Cory Maye
Cory Maye, sometimes spelled Corey Maye, born September 9, 1980, is a prisoner on death row in the U.S. state of Mississippi. He was convicted of murder in the death of Prentiss police officer Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid in 2001. Maye pleaded not guilty at his trial, citing self-defense as the reason (for the theory of self-defense, see here). His case attracted no attention until late 2005, when bloggers started drawing attention to it.
Bloggers supporting Maye say his conviction and sentence raise issues about the right to self defense, police conduct in the War on Drugs, and racial and social inequities in the region. They also raise questions about whether he has received competent legal representation.
Biography
Little is known about Maye's background at this time. He had a child with a girlfriend named Chenteal Longino. He had also fathered another child with a different woman.
Maye was unemployed at the time of the raid that ultimately led to his notoriety. He and his current girlfriend had been renting a duplex apartment for less than two months and had actually occupied it for only a few weeks at the time of the raid.
Maye had no criminal record until he was convicted of killing Jones.
Death of Officer Jones
At 11 p.m. on the night of December 26, 2001, Jones accompanied a seven-member SWAT team from the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, a four-county police agency responsible for drug enforcement. He was not a member of the team, but had been invited along as he had passed along a confidential tip that large quantities of marijuana were being stored and sold in the apartment of Jamie Smith, who lived in the other half of the duplex. The officers had obtained a search warrant for the house, unaware that it was a duplex. Whether the warrant legally allowed for a no-knock entry is still not clear.
While Smith was arrested without incident, and significant quantities of marijuana were found in his home, Maye's former attorney says Smith was never charged with drug possession or distribution. Jefferson Davis County District Attorney Claiborne "Buddy" McDonald says he doesn't remember Smith being charged or convicted.
There is disagreement about what happened next. The officers then either served the warrant on Maye's half of the duplex (later, prosecutors would say both were served simultaneously), or entered what they thought was another door to Smith's in search of more contraband.
Four of the officers who took part in the raid testified they knocked on Maye's door and identified themselves as law enforcement officers. Maye testified he didn't hear a knock and no one said a word. Maye testified he was asleep on a chair in the living room when he heard a crash, prompting him to run to his daughter's bedroom and ready a .380-caliber pistol. When Jones entered the bedroom, Maye fired three times. Jones was wearing a bulletproof vest, but one bullet hit just below the vest, and the injury proved fatal.
Jones, the son of Prentiss's then police chief, was not a regular member of the narcotics task force, but a K9 officer for the Prentiss police department. Trial testimony indicated that when Jones exited the apartment and fell to the ground outside, his pistol was holstered.
Trial
Maye had no criminal record, and wasn't the named target of a search warrant. Police initially concluded they had found no drugs in Maye's side of the duplex, but later claimed that one smoked marijuana cigarette was in the apartment along with a plastic bag containing "traces" of the drug.
The trial was held in neighboring Marion County, after Maye's lawyer successfully argued for a change of venue. Maye testified that it was dark in his apartment when he heard someone breaking into the back door, which was located in the bedroom. "That's when I fired the shots," Maye said. "After I fired the shots, I heard them yell 'police! police!' Once I heard them, I put the weapon down and slid it away. I did not know they were police officers."
The weapon used was stolen approximately one year prior to the shooting. Maye claims it was given to him by a friend. Mississippi law indicates that it is justifiable to kill another in an act of reasonable self defense. It also provides that the killing of a police officer is not capital murder if the killer had no knowledge that the victim was a police officer or fireman.
The prosecution claimed that officers announced at the front door and then at the back door of Maye's residence. He and his lawyer say that they only identified themselves as police after he had shot Jones. The defense tried to show Maye did not know the persons breaking in were police officers, and that he was acting to protect his infant daughter in the bedroom. In mitigation the defense argued Maye's lack of a criminal record and his young age (21).
The jury took five hours to convict Maye. Subsequently, the jury also sentenced Maye to suffer death by lethal injection. Two of the 12 jurors were African American.
Marion County Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks sentenced Maye to death by lethal injection the same afternoon.
Controversy
While researching related material, columnist and blogger Radley Balko ran across the case of Cory Maye and blogged his initial findings. Other bloggers across the political spectrum picked them up, perhaps assisted by the execution of Tookie Williams and doubts among death-penalty opponents as to whether Williams was really an ideal martyr for their cause.
Counsel
Maye's original attorney, Rhonda Cooper, had never tried a capital murder case before she represented Maye. Since Jefferson Davis County has a majority of African-Americans, who might have made more sympathetic jurors, while Marion County is largely white, it may have been a mistake having the trial moved. Maye's family fired Cooper after his conviction. Maye's appeal was filed in a timely fashion and is ongoing.
Maye is now represented by Bob Evans, the original public defender in the case, who is preparing his appeal. Evans is the public defender for Jefferson Davis County, and was concurrently the public defender for the town of Prentiss, seat of Jefferson Davis county, until January 10, 2006 when he was fired by the Prentiss Board of Aldermen. According to the mayor of Prentiss, Charles Dumas, Evans' dismissal was directly related to his representation of Maye.
Discrepancies in police and court records
Since Jones died, it is impossible to know how thoroughly he investigated the tip he received before passing it along. He claimed he had observed unusually heavy traffic at the residence, but left no written record of when he made those observations (important since Maye had only moved into the apartment a few weeks before the raid). The credibility of the informant is not known beyond Jones's statement that information he had previously provided had led to a single arrest. It also does not appear that he and a colleague made a controlled drug buy to verify the tip.
His affidavit for the warrants names Smith but not Maye, referring only to "person or persons unknown" in the other apartment. Both apartments are described using the same language.
Times have been changed on official records of when evidence was collected from both apartments. Characteristically for what was initially a major drug arrest, Smith's apartment was swept immediately afterwards. However, several changes made to the documents for Maye's put the time of that evidence collection at 5:20 a.m., several hours after the raid.
Maye's family and his attorney also accused officers of beating him while he was in custody after his arrest. Officers and prosecutors denied these claims.
Sites that talk about Cory Maye
References
Media coverage:
- Prentiss man to die for '01 death of police officer
- Convicted Murderer Sentenced to Death
- Radley Balko Interviewed About Cory Maye On Charles Goyette Show - Air America Radio Phoenix, Arizona (December 16, 2005)
Internet coverage
Legal Documents: Viewable as .PDFs
- Search warrant for Maye residence
- Affidavit for Maye search
- Underlying evidence for Maye affidavit
- Evidence report from the Maye search
- Search warrant for the Smith residence
- Affidavit for the Smith search
- Underlying evidence for the Smith affidavit
- Evidence report from the Smith search