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 4 of 7)

Under Mississippi law, if Maye knew or should have known that Ron Jones was a police officer before he fired his gun, he is guilty of capital murder. If there is reasonable doubt about his knowledge that Jones was a police officer, he is not guilty (although one could conceivably make a case for criminal negligence if it can be shown he should have exercised more judgment before firing).

The most obvious argument in Maye’s defense involves the simplest interpretation of events. A man with no criminal record is awakened by the sounds of someone breaking into his home. While he is lying in the dark with his daughter, the door to the bedroom flies open and someone jumps inside. Fearing for his life, the man fires in self-defense and kills the intruder.

To convict Maye, the jury had to believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a man with no criminal record, a man who had just moved out of his parents’ home to make a life with his daughter and girlfriend, a man who had only a minuscule amount of marijuana in his apartment, looked out the window to see a team of police officers was about to enter; decided to take them on, even though he had done nothing wrong; waited for them to forcibly enter his home; fired three shots, killing just one of them; and then surrendered, leaving four bullets still in his gun. When I ask District Attorney Buddy McDonald, who prosecuted Maye, why a man would go through such a series of puzzling and contradictory acts, he replies only that “sometimes people do irrational things.”

There are more troubling details in the case against Maye. To begin with, there is no record of Ron Jones’ investigation of Jamie Smith and the Mary Street duplex. Nobody knows the identity of the confidential informant who tipped Jones off. There are no written records of the informant’s past tips or his reliability, or of any surveillance or corroborating investigation Jones did to supplement the informant’s tip. Judge Kruger testified at the trial that he merely took Jones at his word and didn’t press him for details about the informant’s record or Jones’ investigation. But if the informant lied about seeing marijuana in the Maye-Longino half of the duplex, or if Jones misinterpreted what the informant said, it raises the possibility that the raid on Cory Maye’s home was illegal, in which case he had every right to defend himself under Mississippi law. The absence of Maye’s name from the warrants and his lack of a criminal record reinforce the possibility. When I ask District Attorney McDonald what happened to Jones’ records, he replies, “Any record of Jones’ investigation died with Jones.”

Jamie Smith and the girlfriend with whom he lived, Audrey Davis, are nowhere to be found. Smith has not been charged with possession of the drugs found in his apartment the night of the raid. Smith and Davis are the only adult witnesses to the raid on Maye’s apartment other than Maye and the police officers involved. It’s curious, then, that Prentiss police wouldn’t have made more of an effort to keep Smith and Davis in the area. “It’s peculiar that Smith was never asked to testify at trial and that he skipped out so easily,” Evans says. “Especially since he was the reason they went in there in the first place, and already had drug charges against him.” (One other person was present at the raid: Jimmy the 15-year-old. I was unable to track him down while I was in the area. When Rhonda Cooper interviewed him, he apparently didn’t provide much insight to corroborate either version of events.)

The evidence against Cory Maye isn’t just weak. Some of it was presented at trial in a manner that was downright misleading. The prosecution’s forensics case is one example.

Mississippi’s forensic pathology system is, in the words of one medical examiner I spoke with, “a mess.” The state has no official examiners. Instead, prosecutors solicit them from a pool of vaguely official private practitioners to perform autopsies in homicide cases. Steven Hayne, who performed the autopsy on Jones, appears to be a favorite. In the words of Leroy Reddick, a respected medical examiner in Alabama, “Every prosecutor in Mississippi knows that if you don’t like the results you got from an autopsy, you can always take the body to Dr. Hayne.” Defense attorneys in the state bristle at Hayne’s name. In a case last year in Starkville, he testified that he could tell by the wounds in a corpse that there were two hands on the gun that fired the bullet, consistent with the prosecution’s theory that a man and his sister team jointly pulled the trigger. Several medical examiners have told me such a claim is preposterous.

Hayne testified at Maye’s trial that he is “board certified” in forensic pathology, but he isn’t certified by the American Board of Pathology, the only organization recognized by the National Association of Medical Examiners and the American Board of Medical Specialties as capable of certifying forensic pathologists. According to depositions from other cases, Hayne failed the American Board of Pathology exams when he left halfway through, deeming the questions “absurd.” Instead, his C.V. indicates that he’s certified by two organizations, one of which (the American Board of Forensic Pathology) isn’t recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. The other (the American Academy of Forensic Examiners) doesn’t seem to exist. Judging from his testimony in other depositions, it’s likely Hayne meant to list the American College of Forensic Examiners. According to Hayne, the group certified him through the mail based on “life experience,” with no examination at all. Several forensics experts described the American College of Forensic Examiners to me as a “pay your money, get your certification” organization. A February 2000 article in the American Bar Association Journal makes similar allegations, with one psychologist who was certified through the group saying, “Everything was negotiable—for a fee.”

Hayne’s testimony was critical in securing Maye’s conviction. Hayne said he could tell from the damage to Jones’ body the trajectory the bullet took as it entered the officer. Based on that trajectory, he speculated that Maye was standing when he shot Jones, not lying on the floor, as Maye testified. Hayne’s testimony seriously damaged Maye’s credibility with the jury.

But according to a post-trial review by an actual, board-certified forensics expert whom Maye’s new legal team hired, it would be impossible to project the bullet’s trajectory based on the tissue damage in Jones’ corpse, because Jones might have been crouching, rolling, or prone when he was hit. Furthermore, the hole created in the bedroom door frame by one of the three bullets Maye fired that night clearly slants upward, from about shoulder height. The prosecution ignored a bullet hole in a fixed object that was consistent with Maye’s account of the raid and instead pushed Hayne’s testimony about the supposed trajectory of a bullet that struck a moving object.

Hayne did not answer my requests for an interview.

‘I’m Sure She Did What She Could’

At Maye’s first court appearance, Justice Court Judge Jerry Dyess appointed Bob Evans to represent him. Evans, 56, has a private practice in Monticello, but at the time he was also the longtime public defender for both Jefferson Davis County and the town of Prentiss. The son of a Baptist minister, Evans is an avuncular fellow, brimming with charm and Southern aphorisms. A tall stocky man in his 50s, Evans sports a balding head and a goatee. He wears loafers and keeps a pre-tied necktie handy so he can slip it on when he’s late for the courthouse. Evans is unabashedly liberal, though with unmistakable Southern accents. While he has an office full of hunting trophies and a drawer full of guns, he’ll give you an earful about the shortcomings of President Bush with little provocation. He’s also apparently pretty formidable at trial. “I’m a little superstitious,” he says, “so I don’t keep track. But I’ve won a hell of a lot more than I’ve lost.”

But Robert Brown recoiled at the thought of putting his son’s fate in the hands of a public defender. So he scraped together what little money the family had and hired Rhonda Cooper, a black criminal defense attorney in Jackson. Maye’s family says Cooper convinced them she was qualified, to the point of asserting death penalty experience she didn’t have. Cory’s case was in fact her first capital trial.

Andre de Gruy, the head of Mississippi’s death row legal aid program, says Brown’s decision to go with Cooper wasn’t out of the ordinary. Blacks in the state often don’t trust public defenders, particularly white ones. “They sometimes see us as just another cog in a system that’s stacked against them,” he says. “It can be difficult to win them over sometimes, to convince them that we’re really on their side.”

Comments

|10.10.09 @ 2:53AM|#

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

Ratko|12.9.09 @ 5:08PM|#

You said it, Steve, spot on.

Radley's articles almost always inspire thought, and can be credited for changing some of my long held opinions and beliefs.

One such opinion was that of our justice system, it's not perfect, but despite the fact my core system of values dictates that should one man suffer unequal treatment the system is not just, I was willing to accept it as is. It's not acceptable, with so much power in the hands of so few, and little oversight by the rarest creature of all, the authentic watchdog, there is little incentive to make it acceptable.

Back home in Phoenix, I knew a Cory who is Black. He too shot and killed a cop in a botched bust involving illicit drugs.

Both Corys faced similar charges, but the one I knew had a prior record and was found not guilty. It was an undercover narcotics officer his case, he was apparently making the bust without first announcing he was a law officer he attempted to draw his firearm, an action that resulted in his death.

Phoenix Cory was unaware he was dealing with a police officer, so assumed he was being shot. His reaction was to counter draw his pistol in an attempt to fire first, he was successful.

The mistakes made by the state didn't end there, they continued, one was withholding the name and identity of the man he had killed as a police officer until just prior to his trial.

Ultimately his action in the shooting was deemed justifiable. Sometimes, as in this case the system works.

Other times, as in the case of the other Cory, it's nothing more than a human being's fate being decided by the spin of a rigged wheel of misfortune.

The 21st century and this is the best we can manage? "..a boot stamping on a human face.." How much longer until the face won't have to be our very own before we can realize the serious consequences of allowing such an action. We better wake up soon, once we pass the point of no return, our power to influence these matters has ended - forever.

Pingback| 11.17.09 @ 3:11PM

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…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…

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|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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Pingback| 12.18.09 @ 2:08PM

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…to an erosion of civil liberties, and things that can have disastrous results. For example, the rash of botched no-knock paramilitary-style raids that kill innocent pets and people, and sometimes innocent people kill cops. Neighborhoods are shut down by military-style occupations. Harmless Hippie stoners are threatened and forced to become informants, and the results can be fatal. The corruption of law enforcement is…

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…0px 0px 10px;} td.recentcommentstextend { border: none !important; padding:0px 0px 2px 10px;} // Meet Cory Mayes. Someone kicked in his back door, barged into his child’s bedroom, and got shot. Mayes was sentenced to death, because the man in question was a cop on a drug raid. This article made me rage. reason.com 17:30 on 2010/01/12 | Permalink | Reply | 0 -   Reply Click here to cancel reply. Name…

|1.12.10 @ 10:31AM|#

Is anyone actually surprisd by this? I mean really?

Kelp
www.web-privacy.se.tc

|1.12.10 @ 1:21PM|#

anyone who lives in that county knows who the informant was and that individual was a racist himself. If you seen him he would be yelling "WHITE POWER!" To me it sounds like bad info from a bad informant...plain and simple!

Mark|1.12.10 @ 5:41PM|#

Burn in Hell Cory Maye, you deserve it.

|7.1.11 @ 6:26PM|#

you red neck hillbilly come up north and talk that smack i will show you just what it is like to feel the fires of hell,God remembers all..and he is coming home so put that in ur pipe and smoke it u blue eyed devil

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Briefly Noted: James W. Ceaser, “The Roots of Obama Worship” links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…attitudes about race. I do not want to mention names, but believe me, outside of UVA and Stanford racism is alive and well and nasty, nasty stuff. I love this country, but I would be crazy to ignore cases like this: 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…

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The new Slave Masters | The Libertarian Standard links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…such convictions. Just as in the past, blacks had nearly no ability to exercise self-defense without severe negative repercussions, so today do people of all races have nearly no ability to defend themselves against thuggery from the elite class. In light of the new reality, why don’t we reinvigorate some proud American traditions? Police departments already cooperate in apprehending fugitives, so the…

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BWM|12.2.10 @ 9:06PM|#

I like the article. It amazes me that conservatives and even alot of liberals have so much faith in police. The police are like the military; an essential part of the government, but exceedingly dangerous, and a tool to be kept under a careful eye at all times. When civilian deaths are shrugged off and police deaths mean war, the state has completely subverted it's role. They serve US, after all.

|12.6.10 @ 4:33PM|#

The Drug Police are running wild in this country & must be stopped. Thank the Lord & thank the judge-why is he unnamed?

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دردشة|6.23.11 @ 9:56PM|#

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|7.1.11 @ 4:53PM|#

It's so sad in the day & age that's things like this still happen.
Thank you for bringing this to light Mr. Balko. I am sorry Mr. Maye last ten years of his life; Mississippi is such a sorry state. Thank God I don't live there.

|7.1.11 @ 6:22PM|#

@ mark if anyone is going to burn in hell it will be you for saying that God remembers all come up
north and talk that trash,see God took care of him no matter what you say cause he is coming home so put that in ur pipe and smoke it you red neck hillbilly

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M|7.7.11 @ 4:26AM|#

Jesus Christ, Reason magazine, can't you

a) have a decent spam filter
and
b) have a "this is spam" button by each comment?

قبلة الوداع|8.17.11 @ 10:22PM|#

ThaNk U