Man on Mississippi death row for defending home

In the weeks leading up to Dec. 26, 2001, police officer Ron Jones had received an anonymous tip about drug trafficking transpiring at the duplex of Jamie Smith in Prentiss, MS. The town has a population of about 1,200 and Jones knew of Smith. Acting on the tip he received, Jones assembled a raid team consisting of him and eight other officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and Bassfield Police Department, one of whom was a volunteer police officer untrained in drug raids. Only one officer Jones called on for assistance, Darryl Graves, was a trained narcotics agent. Jones' assault team obtained a warrant to search the premises of Jamie Smith, whom the warrant named as a known drug dealer. Jones' team raided Smith's side of the duplex and arrested him without incident. After Smith was apprehended the officers then moved toward the duplex's other side, believing it to be a part of Smith's residence. When the officers could not gain entry through the front door of what was actually Cory Maye's side of the duplex, they attempted to gain entry through the back door. One officer kicked down the door for Jones to enter. As Jones made his way up a flight of three stairs and through the back door into Maye's apartment, the frightened Maye fired three shots in rapid succession. Jones, whose firearm was holstered, was wearing a bullet-proof vest but one bullet managed to enter below the protective gear fatally wounding him. After realizing what he had done, Maye–who had no prior criminal record–dropped his gun, screamed out apologies and immediately surrendered to the other officers who had by now broken down the front door and entered the back bedroom. Jones stumbled back out of the apartment onto the ground and bled to death just as the officers were announcing themselves as police. Maye's 18-month old daughter was left on the bed to wail in the night until her mother, Maye's girlfriend, returned home from working the graveyard shift eight hours later. As Maye's trial began in September of 2003, his prospects for acquittal were less than hopeful. Maye had initially requested a change of venue from Jefferson County, where the shooting of Officer Jones took place, but Maye changed his mind and retracted the request in July 2003. Maye's retraction was denied and instead of facing trial in Jefferson County, where the population is 57 percent black, Maye's trial was ordered to commence in distant Marion County, population 67 percent white. Further adding to his dwindling chances for hope was Maye's court-appointed public defender Rhonda Cooper. According to trial transcripts, Cooper's examinations and cross-examinations of the prosecution's witnesses often lasted less than 10 minutes. Cooper never attempted to present an opposing view of the prosecution's portrait of Maye's character, failing to even brief Maye on possible questions and refusing to interview family or friends who could counter the prosecution's statements. Cooper did not even inform Maye's mother. Aside from a character defense, Cooper incompetently handled forensic evidence, choosing to ignore altogether contradictory expert testimony that confirmed Maye's account of the events and put the prosecution's in doubt. This standout example of Cooper's lack of effort to help Maye during his defense came during the testimony of Eric Johnson, an agent of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Johnson was the lead investigator of the shooting and was thought to be a reliable corroborator of the testimony of Dr. Stephen Hayne, Jefferson County lead forensic investigator. Hayne testified to a "trajectory plane that left no question Maye was in a standing position awaiting to shoot officer Jones and not in a cowering or defensive position." However, Johnson contradicted this testimony by saying no such plane could be determined by the performance of autopsy alone. Johnson then testified his investigation of the bullet holes at Maye's apartment showed the entry points marked in an upward direction suggesting that Maye had to have been crouched, either behind the bed or in front of it, when he fired his gun Cooper failed to seize upon this contradiction even motioning that the portions of Johnson's testimony which challenged Hayne's be stricken on account of Johnson's lack of experience with autopsy investigation. Yet, there were discrepancies in Hayne's autopsy findings, in relation to the prosecution's portrayal of the shooting as a deliberate act of homicide, as Hayne said two of the bullet holes in Jones's body appeared to be re-entry holes suggesting they had occurred from ricochet and not a direct shot. Again, Cooper failed to make the point that such evidence supported Maye's account that he fired in a panic to defend himself and his daughter. Other points missed by Cooper included her not bringing to the jury's attention that Maye was never named in any warrant, that his premises were not Smith's premises, and that police obtained a warrant for Maye's apartment 48 hours after the shooting occurred. Also left out of Cooper's failed defense of Maye was the fact that although 20 pounds of marijuana were seized from Smith's apartment, both Smith and his girlfriend (the only witnesses to the shooting besides the other officers) were released without any charges being filed and told by police to simply leave Prentiss and never return. After Cooper concluded her closing arguments by threatening the jury with God's wrath should they sentence Maye to death, the 10 white and two black-person jury returned a verdict of guilty and recommend the punishment be death. Maye's new defense team filed a brief in October 2005 for a motion for a new trial. That brief was originally scheduled to be heard in May 2006 but was pushed back until September 2006 in order to give the prosecution time to file an opposing brief. Currently both Maye and his defense team are refusing interviews while the motion for a new trial is pending.