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Outrageous Criminal Case

By stcynic on December 7, 2005.

Radley Balko has a post about one of the most outrageous cases you'll ever hear about. A man is on death row in Mississippi for shooting a cop. Ordinarily, most people would think that's okay. But the facts are unreal. The cops were involved in a drug raid but the residence was a duplex. The cops announced their presence at the front door of one unit, but another group of cops busted down the door of the other unit without announcing that they were cops, thinking they were going in the back door of a single family residence. This was all in the middle of the night. The guy in the house wakes up when he hears his door being broken down, has no idea its the police intending to raid someone else, he grabs his gun and shoots the first guy through the door and kills him. And a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. Unfreaking real.

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I thought it was outrageous when I read your summary. Then I went to Balko's original blog post. Black man convicted by a white jury because they thought he was a spoiled brat? WTF?!

By FishyFred (not verified) on 07 Dec 2005 #permalink

Why aren't both the ACLU and NRA all over this one? Protecing house and home with a firearm while civil liberties are being violated.

If it had been the other way around - cops shoot innocent person after cops break into wrong house - they would have gotten off with barely a slap on the wrist.

Shouldn't all the Republitarians be screaming about "jackbooted thugs" violating the sanctity of a private citizen's home? Oh, that's right. "Liberty" and "property" are properly invoked only to protect neofascistic white men who intentionally gun down law enforcement officers doing their duty.

By Donna Dallas (not verified) on 08 Dec 2005 #permalink

Why isn't the NRA on this one? This man is being executed for exercising his Second Amendment rights, isn't he?

By Ed Darrell (not verified) on 08 Dec 2005 #permalink

Details on the web are sketchy. This writeup appears in several places

On Dec. 26, in Prentiss, Officer Ron Jones, 29, called his father, Ronald N. Jones, the police chief, for permission to get a search warrant for an apartment where an informer had told him there was crack. An hour later, as Officer Jones led a team into the apartment, he was shot in the abdomen. The suspect in the shooting, Cory Maye, has been charged with capital murder.

"The hardest thing for me is that I'm the one who gave him the approval," Chief Jones said.

His son had been taking classes in drug enforcement and was the town's K-9 officer.

"He thought he could clean Prentiss up," Chief Jones said. "He honestly gave his life trying to make a difference."

Prentiss is a very small town -- 1500 people, according to several articles.

This http://orig.clarionledger.com/news/0112/28/m01.html is the most detailed acccount I was able to dig up, clearly says that no drugs were found, but does not mention that they broke down the wrong door.

There are a few brief articles about the verdict, saying that Mayes showed no reaction and declined to address the court before sentence was passed. No writeups of the trial itself.

Sorry about the formatting -- apparently the blockquote didn't carry past the line breaks.