More Mississippi Injustice.

This time, a black man, Cory Maye, is on death row for killing a cop, who was the son of the police chief, in a no knock raid executed at the wrong house, because he didn't know that the intruder was a cop until after the shot was fired. But, in the race tinged world of Mississippi injustice, that doesn't matter to the all white jury. By the way, the odds of getting an all white jury by random chance in Mississippi, which has the larger percentage of the population that is African-American in the nation, is virtually nil.

What happened anyway?

Maye's attorney tells me that after the trial, she spoke with two jurors by phone. She learned from them that the consensus among jurors was that Maye was convicted for two reasons. The first is that though they initially liked her, Maye's lawyer, the jury soured on her when, in her closing arguments, she intimated that if the jury showed no mercy for Maye, God might neglect to bestow mercy on them when they meet him in heaven. They said the second reason May was convicted was that the jury felt he'd been spoiled by his mother and grandmother, and wasn't very respectful of elders and authority figures. The facts of the case barely entered the picture. Gotta' love the South.

It gets weirder. Maye's family terminated his trial attorney after he was convicted. In her place, they hired a guy from California with no legal experience who convinced them that he'd had bad representation (given his lawyer's closing argument, he was probably on to something). The new fellow has since failed on several occasions to file the proper appeals.

We will not have justice in this country until we get a better handle on controlling police negligence and misconduct.