here’s hoping red state America can get transcend knee-jerk “cop-killer” and “pot smoker” reactions and see this case for what it is: a man who was protecting his family from intruders.

UPDATE: This thread on the Red State site isn’t very promising.

If you’re interested, here’s a petition calling on the state of Mississippi to free Cory Maye.

UPDATE: Okay, so due to a bad Internet connection I just signed it six times. Hopefully, the admins will fix it. I swear, I’m not a cheater.

I just got the okay to post that the D.C. firm of Covington and Burling will be providing pro bono assistance to public defender Bob Evans in the Cory Maye case.

Covington’s a well-funded, very prestigious law firm, with offices in D.C., New York, San Francisco, London, and Brussels.

This has been in the works since December, when Abe Pafford, an associate there, read the first posts on the Maye case on the site you’re reading.

Covington partner Michael Labson will be heading up the legal team, along with Pafford and a few other lawyers with considerable criminal justice experience, including a former federal prosecutor.

This is terrific news, and the firm deserves a ton of credit.

Some good news.

That prestigious, well-funded D.C. law firm I mentioned earlier has agreed to take Maye’s case pro bono. This is a wonderful development. Unfortunately, I don’t yet have the okay from my contact at the firm to tell you its name. I imagine I’ll get clearance soon. They deserve the good publicity.

Also, I’ll be discussing the Maye case on the Alan Colmes Show tonight at 11pm ET.

If you’ve read the trial transcripts, you might remember that the prosecution spent a good time with Dr. Steven Hayne, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Officer Ron Jones. I’ve noted that Dr. Hayne has since been rebuked by an appellate court for coming up with a wholly unfathomable theory that, in his expert opinion, a bullet wound was consistent with the prosecution’s theory that two people simultaneously fired the gun that created it. There’s much, much more on Dr. Hayne. But that’s for another time.

Today, let’s look at the exchange between Dr. Hayne and District Attorney Buddy McDonald on the trajectory of the bullet wound that killed Officer Jones (see here, beginning on page 33 of the document).

Dr. Hayne testifies that the bullet was headed downward into Jones’ body at an angle of approximately 20 degrees. McDonald asks Hayne to elaborate, and show the trajectory on a diagram. McDonald then asks Hayne if the wound was “an entrance wound.” Hayne replies that it was, and that it was “nearly circular,” clearly implying that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the wound. McDonald continues to belabor the downward trajectory, next asking Hayne to trace it out with a red pen.

McDonald’s point here is that if the bullet were traveling downward, there’s no way events could have transpired the way Cory Maye described them — that is, he shot upward from the floor, where he lay frightened when Jones burst in. Instead, McDonald tries to manufacture the scene that Maye lied in wait, and pounced when Jones came in.

McDonald returns to this in his closing argument (see here, page 37), imploring:

He said — and this is a major thing. He said he was lying on the ground and he had that gun like this looking in the opposite direction when he fired. If you believe he’s telling the truth about that, look at Dr. Hayne’s diagram. Think about what Dr. Hayne said in his testimony with respect to the angle of that projectile. Is Cory telling the truth about that?

Emphasis mine.

So the bullet’s trajectory was clearly a major part of the prosecution’s attempt to cast doubt on Cory Maye’s credibility.

But take a look at the autopsy report. That report, presumably authored by Hayne (given that he signed it) describes the gunshot wound as “slightly irregular in configuration suggestive of an irregular reentry gunshot wound” (page 4.) In fact, it’s described as a “reentry” wound twice in the same paragraph, then again on page 8. The report also describes the wound’s shape as “ovid,” not “nearly circular.”

Somehow, between the autopsy report and the trial, “irruglar reentry” becomes entry, and “ovid” becomes “nearly circular.” Hayne does use he word “reentry” once in his testimony, enough I guess to provide plausible deniability, but the whole of his back and forth with McDonald clearly obscures the most likely scenario — that the bullet hit something else before it entered Jones, meaning the trajectory of the bullet has little bearing on the position Cory Maye was in at the time he fired it.

If you read Bob Evans’ amended motion, you’ll see that Hayne later confirmed to him in a phone call that “reentry” indeed means that the bullet’s trajectory was likely altered before it struck Jones. So the question here is not only why Hayne would neglect to mention the reentry business in his testimony, but why he would let McDonald use him to lead the jury into thinking the bullet went in straight, thus casting doubt on Cory Maye’s credibility.

Give the level of importance McDonald put on how the bullet’s trajectory cast doubt on Maye’s story, and therefore on his credibility, Hayne’s testimony — and McDonald’s questioning — were clearly intended to mislead.

And Rhonda Cooper, Maye’s trial lawyer, completely missed the opportunity to impeach Hayne’s testimony, and perhaps give the jury reason to mistrust the prosecution.

It gets odder. Before going on, I should note here that the “reentry” and “ovid” descriptions in the autopsy report in themselves raise significant questions about Hayne’s testimony, and about Maye’s defense counsel. What follows is merely an oddity I discovered, from which you can draw your own conclusions:

In his amended motion, Bob Evans notes that the crime report on the bullet found in Ron Jones is body indicates that the bullet was too mangled to be positively traced back to Cory Maye’s gun. Meanwhile, the bullet found in the door frame was able to be definitively traced to the weapon. In other words, a bullet that allegedly only hit tissue was mangled, while the bullet that hit wood and metal was intact enough to be identified. Yet more evidence that the bullet in Jones’ body hit something to alter its trajectory before striking him.

So here’s where it gets weird. Evans mentioned the crime report to me a couple of times in our early conversations. A friend of Maye’s family also emailed me shortly after my first post on Maye, and told me to be sure to check the crime report, for the same reasons Evans specified.

But if you do check the report, you’ll see that the bullet from Jones’ body was positively traced to Maye’s gun. So was the bullet in the door frame. The only thing that wasn’t positively traceable was a casing found at the scene.

So I guess the question is why would Evans and at least one other person have clearly remembered a different crime report than the one now available? The obvious answer is that Evans and the person who emailed me confused the crime lab report’s description of the bullet with its description of the casing. But Evans is a lifelong Mississippian — the kind of guy who strikes me as someone who knows his way around a gun.

This isn’t as crucial a matter as the “reentry” business. It’s merely the latest in a series of oddities in this case.

Seems to me that two things stick out in the documents below. The first is a pretty striking revelation in the autopsy report that never came up in trial. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But the second, which I’ll address now, is the continued accumulation of evidence of the ineffectiveness of Maye’s trial attorney. Rhonda Cooper’s long list of dropped balls is documented here, in Bob Evans amended motion for a new trial for Maye. Among her more egregious mistakes:

Analysis to follow.

But here are more documents from the Cory Maye case:

1. Crime Lab Report on the Maye Case.
2. Report on the Autopsy of Officer Ron Jones.
3. Rhonda Cooper’s motion for a new trial.
4. Bob Evans amended motion for new trial.
5. Addendum to #4.
6. Second addendum to #4.

It has tentatively been scheduled for February 27.

I’ll have more on Maye’s case over the weekend.

The Cory Maye case grows curiouser and curiouser.

As I’ve mentioned before, Cory Maye’s lawyer on appeal is Bob Evans, who also happens to be the public defender for Jefferson Davis County. For ten years, Evans has also served as the public defender for the town of Prentiss, the seat of Jefferson Davis County.

It now appears that the Prentiss Board of Aldermen have fired Evans as the Prentiss public defender. His transgression? Representing Cory Maye. Evans told me last month that he’d been warned that if he agreed to take this case, he could well be fired. Looks like whoever warned him was correct.

With his permission, here’s the email Evans sent to me this morning

Just found out this a.m. that the Town of Prentiss has “decided to go another route” pertaining to my position as town public defender. In other words, they have now made official what was intimated to me back in December and have fired me.

The explicit and sole reason given to me by the mayor was that my representation of Cory Maye was not to the liking of the aldermen. I guess it wasn’t to the mayor’s liking either since, to the best of my knowledge, he didn’t veto their decision. Of course, I have no doubt that it’s a politically popular decision among the Caucasians of Prentiss. But what in life is not, at least to some extent, political?

When apprised that this move was being contemplated, although I doubted that it would make any difference I requested the courtesy of being allowed to appear before the board to express my reasons for representing Cory. They did not deign to grant me this opportunity.

I have been Prentiss public defender officially (salaried) since February 1995 and unofficially for several years prior. During that time not one official complaint has been communicated to me about my performance. Of course, there have been many unofficial complaints about me “getting all those guilty people off.”

What it boils down to is something that I have known and personally observed about members of the “unwashed masses” for many years: When the Constitution and Bill of Rights are applied to benefit others, the right to counsel, due process, fair trial et al. are “technicalities”. Criminals get off on technicalities such as the 4th Amendment. Only when one of their asses is in a sling are these same documents “fundamental rights”.

But what the hell. Four hundred a month ain’t gonna bankrupt me. This decision, to me, is an indication that the “powers that be” actually believe that we can win Cory’s appeal. That is a refreshing thought. I have always liked the adage “He who laughs last laughs best.”

This afternoon, I made some phone calls to Prentiss officials to verify the reason for Evans’ firing. My first call was to the mayor, Charles Dumas. One thing to keep in mind about Dumas — he’s very close to the family of the late Officer Ron Jones. In fact, in one December 28, 2001 article from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Dumas is described as spokesperson “on behalf of the Jones family.”

Mayor Dumas told me he couldn’t say one way or the other if Evans’ story was true, and that if I wanted to know why the Board fired Evans, I’d have to talk to the aldermen. I asked him specifically about the conversation Evans said they had this morning, in which, according to Evans, Mayor Dumas said the termination was in direct retaliation for Evans’ representation of Maye. Mayor Dumas said, “Bob and I had a personal conversation. I won’t comment on that. You’ll have to ask the Board why they fired him.”

So I called the board. Aldermen Terry Brinson and Robert G. Miller didn’t answer their phones, and had no answering machine or voicemail. I left messages on the answering machines of Aldermen Danny L. Daniels and Willie Davis.

The only alderman I was able to get in touch with was Sylvia Ward. Ward told me that she didn’t feel comfortable telling me why the Board fired Evans, and that if I really wanted to know, I’d have to come down to Mississippi and ask the board “as a whole.” I told her that the Mayor told me only the board could tell me why Evans was fired, but that I had reason to believe it was because he was serving as counsel for Cory Maye. Again, she said, I’d either need to request a copy of the minutes from Prentiss Town Hall or come down to Mississippi and make my request in person.

You are, of course, free to draw your own conclusions here. But of the two Prentiss officials I’ve spoken with so far, neither has denied that his representation of Maye was the reason for Evans’ termination, and both were rather coy when I suggested it.

It seems pretty clear to me that Evans was fired from his job as Prentiss public defender in direct retaliation for representing the man who shot the town police chief’s son in his death row appeal.

The fact that the town took such petty retaliatory measures against a public defender for doing exactly what he’s supposed to do — represent an indigent defendant — certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in the way justice is meted out in Prentiss.

NOTE: I’ve gotten several emails on this, so I’ll answer them here: Evans is still Maye’s attorney. He was working as public defender for both Prentiss and Jefferson Davis County. He is still public defender for Jefferson Davis County, and says he plans to continue representing Cory for as long as Cory will let him. So if you are planning to make a contribution to Maye’s defense fund — or already have — Evans is still the man overseeing the fund. The address for the fund is here. But you might want to read a brief disclaimer before donating, which I’ve posted here.

Just got a few more details. First, before you write a check, understand that this is not a 501(c)(3). So your contributon would not be tax exempt.

Second, Evans tells me that the expenses he expects to occur would come should Maye get a new trial. The hearing for a new trial should come relatively soon. Normally, a motion for a new trial is rather perfunctory, and is usually promptly shot down by the judge. But Evans believes that in this case, there’s some room for optimism. The circuit court judge who will preside over the hearings has a history of compassion, and Evans thinks the extraordinary circumstances and flaws in Maye’s original trial make this particular motion anything but the usual.

In other words, there’s some reason to think the judge will give Maye a second day in court. There’s also a chance that, further down the road, the Mississippi Supreme Court could order a new trial.

But Evans wanted me to be sure to mention that while there will certainly be expenses if Maye’s given a new trial, and there will be some expense associated with preparing the Supreme Court appeal, there are no immediate expenses associated with Maye’s defense. It’s just a matter of waiting for the hearing on the motion for a new trial.

He said he’d feel better if anyone thinking about contributing knew that before writing a check.

Bob Evans, Cory Maye’s attorney, has set up a legal defense fund for Cory. Evans will deposit the contributions into a trust fund, with he and Cory as required joint signatories. He’ll also send you a receipt if you send a return address with your check.

Why does Maye need a defense fund? First, Evans is a public defender. Now that Maye’s trial is over, Evans gets no state money for private investigators, expert witnesses, and the like. It would be nice to have a forensics expert look at Dr. Hayne’s autopsy for example (I’ll have more on Dr. Hayne later), or to have an investiagor track down Jamie Smith and his family, or neighbors, to see if their account of the night’s events match up with the police version of the raid. I’m sure Evans could also use some legal help on the appeal. Last I heard, the D.C. firm looking into taking Maye’s case pro bono was still reviewing the case to see if it presented any internal conflicts of interest. I’ll let you know when I get an update.

Next week, I’ll be posting PDFs of the autopsy report on Officer Jones, the crime lab report on the bullets and shell casings found at the scene, the motion filed by Rhonda Cooper for a new trial, and the amendeded motion subsequently filed by Evans.

As it stands now, the state is preparing its response to the Cooper-Evans new trial motion. There will be a hearing set once the state files its response.

Contributions can be submitted to:

Cory Maye Justice Fund
c/o R.E. Evans
P.O. Box 636
Monticello, MS 39654

There’s much more to come.

But right now I’m waiting for a few more documents, as well as trying to gather information on another aspect of the case.

Apologies also for the spare posting over the last few days. I’ve been moving and trying to tie up a few projects I’ve been working on.

A big part of the prosecution’s case rests on the testimony from the raiding police officers that after they first knocked and announced themselves, a light went on in Maye’s apartment. One officer then testified that he saw someone jiggle, then peep through the door blinds. The theory is that Maye woke up, turned on a light, peeked through the blinds, saw there were cops outside, then ran back to get his gun so he could take them on.

This scenario doesn’t make much sense, for several reasons:

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.

Here’s a little tidbit that’s not in the trial transcripts. It’s hearsay, so take it for what it’s worth. But I head it from Bob Evans, Cory Maye’s current counsel. And Maye says it happened in the judge’s chambers, with witnesses. In fact, he’s planning to use it in both the appeal and in his petition for a new trial, so it’s hard to think he’d be making it up.

In any case, apparently after Maye had been convicted, the judge convened privately with counsel for both sides, and asked each side for its jury instructions for the death penalty phase of the trial. Maye’s attorney, Rhonda Cooper, apparently told the judge she didn’t have any jury instructions. When he asked why, she said hadn’t drawn any up because she hadn’t expected the trial to get to the death penalty phase. Evans says every jaw in the room hit the floor.

Keep this in mind when we look at questioning of the defense witnesses in the death penalty phase of the trial.

Many thanks to the readers who helped me break these apart. Several gave it a go, and several more offered.

For some reason, my copy of the transcript is missing pages 3 and 4, but those pages appear to be filled only with formalities related to Rhonda Coopers motion to suppress the marijuana allegedly found in Maye’s apartment. The meat of the motion appears on page five with the first witness.

I also just received a copy of the autopsy report on Officer Jones. It’ll probably be next week before I can make PDFs of that. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Steven Haynes. I’ll have much, much more on Haynes, the autopsy, and how critical it was to Maye’s conviction a bit later. Of course, I’ll also explain why I think the autopsy report was wrongly used to impeach Maye’s credibility.

I’m also hoping to get a copy of the third search warrant issued in the case. This was the warrant issued after the initial raid, and after Jones’ death. It’s with this warrant that police allgedly found the less than one ounce of marijuana in Maye’s apartment.

Here they are:

1. Defense motion to suppress marijuana evidence (motion transcript pages 1-42).
2. Defense motion to suppress marijuana evidence (motion transcript pages 42-83).
3. Voir dire — court and state (trial transcript pages 3-60).
4. Voir dire — defense (trial transcript pages 61-111).
5. Jury selection (trial transcript pages 112-141).
6. Opening statements, beginning of state’s case (trial transcript pages 142-193).
7. State’s case (trial transcript pages 194-261).
8. State’s case, continued (trial transcript pages 262-311).
9. State’s case, continued (trial transcript pages 312-361).
10. Defense case (trial transcript pages 362-390).
11. Cory Maye’s testimony (trial transcript pages 391-454).
12. Closing arguments and verdict (trial transcript pages 455-501).
13. Setencing phase (trial transcript pages 502-528).

One other note, the court reporter has indirectly asked that I emphasize that these are unedited transcripts. So you will likely come across some typos.

A couple of other points about the case I’ve learned from a quick lookover of the transcripts:

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.

I originally reported that the raid was largely conducted by the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, who asked Officer Jones to come along. That came from my conversations with Rhonda Cooper, Maye’s first attorney, as well as a December 29, 2001 article from the Hattiesburg American which said that Jones conducted the raid with “eight other officers who were also from the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force and the Jefferson Davis County Sheriff’s Department.”

That article wasn’t quite right, and neither was I.

As it turns out, only one officer from the narcotics task force went along on the raid. Jones seems to have assembled an ad-hoc team of eight police officers to conduct the raid, including himself; a volunteer police officer from Bassfield named Phillip Allday; Darryl Graves, the task force officer; another Prentiss police department officer; and officers from both the Jefferson Davis County Sheriff’s department and the Bassfield department.

I think this reflects even more poorly on the way the raid was handled. Only one of the eight officers — the officer from the task force — had any narcotics training at all. He was on the four-man team who executed the warrant for the other apartment, that of Jamie Smith. Which means none of the officers who raided Maye’s home had training in serving a high-risk narcotics warrant.

Here’s another troubling tidbit — it was the ununiformed volunteer cop who kicked down Maye’s door. Also, given his volunteer status, Allday wasn’t authorized to announce “police” prior to entering the apartment.

Got them back from Kinko’s. And they’re screwed up. I asked Kinko’s to break them up into 50-page PDF files instead of one enormous 500-page file. And of course they did just the opposite.

So I’m going to take them back tomorrow morning. Hope to have them up before the weekend.

Hayne is the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Officer Ron Jones after the raid on Cory Maye’s apartment.

Hayne’s testimony was crucial in securing Maye’s conviction. His testimony about the trajectory of the bullet found in Jones’ body cast doubt on Maye’s version of how the raid transpired. Maye’s current lawyer, Bob Evans, thinks jurors dismissed just about everything Cory Maye said after hearing Hayne’s testimony.

I’ll get into this a bit more when we start going through the trial transcripts. There’s also some misleading of the jury on the part of the prosecution involved, as well as some ineffective counsel issues with repsect to Maye’s first lawyer.

I bring Hayne up because the guy’s credibility took a serious blow this week, due to some truly bizarre testimony he gave in an unrelated murder case. In that case, the prosecution had claimed that two defendants simultaneously put their hands on the trigger of a gun and, together, fired the bullet that killed the victim.

I suppose that’s possible, though strange. What’s revealing, however, is that Hayne testified on behalf of the prosecution that in his expert opinion, the wound itself supported the prosecution’s theory. From the the Jackson Clarion-Ledger:

In last year’s murder trial of Tyler Edmonds, prosecutors argued the teenager, then 13, fired the gun together with his 26-year-old half sister, Kristi Fulgham. Prosecutors said in opening arguments, “They both put their finger on the trigger, and you’re going to hear how they both shot and killed Joey Fulgham.”

[...]

During the 2004 trial, forensic pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne testified it was more likely Joey Fulgham was killed by two people rather than one. “I could favor two people involved in the positioning,” Hayne testified. “It’s consistent with two people involved. I can’t exclude one, but I think it would be less likely.”

If you’re wondering how in the hell a medical examiner could tell from a bullet wound how many hands were on the trigger of the gun that created it, you’re not alone:

Judges on the Mississippi Court of Appeals questioned today how a pathologist can conclude more than one person fired a gun.

[...]

In today’s hearing before a three-judge panel, Edmonds’ lawyer, Robert McDuff of Jackson, called such a conclusion “voodoo science.”

Judge L. Joseph Lee agreed: “It’s impossible to testify as to that. If there’s one bullet, you can’t say whether it was fired by one person or three.”

I’ll say. It’s a bit like saying you can tell by the bullet hole what color eyes the killer had. Or that a very strong man squeezed the trigger.

Lexis and Google searches on Hayne show a guy with a very long history of offering testimony that favors prosecutors in murder trials, and that tends to exonerate from wrongdoing police officers accused of using excessive force. In fact, he’s described in a couple articles as a “longtime prosecution witness,” or words to that effect. Of course, that in itself doesn’t necessarily impeach his credibility — he was also an official medical examiner for the state of Mississippi for quite a long time.

But the case above offers at least a glimpse into just how far Dr. Hayne will go to offer support for the state’s case against a defendant. If the “two hands on the gun” case is any indicator at all of Dr. Hayne’s propensity to favor the prosecution, I think we have pretty good reason to be suspicious any time the guy takes the stand. I’m not certain about this, but I’d guess that it’s pretty rare for a medical examiner to be rebuked by an appellate court judge.

Keep this in mind when we discuss Dr. Hayne’s testimony in Cory Maye’s trial.

Another reader writes:

As a retired SWAT Commander, I have several questions about the shooting. In no way am I convinced that Maye belongs in prison, much less on death row. The PDF docs are lame. Surely there is more than what is posted to have a judge sign a search warrant.

If the officer had lived, he would have been asked if he kept a surveillance log on the duplex. This should have included times, vehicle descriptions, and tag numbers.

As a supervisor I would have never have approved even asking a judge for a warrant, and I don’t know of a judge that would have signed one given this lack of information. Most departments require informants to be registered, which means the informant should have been known. Even if the department didn’t require registration, other officers usually know at the least the info given, if not who the actual snitch was.

[...]

I cannot believe Maye was convicted with the piss poor information I have seen.

I would be willing to speak to you and the defense attorney to see if I could assist Mr. Maye in his case. I do ask that my name not be used and to keep my information private.

I’m willing to grant that things are perhaps done differently in small towns than they are in more urban areas. Still, the lack of any documentation whatsoever from Officer Jones with respect to the investigation leading up to the warrants is troubling, to say the least. You’d think he’d have made some record of his investigation. And you’d think the judge would have asked to see some of that documentation before signing off. And given that one of the keys to understanding Maye’s state of mind that night is knowing whether or not police actually had cause to be at his apartment, the lack of documentation also becomes pretty convenient.

I’ll have more on this when we start looking at the trial transcripts. According to Kinko’s, they’ll be done on Wednesday. Which means I may not have them up until Thursday or Friday.

A reader writes in response to the Maye case:

I’m also a victim of a drug raid. My house was raided at 10 p.m. by overzealous cops looking for a meth lab. I fortunately cannot abide weapons of any kind—all they found was a marijuana pipe and a teaspoon of weed, enough to give me three years probation, loss of voting rights, passport, etc.

I was ass’t. press secretary to Gov. Jerry Brown when he ran against Clinton back in ’92. The judge sneered and rolled her eyes at the mention of his name. But, if I were not broke and disabled (my use of marijuana really was medicinal), I’d help this Maye guy out in a heartbeat.

They came in the mail today.

I’m off to Kinko’s at lunch to get copies and PDFs made.

Daniel Glover has written a nice piece on Cory Maye and the blogosphere for The Hotline.

Media coverage thus far still seems to be limited to features of the “watching the blogs” variety. But hey, that’s better than nothing.

I’m really not all that interested in the “blogs vs. the MSM” angle of this story. Nor am I interested in the “why aren’t the liberals helping this guy instead of Tookie” angle. Blogs all over the political map have weighed in on this, generally overwhelmingly in favor of Maye. If it takes a NY Times investigation or Barbara Streisand’s activism to get Maye some justice, I’m more than okay with that (though given that Gov. Barbour is one of the people we need to convince, the latter would probably be counterproductive).

Anyone who wants to help us get this guy a new trial, a pardon, or clemency is welcome. Gun rights activist, civil libertarian, or Hollywood liberal — I don’t particularly care how you got here.