The Cory Maye case has both lefties and righties up in arms. It’s been on righty radar for a while, now it’s on the lefty thanks to Tookie Williams’ execution yesterday. Crooked Timber has the summary.

I’ll put the details below the fold. I urge you to read them. The guts of it is that Cory Maye is a black man on death row for shooting a white police officer dead. The officer was part of a paramilitary no-knock drug raid which broke down the door of Maye’s apartment at 11:30pm, when he and his young daughter were sleeping. The building was a duplex and the officers had a warrant for Jamie Smith, the person who lived in the other half, and for “occupants unknown” in Maye’s half. It’s not clear that the officers expected anyone to be in that half of the duplex. There’s no evidence that Maye had anything to do with Smith, and Maye did not have a criminal record. When the officers broke in, Maye woke up, took his gun and ran to his daughter’s room. When Officer Ron Jones entered the room, Maye shot him. Jones later died. There is disagreement about whether the officers announced they were the police as they broke in, and what the exact sequence of events was once they were in there. (I don’t think it’s in dispute that Maye really had no reason to expect the police would come breaking down his door at midnight.) Jones was (1) first into the apartment but (2) not part of the SWAT team-he was invited along because he tipped off the Narcotics Task Force about the suspected dealer in the other half of the duplex. He was also (3) the son of a local police chief. Mayes was tried, apparently was not well-represented, and was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

Maye was absolutely right to defend his home. As I said, I’m no defender of the sanctity of life so I am not troubled at all by the death of Jones. Jones and the rest of the police made a negligent, reckless mistake and Jones paid for it in blood. Were any of us in Maye’s position we also would have been right in defending our homes and our loved ones.

But this is Mississippi. And Maye is black and Jones is white. They’ve got their own kind of justice down there. That this was even brought to trial is ridiculous. That a jury convicted him is expected but disappointing and infuriating. That Maye has been rotting in jail for this long is a travesty.

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