Cory Maye
He was originally convicted of murder in the 2001 death of Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer Ron W. Jones, during a drug raid on the other half of Maye's duplex.
The case attracted little attention until late 2005, when Reason magazine senior editor and police misconduct researcher Radley Balko brought it to light on his blog The Agitator.
[1] Balko's research raised several questions about Maye's conviction and in particular about the reliability of medical examiner Steven Hayne, who performed the autopsy on Jones and testified at the trial.
According to Maye's supporters, his conviction also brought up issues such as the right to self-defense, police conduct in the War on Drugs, racial and social inequities in Mississippi and whether he received competent legal representation.
On November 17, 2009, the Mississippi Court of Appeals ruled that Maye's constitutional right of vicinage was violated when Judge Eubanks refused to return the case to Jefferson Davis County, where the alleged crime occurred.
On December 2, 2010, the Mississippi Supreme Court issued its decision, in which it held that Maye was entitled to a new trial on the ground that the trial court had improperly refused to issue a self-defense instruction that would have highlighted for the jury Maye's right to act in defense of his infant daughter, who was present in the home on the night of the police raid that led to the shooting.
At 11 p.m. on the night of December 26, 2001, Ron Jones along with other police officers and an agent employed by the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, a four-county police agency responsible for drug enforcement, went to Maye's duplex for the purpose of drug interdiction.
Jones, though not a member of the task force, had received 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.
Jefferson Davis County District Attorney Claiborne "Buddy" McDonald says he does not remember Smith being charged or convicted.
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 that he kept boxed and unloaded on top of a tall headboard.
The trial was held in neighboring Marion County, after Maye's lawyer successfully argued for a change of venue.
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.
The same afternoon, Marion County Circuit Court Judge Michael Eubanks sentenced Maye to death by lethal injection.
Judge Prentiss Harrell of the 15th Circuit Court of Mississippi signed the agreement under which Maye pleaded guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a ten-year sentence, which was decreed to be time served.
