I’ll be discussing Cory Maye in just a sec.

Listen here.

The Mississippi Dept. of Corrections apparently lists Maye’s first name as “Corey.”

Every news article lists it as “Cory.”

I emailed public defender Bob Evans, who confirmed with Maye himself that it is indeed “Cory.”

I’ll be on the Air America affiliate in Pheonix tomorrow to talk about the Cory Maye case.

11:00am Eastern Time on the Charles Goyette Show.

Live stream here.

Somone has nominated the Cory Maye entry for deletion from Wikipedia, apparently on the grounds that he’s a “non-notable” person.

Seems a little rash to me. No, he hasn’t yet been covered by a major media outlet. But I’d say it’s pretty clear that a guy on death row with significant questions about his guilt ought to be “notable,” particularly given that that the Maye entry is classified as a “current event.”

Blogosphere support for Maye’s case has been nearly universal. There have, however, been a few dissenters. In the interest of open debate, I’ll let you read their reasons for believing the Maye verdict was just, and let you decide for yourselves.

I’ve heard via email that several prestigious, well-funded D.C. firms have begun to look into the possibility of donating pro-bono work to help with Maye’s appeal. One firm in particular has already been in touch with Maye’s attorney. Can’t reveal which firms just yet. If it pans out, I’ll fill you in.

Maye’s current attorney, public defender Bob Evans, tells me one reason Maye have come off as unsympathetic to the jury was that he has an odd facial mannerism. He apparently has a half smile — Evans says some might call it a smirk — when he speaks, even when he’s talking about pretty important things, like saving his own life. Any defense attorney will tell you that a defendant’s body language is immensely important, perhaps more important than what he actually says. Evans’ description of Maye’s quirky mannerism seems to fit with what Maye’s trial attorney told me early on — that two jurors told her after the trial they thought Maye was spoiled and disrespectful. And that that impression made them less likely to believe his testimony.

If you want to help spread the word about the case, I’ve created a clearinghouse page with all of my posts on Maye. It’s here.

I have lots more stuff on Cory Maye pending, but I’m not comfortable sharing it until I get the trial transcript, so I can verfiy a few things.

DA McDonald said he’d send it to me earlier this week, so I hope it’ll show up in the mail soon.

I’d also like to figure out some way to put the trial transcript online. As I’ve written all along, my goal here is to make as much information available as possible. Call it a quest for some open source justice.

The problem is, the transcript is 500+ pages long. That presents some logistical problems. I’m also not sure about the legality of putting it online. I can’t conceive of any reason why there should be a law against putting a trial transcript online. But it seems like just the kind of pettly little thing some legislator or bureaucrat might have decided ought to be illegal.

If you have any ideas on how to get it up, or on whether I’m allowed to put it up, drop me a line.

A few words about Officer Ron Jones.

Public defender Bob Evans — Maye’s attorney — tells me he’d known Jones for a long time, and that Jones was a good guy, and a well-meaning cop. I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary.

But I do think it’s possible to question the thoroughness and accuracy of Jones’ investigation without calling Jones’ character into question. Indeed, that’s what we’re doing. The problem here is the policy. There’s far too much discretion given to cops, courts, and prosecutors in drug cases, discretion that comes at the expense of the rights of the accused. Warrants are handed out on flimsy evidence. Volatile raids on nonviolent offenders are commonplace.

I think Jones erred in applying for a warrant on Maye’s home. And I think the judge erred in giving it to him. But search warrants are given for similarly lackluster cases every day, all across the country. I think the team Jones was a part of erred in breaking down Maye’s door. And I think Jones erred in storming Maye’s bedroom. I also regret that we can’t ask Jones how much corroborating investigation he did of Maye before applying for the warrant.

But no one is questioning Officer Jones’ honor, valor, or character. No one is suggesting he lied, or that he’s corrupt. My guess is that he was doing the job he was trained to do, and did nothing too far out of line with what cops routinely do while investigating drug cases.

The problem lies with what has now become routine. Jones’ job is to abide by the rules while looking for people who break the law. Our job is to make sure the laws are just, and that the rules sufficiently safeguard our civil liberties.

To that end, we need to start asking serious questions about the way we enforce drug laws in this country. Breaking down the doors of civilians with no criminal record in the middle of the night, essentially inviting confrontation, doesn’t seem like the best way to enforce the law. And of course, as a libertarian, I have a problem with the laws themselves. Seems to me there are better ways we could be using law enforcement resources than to set them out to hunt down nonviolent marijuana dealers.

In any case, I wanted to stress that we shouldn’t be thinking of Officer Jones as a villain. We should be thinking of him as a victim. And I guess my position would be that the fact that we have one dead victim as a result of the flawed raid on December 26, 2001 is more than enough.

(Disclaimer: I don’t yet have the trial transcript, so the following post is hearsay.)

One of the biggest mistakes Rhonda Cooper seems to have made in representing Maye was also one of her first moves. That was her change-of-venue motion. Here’s the problem: The raid and shooting took place in Jefferson Davis County, Mississippi. Jefferson Davis County is 57% black. The county Cooper initially approved of for the move was Lamar County, which is 85% white. Cooper apparently realized her mistake, and attempted to get the venue changed back to Jefferson Davis County. But the judge found that in moving for the original change of venue, Maye had waved his right to be tried in Jefferson Davis County. The compromise county — where the trial was actually held — was Marion County, which is 67% white.

Marion County is wealthier than Jefferson Davis County ($21,834 median income vs. $24,555), and much more conservative. Marion County went for Bush in 2000, and for Bush by 67% in 2004. Jefferson Davis County went for Gore in 2000, and for Kerry by 52% in 2004. Since both blacks and the poor are less likely to vote than whites and the wealthy, and Jefferson County is almost 60% black and 28% below the poverty line, it’s a safe bet that Jefferson Davis County is quite a bit more liberal than even its election returns bear out.

Given that it only takes one holdout to hang a jury, moving the trial out of Jefferson Davis County seems to me to have been a pretty devastating blow to Maye’s defense. It probably cost him several black jurors, and almost certaintly pulled a jury more conservative, and more sympathetic to cops than an to indigent kid with an illegitimate daughter. It was less likely, in other words, to be a real jury of his peers.

One thing Bob Evans mentioned to me yesterday is that the police officer who conducts the investigation leading up to a drug raid is never brought along on the raid. The reason is pretty simple: If that officer dies, there’s no way to go back and confirm the details of the investigation. Which of course is exactly what happend in the Maye case.

So I guess two questions arise from this. First, is Evans right? Is it true that the affiant is never supposed to accompany the SWAT team? And second, why was Officer Jones invited to join in on the raid?

On confidential informants:

have been a criminal lawyer in Canada for 7 years; my first year of
practice was involved with drug prosecutions, but I have been a defence lawyer since.

I wanted to make a couple points about the “informant”, and the idea that information died with the officer. I am increasingly convinced that many an “informant” referred to in an affidavit to obtain a warrant is entirely fictitious – who will ever be the wiser?

Nevertheless, it should be the protocol of any police force to document their informants; this doesn’t necessarily mean that their names are kept, but the handler-informant relationship is documented – why wasn’t that done here? Moreover, aren’t officers obliged to keep notes? Although the officer may have died, his activities in investigating and obtaining this warrant should have been noted in his notebook – this should include his observations of the traffic in and out of the residence. I have often found it fruitful to demand production of an officer’s notebook, and contrast the observations of foot traffic into a suspected drug den with what was said in the officer’s affidavit. This whole notion that critical information died with the officer makes no sense to me, assuming he was following standard police procedures with respect to notes and informants.

Another reason informants are usually documented is that they are *paid*. The only reason an informant would provide information without payment is if the cop has a squeeze on him – holding the prospect of arrest/prosecution over their head for their own criminal behaviour if they don’t flip on someone else.

As for the reliability of an informant, you touch on an important issue: shouldn’t the fact that little if anything was found at Maye’s residence impeach the reliability of the informant? You would think so. However, the converse is likely true. In my experience, *any* drugs found during the execution of a warrant bootstrap the reliability of the informant for that warrant. This is so even if they are looking for coke and find pot. In other words, if an informant is described as having provided reliable information that led to 3 previous warrants where arrests were made, and on the basis of that statement a warrant is issued to look for 2 kg of cocaine – but in the search the cops only find a half a marijuana joint, the next time the cops use that informant in a warrant application he will be described as having been proven reliable 4 times in the past, with 4 warrants issued on the basis of his information, leading to arrests in all 4 instances. It is a total sham.

Nearly every botched drug raid I’ve looked into was initiated based on information collected by a confidential informant.

Stephen Gordon has put Cory Maye up on Wikipedia.

As I mentioned before, I’ve been posting on the fly with this story, while trying to correct and clarify along the way. While blogland has been almost universally supportive of Maye, a few blogs and comments on blogs have noted that inaccuracies are being perpetuated. This is in part my fault, and in part due to the fact that the blogosphere sometimes functions like an enormous game of “telephone.” As for the part that’s my fault: My firsts posts on the Maye case were summaries, in which I collected information from media reports (which I’ve noted were sometimes contradictory) and from my conversations with Maye’s first attorney, who hadn’t been on the case in nearly two years. I don’t regret putting up those posts, inaccuracies and all, because they’re what put this case into public discussion. Only after those posts went up, and particularly after some PR help from Glenn Reynolds, for example, did folks in Mississippi start returning my calls.

But I don’t want this to be a case of blogs running amok with foggy details. I think Maye ought to be exonerated on the facts. So before I go on with new information, I’d like to put up a post that aims to keep everyone on the same page.

Let’s start with misconceptions, inaccuracies, and clarifications.

The CBS News blog and the Hotline blog have both picked up the Maye story.

Perhaps we’re close to a breakthrough. I’ve also been commissioned to write an op-ed on the case by what we’ll call for now a national newspaper. That’s about all I can say at the moment — it’s not yet a done deal.

I’ve received lots of email asking about a legal defense fund, pro bono work, etc. for Cory Maye. I posed the question to Maye’s current counsel, public defender Bob Evans. He replied:

Certainly am interested in anything that could be helpful to Cory’s case. Particularly would not be averse to talking with other interested lawyers who not only are willing but are CAPABLE of helping with the appeal and, hopefully, the retrial. Sentiment alone, while appreciated, is not helpful from a legal standpoint.

Defense funding would also be extremely helpful. Cory’s family, while obviously very concerned about him, are not financially able to obtain all the things that would be helpful in litigating his appeal. And while an indigent can, at the pretrial level, request the court’s financial assistance in obtaining things such as expert testimony (re: pathologist to discuss bullet path thru body and reasons that path does not jibe with Cory’s statement) and investigative help (for ex. to establish whether anyone else in the surrounding subdivision heard any of the cops announcing before entering), such assistance is not generally available at the appellate level where we now are. If others want to assist Cory in this manner, that would be fantastic.

Although being a cause celebre didn’t prevent Tookie’s execution this morning in California, he was undeniably guilty. Cory is not.

Let me know your suggestions about establishing a defense fund. Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I know nothing about how to establish a legal defense fund. And as I’ve written before, I don’t really think it’s my place to start one. But I’d be happy to put anyone with knowledge of such things in touch with Evans.

Here’s the latest, according to Bob Evans, Maye’s attorney:

The gun was stolen, not unregistered. Mississippi doesn’t require guns to be registered. The prosecution apparently wanted to push the fact that the gun was stolen in an attempt to discredit Maye (in Evans’ delightfully Southern parlance, “They tried to ride that horse long and hard”). But documents apparently show that the gun was stolen at least a year before Maye was found with it (I’ll have to check the trial transcripts when I get them to see just how long before the raid it was stolen), and that it was stolen in Natchez, Mississippi, about 100 miles away.

In other words, it’s almost certain that Maye’s assertion that he got the gun from a friend was correct. And Mississippi has no law against private transfers of guns. So the only thing illegal about the gun was that it was stolen, and there’s no evidence to suggest that Maye stole it, or knew that it was stolen.

All of this is probably why the trial judge suppressed the gun evidence, never letting it get to the jury.

I just had about an hour-long conversation with Bob Evans. Evans is the Jefferson Davis County public attorney, and he’s represtening Cory Maye on appeal.

The good news is, to my admidetly untrained ear, Evans knows his shit. I think too often families of the accused recoil when they hear the words “public defender,” and immediately move for someone, anyone else. But public defenders have a lot of exeperience in these kinds of cases, and unless you can afford a Johnnie Cochrane, they’re probably your best bet. In this case, Maye’s family fired Evans and hired Rhonda Cooper, a nice woman who seems to have done the best she could, but who had never tried a capital case, and who in my judgment made some devastating mistakes. I’ll get to those later.

I’ll have much, much more on this soon. There’s quite a bit more evidence in Maye’s favor we haven’t discussed yet. But I have a few other things I need to take care of first.

In the meantime, keep up the buzz. Evans said he’ll tell Maye the next time he sees him that there’s some support building for his case.

Just learned that Maye’s being represented by Bob Evans, a public defender. Not sure why an appeal has yet to be filed. Left him a voicemail this morning.

District Attorney Buddy McDonald emailed me yesterday to tell me the gun Maye used to shoot Officer Jones was unregistered, and possibly stolen. So far, I’ve found no mention of the gun in about a dozen local media reports on the case, nor was it mentioned in the evidence sheet of items seized from Maye’s home. The status of the gun was also suppressed at trial, though McDonald says his bringing up the gun and the judge’s suppressing that tesimtony will turn up in the transcript. I should have a copy of the transcript in a few days. Maye apparently told police he got the gun from a friend.

If this is true, I suppose it gives anyone looking for a reason to impeach Maye’s credibility a peg to latch on to. I’m not terribly surprised by it, nor does it make me less outraged by the fact that Maye’s on death row. The fact that a poor man living in a high-crime area borrowed or bought a gun from a friend for protection doesn’t strike me as all that scandalous. When I had my little run-in with cops and gangbangers last winter, several readers offered to lend me a weapon until I could buy one myself. If I’d accepted and, God forbid, had cause to use it in a scenario similar to Maye’s, I’d hope the fact that the gun wasn’t in my name wouldn’t be cause to send me to death row.

Beyond possibly striking a blow against Maye’s credibility, I don’t think this latest revelation does much at all to alter the facts of the case. The question here is whether or not Maye reasonably believed his life was in peril. That he used an unregistered gun to defend himself doesn’t affect that question one way or the other.

My position on this case is pretty clear. I think Maye should be pardoned and released. Probably compensated, too. But in the interest of gettng at the truth, I think it’s important that we put all information out there. Even information that isn’t necessarily productive to Maye’s cause.

UPDATE: Just spoke with Rhonda Cooper, Maye’s former attorney. She says there’s documentation showing that there’s no way Maye could have stolen the gun. It was apparently stolen from another part of the state, and well before it ever came into Maye’s possession. Sounds like a typical black market gun that made it’s way to Maye’s friends, then to Maye himself.

(Note: I’m putting these posts up pretty quickly, while simultaneously writing an op-ed on this case. Please forgive spelling errors, typos, etc. (Of course, if you spot some, do let me know) I’ll go back and correct them as I have time.)

I received one set of search warrants and affidavits this morning at 8:45am. There was one warrant and one affidavit for each apartment at the duplex. They were very spare — boilerplate, really — with no details about Officer Jones’ due dilligence to confirm that Cory Maye was dealing drugs. I then got a second fax at 9:50am, which included a document called “Underlying Facts and Cirucmstances,” in which Officer Jones lays out his reasons for requesting the warrants.

Here are the PDFs:

Warrant on Maye’s residence.
Affidavit on Maye’s residence.
Underlying facts on Maye’s residence.
Post-raid evidence sheet on Maye’s residence.

Warrant on Smith’s residence.
Affidavit on Smith’s residence.
Underlying facts on Smith’s residence.
Post-raid evidence sheet on Smith’s residence.

My observations:

Here’s a pretty straightforward question:

If the narcotics task force that raided Maye’s home really did set out to knock, announce themselves, then give Maye a reasonable time to answer the door, why would they serve the warrant at 11:30 at night?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to serve the warrant at 7 or 8, when Maye would be less likely to be sleeping, and more likely to hear the police announce themselves, come to the door, and answer? Isn’t a late-night raid more likely to inspire fear and apprehension?

Unfortunately, this is a pretty common practice, particularly in jurisdictions where no-knock raids have been outlawed or severely restricted. Police get around it by conducting “knock-and-announce” raids at hours when a normal person would be least likely to hear the announcement.

In 1999, for example, cops in El Monte, California raided the home of 64-year-old Mario Paz. Paz thought he was being invaded, and reached for a gun to defend himself (actually, police first say Paz was holding a gun, then they said he was reaching for a gun, then they said he was reaching for a drawer where a gun was stored). Police shot Paz twice in the back, killing him. They found no drugs in Paz’s home.

I bring up the Paz case because of what El Monte assistant police cheif Bill Ankeny told the L.A. Times after the shooting:

“We do bang on the door and make an announcement–’It’s the police’–but it kind of runs together. If you’re sitting on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down.”

And if you’re sleeping, you probably wouldn’t hear the announcement at all.

An announcement just as you’re opening the door, or after you’ve already opened, is akin to no announcement at all, particularly if it’s done at odd hours.

(Thanks to Joel Miller, who documents the Paz case in his book Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs Is Destroying America.)

Check out this weird account of Maye’s trial proceedings from a January 23, 2004 article in the Hattiesburg American:

When asked by defense attorney Ronda Cooper if he would have shot at the officers had they announced they were police officers, Maye shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I would have let them in.”

Maye said he shot his Larson .380 caliber handgun to defend his and his daughter’s life.

But on cross examination, District Attorney Buddy McDonald questioned Maye’s concern for his daughter.

“You were so concerned about your daughter, but you left her on the bed?” McDonald asked. “Don’t you think it was a tad dangerous to open fire with your daughter laying right there?”

What a bizarre question. It’s a small apartment. Maye says he felt someone was breaking in to his apartment to do him harm, enough so that he was ready to fire a weapon in self-defense. His daughter was on the bed. What was he supposed to do? Fire while carrying his daughter in his arms? Move her to the front room, where the intruders had already been banging on his door? I find it hard to fathom how leaving his daughter where she was somehow shows that Maye wasn’t really all that concerned about her. And I think any gunowner with children would reject the idea that firing on someone who’s breaking down your door is endangering your kids. I think most gunowners would agree that it’s an act of protecting them.