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 bedroom where his 18 month old daughter was sleeping. Terrified and confused, Maye fired at the armed men approaching him in the dark.
Those armed men were police, and the man Maye shot and killed was Officer Ron Jones.
The police were executing a so-called “no knock warrant” where officers will go into a home without announcing themselves because of fear that a suspect will flush drugs. It turned out that Maye had a small amount of marijuana.
The police had gotten a warrant for Jamie Smith, who lived in the apartment across from Maye, while Maye and his girlfriend were only identified as occupants of an apartment adjacent to the suspected drug dealer’s. Although there was considerable reason to believe that Maye acted in self-defense, Maye was indicted and prosecuted for capital murder, convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
What happened to Maye, however, was hardly atypical for a black man accused of shooting a white cop in Mississippi. According to Radley Balko, who was largely responsible for publicizing Maye’s story with an article in Reason, Maye’s trial was rife with misconduct by the prosecution and procedural shortcomings; due to incompetence on the part of his defense attorney, Maye was convicted. Maye, however, is not completely doomed.
Because of sustained uproar and the persistent work of a new legal team, Maye was able to get the death penalty thrown out because he did not have an adequate defense in the penalty stage of his trial. But life in prison without parole by no means seems just for a man whose house was probably illegally invaded by police and in all likelihood only fired in self defense.
Maye, following a ruling by the Mississippi State Court of Appeals, will now get a new trial, this time in his home county. The prosecutors are still going to try Maye, barely shamed by the shady story behind the warrant and the considerable evidence that Maye acted in self defense. They won’t even take the face-saving route, suggested by Balko, of offering Maye a plea and letting him out after serving time. But Maye, at least, has a chance at justice.
Cameron Todd Willingham was not so lucky. Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters by burning down their house one night in December 1991. He was given the death penalty and executed in 2004. The linchpin of the case was forensic evidence that apparently showed that Willingham had burned down the house — this evidence has been vigorously disputed by many of the most highly regarded arson scientists.
Willingham, like Maye, has prominent defenders in the legal and journalistic worlds. In an article published in the country’s most venerable and respected newsweekly, considerable doubt is cast upon the central thesis of the prosecution. Many now think him to be innocent. One of the country’s most prominent forensic arson investigators has prepared a lengthy report saying that the evidence left by the fire which consumed the Willingham home and killed his three young daughters is unsubstantiated.
Govenror Rick Perry, of Willingham’s home state of Texas, is under fire for removing three members from a state commission charged with investigating the forensic evidence that was at the heart of state’s case against Willingham. The former head of the commission has accused Perry and his legal staff of interfering with the commission’s work.
But Willingham, unlike Maye, is dead. Even if he can be redeemed, in the eyes of the public and perhaps, one day, legally, he will never be able to enjoy it. Maye and Willingham are two of the most prominent likely-innocent men who have been railroaded by criminal justice systems that are practically designed to secure convictions, and after that, death sentences. Maye, purely by the luck of getting attention for his case and being sentenced in a state where the gears of death are not as well oiled as in Texas, is still alive and has a chance to plead his innocence in front of a judge.
Both cases are examples of where journalists have been responsible for bringing these cases attention beyond the areas where they occurred. The New Yorker didn’t publish their article until only a few months ago, more than five years after Willingham’s execution in February of 2005. The Chicago Tribune in 2004 had published an article reporting the opinions of several legal and forensic experts that it was highly unlikely that the fire that killed Willingham’s three kids could have been intentionally set.
The best the heroic journalistic efforts of the Tribune and New Yorker can lead to is future faulty death sentences being exposed before they are carried out, or better yet, such prosecutions never being initiated in the first place. But who will be able to do this type of leg work? The New Yorker and Tribune, like just about every other print news title these days, are not profitable ventures. Even worse, such investigations of criminal sentences are some of the most expensive pieces for a magazine or newspaper.
A possible alternative to print newspapers and magazines are universities, which have both the resources and the inclination to perform this type of public-spirited work. One of the best examples of universities picking up where the press and the criminal justice system collide is, of course, the Medill Innocence Project, which is being famously hounded by Cook County prosecutors.
There may be no great way to promote and sustain the type of boring, unglamorous and expensive work that, more cases than not, ends up with little actual news produced. But it’s imperative that we find a way to do so. If we simply didn’t think that holding prosecutors and the criminal justice system as a whole accountable was worth anything, Cory Maye would be dead and Cameron Todd Willingham would be forgotten.