Cory Maye: Getting the Death Penalty for Being Disrespectful of Authority

Radley Balko describes the case of Cory Maye, who had the misfortune to live in a duplex opposite a drug dealer named Jamie Smith:

Cops mistakenly break down the door of a sleeping man, late at night, as part of drug raid. Turns out, the man wasn't named in the warrant, and wasn't a suspect. The man, frightened for himself and his 18-month old daughter, fires at an intruder who jumps into his bedroom after the door's been kicked in. Turns out that the man, who is black, has killed the white son of the town's police chief. He's later convicted and sentenced to death by a white jury. The man has no criminal record, and police rather tellingly changed their story about drugs (rather, traces of drugs) in his possession at the time of the raid.

According to Maye's attorney, though the jury was initially sympathetic, they turned against her because in her closing arguments she suggested that God might not give them mercy in heaven if they showed no mercy to Maye. They further thought that he should be convicted because his mother and grandmother spoiled him and he was disrespectful of his elders and authority figures.

Maye is on death row in Mississippi.