The Case of Cory Maye

A cop is dead, an innocent man may be on death row, and drug warriors keep knocking down doors.

Radley Balko from the October 2006 issue

(Page 3 of 7)

‘This Is Still Mississippi’

I first discovered the case of Cory Maye in December 2005, while doing research for a Cato Institute paper on the sharply increased use of paramilitary tactics in domestic policing. After reading a few local articles about the case, I grew suspicious of Maye’s conviction. I called his original attorney, Rhonda Cooper, and asked the Jefferson Davis County clerk for a copy of the search warrants. Eventually I wrote about what I’d found on my personal weblog, theagitator.com. During the next few weeks, the case began to attract attention and sympathy from around the Internet. Interestingly, the concern came from writers of all political persuasions. A Google search on Maye conducted early in my investigation returned about 30 hits. A similar search today returns 186,000.

In early March 2006, Reason sent me to Prentiss to research this article: to see the town, talk with locals, and interview Maye’s family. (Maye’s attorneys declined to let me speak to Maye himself, a decision that’s not unusual for a death penalty case still early in the appeals process.) By this time, I was more of an advocate than a dispassionate journalist. Shortly after I began writing about the case, an associate with the large D.C. law firm Covington and Burling contacted me about providing pro bono representation for Maye, as did the conservative George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr. I put both in touch with Maye’s current lawyer, Bob Evans, and both are now part of his legal team.

Prentiss is the seat of Jefferson Davis County, one of the poorest corners of the country. According to census data, the town lost about 9 percent of its population between 2000 and 2004. It has a lower mean household income, lower home values, and higher unemployment than the averages in Mississippi, a state that ranks near the bottom on most economic indicators.

At the Prentiss town center, bright green banners advertising “Historic Downtown Prentiss” flap over bare storefronts, boarded-up display windows, and mostly vacant lots. The town’s biggest employers are the hospital, the schools, and the city and county governments. The last factory in town—a Cadillac parts manufacturer called KLH Industries—left for Mexico in 1999, taking 600 jobs with it. Unemployment jumped to 25 percent. The south side of town features a few signs of life—gas stations, a florist, a tobacconist, some fast food franchises—but little beyond services and light retail.

The area’s economic woes and bleak prospects have fostered drug activity and homicide. In 2002 the county made the front page of The New York Times as part of a story about the drug trade’s move from urban to rural America. Prentiss is known in the area as a junction in the illicit drug pipeline running from New Orleans to Jackson up to Memphis. Residents note the comparatively expensive new homes that have sprung up alongside the ramshackle trailers and bedraggled flats on Mississippi Route 13 and conclude that they could only have come from drug money. “There’s nothing here” economically, one local business owner told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in 2004, “but there’s lots of shiny cars.”

The county’s homicide rate in 2002 was five times the national average. Residents fear the crime, but they don’t seem to trust the cops to do much about it. When I ask what they think of the local police, most residents answer, “Corrupt.” They’re happy to talk with me, but they don’t want me quoting them by name. When I ask why, they say things like, “Murders never seem to get solved around here.”

The most striking impression I get is the pervasive, suffocating role race plays in everyday life. The fear and paranoia from black residents can be overwhelming. But even to someone generally skeptical about claims of racial discrimination (as I am), it’s utterly convincing. When people in the area talk about why they don’t trust law enforcement, you hear the same cops named over and over again. You hear about many of the same incidents, then learn that the officers involved never really stop policing; they just move from one department to another. It takes me just a few hours in Prentiss to find another woman who says she too was on the receiving end of a violent, forced-entry drug raid. Though the police didn’t find the meth lab they were looking for, they nevertheless jailed her brother for months (he couldn’t afford bond) before releasing him without explanation. The Monticello County Sheriff’s Department, where the man was jailed, claims he was bound over to circuit court for trial. But eight months later, he has yet to be charged or tried.

And it’s not just civilians who make such accusations. One black officer warns me not to trust what I hear from white cops in the area. “The badge and the gun don’t mean anything,” the officer says. “It doesn’t mean they found what they say they found.”

Mississippi has tried to make amends for its past, but some areas of the state still lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to race. Jefferson Davis County is one of them. “Jackson’s a pretty modern city,” says Andre de Gruy, the earnest, eloquent young lawyer who heads up the state’s legal aid program for death row inmates. De Gruy, a white man in his 30s, works with two other lawyers in a modest office overlooking the dig where the state’s new Supreme Court will be built. “In the northwest, you have the Memphis suburbs,” he continues. “The Gulf Coast development down around the casinos is comparatively enlightened too.” He pauses. “But just about everywhere else, this is still Mississippi.”

Another defense attorney is blunter. “We don’t lynch black people outside of Mississippi courthouses anymore,” he says. “But we still lynch them on the inside.”

“White people control this town,” one black woman tells me from her driveway. The short, thirtyish black man standing next to her nods in agreement. Neither wishes to be identified. “They run it from the police department, the hospital, and City Hall. Oh, and Prentiss Christian,” she adds. Prentiss Christian is the private, overwhelmingly white school where the town’s few residents with money send their kids. “All of them are racist,” she continues, referring to public officials and law enforcement. More than one resident tells me that during Hurricane Katrina black folks who had been waiting in line for hours to get emergency supplies were told to go home, due to the curfew. When they returned the next day, they say, the supplies were gone. It’s hard to know whether to believe the story; it seems awfully blatant. But the assumption of racial animosity behind it is unmistakable. The people who tell me the story believe it, and after a few days in Prentiss I can’t help feeling they have every reason to.

Jefferson Davis County is about 60 percent black, while Prentiss is about 70 percent white. The town’s mayor, aldermen, and police chief are white, but Jefferson Davis County Sheriff Henry McCullum is black. There is palpable tension between the two police forces. White residents generally have good things to say about the Prentiss Police Department and sneer at the sheriff’s department. Black residents generally trust the sheriff’s deputies but fear the Prentiss officers. New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield—author of the aforementioned front-page story about Prentiss—told me in a phone interview that the town’s white police officers cautioned him not to consult McCullum for the story. McCullum was a black man, they told Butterfield, and he couldn’t be trusted.

The saddest thing about Officer Ron Jones’ death is that Jones seems to have been an exception to all of this racial antagonism. Evans says Jones was “a good cop and a good guy.” Even black residents who feel nothing but ill will toward the Prentiss police speak highly of Jones. One black man recounts to me an incident in which police pulled him over for speeding, searched his car, and were preparing to take him to jail, despite the fact that they’d found nothing incriminating. Jones arrived at the scene, calmed everyone down, and told the officers to let the man go. “He was one of the good ones,” he says. Another woman summarizes the black community’s relationship with Jones by saying simply, “He was a friend.”

‘Sometimes People Do Irrational Things’

Comments

|10.10.09 @ 2:53AM|#

excellent article, both compelling and documented, you're a credit to the field of writing.

Pingback| 11.17.09 @ 3:11PM

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All Libertarians Only Care About Taxes and White People § Unqualified Offerings links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Crack rock, rolling paper, switchblade | Main | November 17, 2009 All Libertarians Only Care About Taxes and White People By Mona Everyone “knows” that, right? Well Radley Balko’s Pulitzer-worthy journalism was the sine qua non of this. Or at least, his publicity-generating investigations mean that Cory Maye will now have a superb defense team. (And for those who may not know, Maye is an…

Pingback| 11.19.09 @ 2:43AM

Why you should care about Cory Maye and Cameron Todd Willingham » North by Northweste links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Writing Politics Multimedia Magazine RSS Why You Should Care / Nov. 18, 2009 at 11:20 pm Why you should care about Cory Maye and Cameron Todd Willingham By Matt Zeitlin It’s hard to imagine a more depressing story than that of Cory Maye. In September, 2001, when he was just 21 years old, Maye fell asleep on the couch of his duplex in Prentiss, Mississippi. Hours later, armed men assaulted his home and burst into his…

|11.21.09 @ 1:32AM|#

This is absurd, self defense is a god given right, this cop crossed the line, and got what he had coming. I've got nothing against cops per-say, but when they use Nazi tactics, and lose, justice turns pervert. It's not even justice anymore, our system is so corrupt, and one sided, you are NOT presumed innocent,until you can prove it beyond doubt, any doubt. The second one sets foot in a courtroom, they're guilty, and the court is prejudice.

|11.21.09 @ 1:37AM|#

This is absurd, self defense is a god given right, this cop crossed the line, and got what he had coming. I've got nothing against cops per-say, but when they use Nazi tactics, and loose, justice turns pervert. It's not even justice anymore, our system is so corrupt, and one sided, you are NOT presumed innocent,until you can prove it beyond doubt, any doubt. The second one sets foot in a courtroom, they're guilty, and the court is prejudice.

|11.21.09 @ 4:17AM|#

A really simple solution to the problem of "he said, he said", would be to mandate by law recording devices be present during these raids. A man's life hinges upon whether the police shouted "Police!" before he started shooting at them. How simple it would have been to have a video, or even audio recording of the raid.
The standard of proof would be statutorily pegged, that if the police did not make the recording, in violation of law, then the presumption of credibility will lie with the defendant.

|11.21.09 @ 10:43PM|#

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