A travesty: Remember what I said about civil liberties yesterday? Instapundit has now brought this to my attention.
The case involves a 'no-knock' raid that, to say the least, went afoul.
Here's what seems to have happened: the local PD in Prentiss, Mississippi received a drug tip and passed it along to a narcotics enforcement agency, who organize a raid on the property of one Jamie Smith.
The son of the local police chief, as an officer himself, comes along in the raid. It was a no-knock raid, so the agents didn't knock on Smith's door beforehand. They just broke in. In the course of the raid, the son of the chief saw a side door and assumed it also belonged to Smith's apartment. It was, in fact, an entrance to the apartment of Cory Maye. The son of the chief charges into Maye's bedroom, where Maye and his daughter are sleeping, whereupon a startled Maye fires at the officer and kills him.
Maye has since been convicted of capital murder and sits on Mississippi's death row.
From my perspective, Maye was acting in legitimate self-defense. Let us review the facts of the matter: Maye was not the subject of the search warrant. He was a completely innoncent bystander at the wrong place and wrong time.
So, keeping that in mind, what was he to think when a someone in paramilitary get-up broke down his door? What would anyone, roused from their sleep and their daughter to protect, think?
Here's a particular passage I find troubling:
Maye had no criminal record, and wasn't the target of the search warrant. Police initially concluded they had found no drugs in Maye's side of the duplex. Then, mysteriously, police later announced they'd found "traces" of marijuana and cocaine.
How convenient! Since the original warrant was for a drug raid, let's announce that drugs were found. Of course, they were found in the wrong apartment, which is something a mitigating circumstance. Warrants are for very specific places and times, or else they are meaningless. A PD can't raid the wrong apartment and claim the end results justify the means, especially when the end results are this suspicious.
In case you need a bit more to top you off, let me say that Maye is black and the officer his shot was white. The jury was also entirely white.
The case involves a 'no-knock' raid that, to say the least, went afoul.
Here's what seems to have happened: the local PD in Prentiss, Mississippi received a drug tip and passed it along to a narcotics enforcement agency, who organize a raid on the property of one Jamie Smith.
The son of the local police chief, as an officer himself, comes along in the raid. It was a no-knock raid, so the agents didn't knock on Smith's door beforehand. They just broke in. In the course of the raid, the son of the chief saw a side door and assumed it also belonged to Smith's apartment. It was, in fact, an entrance to the apartment of Cory Maye. The son of the chief charges into Maye's bedroom, where Maye and his daughter are sleeping, whereupon a startled Maye fires at the officer and kills him.
Maye has since been convicted of capital murder and sits on Mississippi's death row.
From my perspective, Maye was acting in legitimate self-defense. Let us review the facts of the matter: Maye was not the subject of the search warrant. He was a completely innoncent bystander at the wrong place and wrong time.
So, keeping that in mind, what was he to think when a someone in paramilitary get-up broke down his door? What would anyone, roused from their sleep and their daughter to protect, think?
Here's a particular passage I find troubling:
Maye had no criminal record, and wasn't the target of the search warrant. Police initially concluded they had found no drugs in Maye's side of the duplex. Then, mysteriously, police later announced they'd found "traces" of marijuana and cocaine.
How convenient! Since the original warrant was for a drug raid, let's announce that drugs were found. Of course, they were found in the wrong apartment, which is something a mitigating circumstance. Warrants are for very specific places and times, or else they are meaningless. A PD can't raid the wrong apartment and claim the end results justify the means, especially when the end results are this suspicious.
In case you need a bit more to top you off, let me say that Maye is black and the officer his shot was white. The jury was also entirely white.
posted by Joshua @ 10:37 AM
1 Comments:
In response to Josh's comments on Maye's trial, I looked into the law a very little bit- Based on a very brief legal search on this topic, Maye's case seems to present an issue of first impression. There are no recorded cases at any level that deal with a potentially invalid search under a warrant AND a self defense theory of murder of a police officer. However, by combining what I did already know and found, here's my "legal opinion". There seems to be two issues here. First, was the search of Maye's apartment valid under the warrant for Smith's? Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, Justice Stevens, discusses a search of an apartment as a mistake. There, after what the court held a diligent search for the proper apartment, the warrant simply listed the 3rd floor apartment (assuming only one on the 3rd floor) as the place to be searched when there were actually two apartments on the third floor. It states that while the police have some discretion to execute the warrant, once they discover or should have reasonably discovered they were in the wrong apartment, they must leave. Some other good dicta on searching and reasonable mistakes. Also, Brennan, Blackmun and Marshall dissent, finding the right to be secure in the home outweighs even a police mistake such as this.
The second issue would be whether or not self defense is a valid justification for murder when a cop is the victim, particulary when they re in your home under a search warrant. A case addressing self defense in killing a police officer when they enter under a valid search warrant is State v. Eggleston, 118 P.3d 959. (There are others I didn't get to though) There, the occupant of the house killed the police officer when the police officer was validly executing the warrant, fearing he was a thug after the house was robbed a few days previously. The court held that self defense requires a reasonable response to the force or threat presented, however, it is not available (ie, there is no threat) with police officers executing a legal duty such as with a valid warrant- if you knew or could have known it was a cop, there is no threat presented.
Therefore, Maye would need to argue first that the warrant did not permit the police to enter his home (ie, no mistake) therefore the police were not engaging in a legal duty. An issue we don't have any information on here is the terms of the warrant- its precise description of the apartment, because Garrison turns on the warrant "properly" listing the third floor in its entirety. Did the police know that there was more than one apartment on that floor for example? If they did, then the warrant would probably be invalid for Maye's apartment under Garrison. Self defense could then be proven if Maye can show he didn't (or couldn't) have known it was a police officer. If the warrant validly allowed the police to be in the apartment the game is over unless Maye had no way of knowing AT ALL that it was a cop, like if the cop was in street clothes. It seems a lot less likely to succeed if the police have the legal right to be there as opposed to them violating the 4th amendment...The outcome of course depends on his appeals, if he can those together, but this does seem a terribly unfair. Also, since there is no Supreme Court opinion on this invalid warrant question, who knows, maybe we could get some a few years down the road. I think Marshall and the rest have it right that the right to be secure in your home is much more important than police margin of error, especially since the only remedy provided in the case of an invalid warrant is SUPPRESSION OF THE EVIDENCE FOUND. Well, you can sue the police under Federal law for money, but what about your door getting kicked down and your father getting the death penalty because the police made what the law defines a reasonble error? What remedy for that? Is money really enough?
Humbly submitted,
Alita
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