Who is Cory Maye? He’s a Mississippi man sentenced to death in 2004 for shooting a police officer in a botched, forced-entry drug raid on his apartment. The circumstances look very much like self-defense: a man asleep in his home with his 18-month-old daughter reached for a gun when someone kicked down his door late at night. Maye shot three times into the darkness and killed a police officer. Capital murder, or tragic mistake?
If you’ve heard of the Cory Maye case, it’s almost certainly due to the tireless efforts of Cato Institute policy analyst Radley Balko, who, during the course of researching a Cato policy study on paramilitary drug raids, came across reports of Maye’s conviction, got suspicious, and started digging. If you haven’t heard of the Cory Maye case by now, this will get you started: