Shades of Cory Maye

I can't help but think that Eric would have posted something on this story if he weren't still hip deep in the big move to Michigan, so I'll take a small crack at it myself, though I see that it's created some buzz throughout the blogosphere.

There's no better place to start than the lead to the story from the Baltimore Sun:

When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.
It seems that the Sheriff's office had intercepted a package of marijuana addressed to the mayor's wife and, without notifying the local police, initiated not a raid but a home invasion.

As for the marijuana, it was apparently part of a scam: have it delivered to the "wrong" address, then pick it up later. The perpetrators have since been arrested, and yet two dogs are dead and an innocent family terrorized, humiliated, and treated like criminals.

But something about this makes me sick: I have no doubt that the outrage will swell (as it should), reparations shall be made (as they should), and that changes may be made (in this locality at least) as they should, after so a flagrant a case of unconstitutional procedure.

But what makes me more sick is that Cory Maye still sits in prison because a cop knocked down the wrong door in the middle of the night. He had received the death penalty for defending himself, but the ruling was overturned.

And there he sits, forgotten.

More: I just spotted a post by J.D. Tuccille who has some interesting things to say on the subject:

Just today, a Lima, Ohio, police sergeant was acquitted of criminal charges stemming from his killing of an unarmed woman and shooting her one-year-old son during a botched drug raid. Cory Maye is currently serving life in prison for killing a housebreaker who turned out to be a raiding police officer acting on bad information.

Violent police raids are dangerous. But marijuana, in and of itself, is not. Even if Calvo was the intended and willing recipient of that package, there's no excuse for enforcing the laws against marijuana by knocking his doors in and shooting his dogs.

Amen, brother.

posted by Dennis on 08.07.08 at 10:04 PM





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Comments

I hate the war on drugs. It turns police into gestapo. It makes us all subjects of the police state. Time to call a truce. Or better yet an armistice.

Papertiger   ·  August 7, 2008 11:14 PM

No political candidate will ever advocate the end of the war on drugs. It is the biggest Catch-22 in our society.
The no-knock raids too often end in these tragic consequences.
I hope Cory Maye gets out and the Mayor gets repairations. They are both travesties.

Elroy Jetson   ·  August 8, 2008 02:49 AM

This is just unconscionable. The 'tards HAD to know it was the mayor! HAD TO! Why not walk up, present their evidence and a regular search warrant? Easy. Because THEY WANTED TO ACT AS THEY DID!

I hope this mayor brings the full force of the law down on the whole bunch.

Robohobo   ·  August 9, 2008 04:25 AM

What concerns me is that the ones responsible for "bring[ing] the full force of the law down" are the very same ones responsible for the raid in the first place.

Given the relationship between foxes and henhouses, I expect pretty much nothing will happen.

brian   ·  August 9, 2008 10:30 AM

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