Armed Defense in Your Home Can Put You on Death Row

From the American Chronicle

By Jeff Knox
January 24, 2006
What would you do?
It’s late at night. You’ve fallen asleep in a living room chair. Suddenly you’re roused by loud crashing and yelling coming from outside and the apartment next door where that shady fellow lives.

Your first thought is for your baby in the next room. You grab your gun and race to her bed-side. Suddenly, there is a violent crash as the back door is kicked open. In the dark you see a figure lunging into the room and you instinctively pull the trigger several times. Then you hear someone yell “Police” and as the lights come on you realize what’s happening. You throw down the gun and raise your hands.
Not a criminal.

Cory Maye had no criminal record, was not wanted by the police, was not engaged in any illegal activity. He had no reason to expect the police to knock on his front door much less kick in his back door. He was a young father, currently unemployed, living in one side of a run-down duplex in a bad neighborhood of Prentiss, Mississippi.

Had the invaders who kicked in his back door been drug addicts or gang-bangers, Cory would have been grateful for the .380 auto a friend had given him and it is doubtful that any charges would have been filed. Since the invaders were police officers from the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, Cory was wishing he had never laid eyes on that gun.
Murder?

Cory Maye’s three wild shots as the first figure entered the room resulted in one hit, just below the body armor of Officer Ron Jones – the son of the local Police Chief. Officer Jones died.
Whether the fact that Officer Jones was White and Cory Jones is Black played any part in the events is open to speculation but Cory Maye is now awaiting execution on Mississippi’s death row for murder of a police officer.Drug raid.

The target of the police raid that has cost one life and is scheduled to take another was Jamie Smith, a reputed marijuana dealer. There is no known tie between Maye and Smith beyond the fact that they lived next door to each other in a duplex.

For some reason, the warrant issued for the search of Smith’s side of the duplex included authorization to search the apartment occupied by Maye and his girlfriend – referred to in the warrant as person or persons unknown.

The raid itself is questionable. Why engage in a midnight no-knock raid when a simple knock on the door would probably have been just as effective and much safer for all concerned.

While marijuana was found in Smith’s apartment, there is no record of any charges being filed against him. In the initial search of Cory Maye’s apartment, no drugs were found but police discovered remnants of the burned end of a marijuana cigarette and a baggie containing traces of marijuana residue during a search the next day. No drug charges were filed in the case.
A Citizen exercising his rights.

Cory Maye was not a gun-rights advocate. He was not an active shooter or collector. He was just a young man who felt that his life and the lives of his girlfriend and their small child were worth defending and he chose a handgun as the means of that defense.

The gun Maye’s friend had given him was stolen – the serial number had been defaced. Regardless of the legality of the gun, Cory Maye claims that he did not know the invaders were police and that he was in fear for his life and that of his child when he pulled the trigger.
All of the facts.

As always in such a case it is impossible to know exactly what happened and why but all of the information I have found on this case indicates that it is a travesty of justice which should rock every freedom-loving American to their heels.

In my opinion, the gun-rights community should demand a full and public accounting of the facts in this case and, barring some dramatic and heretofore undisclosed evidence, actively work to have Cory Maye released. No man should ever be condemned for defending his home.